-- Mr. Paravicini, in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap
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Been almost a month. No apologies--I've been busy, too on-the-go for a stop-and-look. You can't reconcile writing about life when the specks of it are flying all around you. That's like asking the tornado where it came from as it shreds the field, scars tree on tree; or like Job, boiled and troubled, getting a divine interview as the mountains crack behind him. No.
We toured A Christmas Carol for three solid weeks after Thanksgiving, setting up and performing two to three shows a day, seven days a week. No breaks. No days off. No reprieve, and no chance to ponder. Do, do, do. Real life skated by in tendrils, leaving trails for me to follow as I tried to focus on my work. I wanted to stop and stare at statues but the museum guard yanked my arm, pulling me to more galleries, ordering me to keep pushing the images into my head. Some statues, frozen in my head, now come back to me, relics of the last insane three weeks:
Indiana slush in a small town's motel, a smoking room with three beds and three ashtrays beside the beds, a last warrior for sleepy smokers. Chicken for dinner, with bouillon-steeped rice and twice-cooked potatoes (a first for yours truly), veggies galore. Champagne corks slamming my fist through the protective dishrag, fiery bubbles searing throats, drunk eyes smiling. A sea of fifty incontinent children in special reclining wheelchairs (more like wheelbeds), each with an overweight, stressed attendant at the elbow, these attendants dressed like receptionists at a dental office, the children writhing and seizing against the straps without knowing Scrooge or the ghosts, without even knowing themselves or the world that attacks them, and the actors, playing in front of a ratty backdrop of brick and marker, their eyes darting at each unknown sound of human voices screaming at the dark of existence. Exchanging secret Santa gifts in the van before our last show, gladly giving, gladly receiving.
Secret Santas in a van. The moment in December--for me, anyway--when a Christmas carol first leapt, uninvited but welcome, into my head; the first waking of the Christmas spirit. A gift after gifts.
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Listened to Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, yesterday. Afternoon, evening, midnight, finally crossing the bridge into Nebraska. Got caught in the snowy shit, the coldest and worst of storms I've ever encountered in a car: three hours to leave Chicago, an hour stopped on the ice behind semi trucks and completely stuffed cars,
(knowing they, too, are going home for christmas because of the mountain of presents stuffing the back seat, suitcases on boxes and cases and satchels, university bumper stickers and angry youthful faces glaring over scarves)
wondering why we all decided to drive on the day before the eve before the day of Christmas, and then another hour rolling at thirty miles an hour behind a duo of snowplows scraping and salting along both lanes on the highway. An awful drive--a seven-hour trip turned into a twelver--but I made it home finally, charged my ailing phone, and fell asleep for the length of the drive.
And, after all, still surprised my parents.
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Merry Christmas.
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