Wright

"Indeed, Jack had already begun to think of the beanstalk as his beanstalk, as if it were a close friend or pet, instead of the beany cloud-busting belfry, the grandiose green garrison, the lovely legendary leafy looming legume--that it was."

-- a line from Jack & the Beanstalk which was not in the original script but was added (and cut) during rehearsals

--

Well. Jack & the Beanstalk opened this morning. First public show, tonight. Buy tix here.

It went off hitch-free for the first school show, to our shock and awe. During the second show, the only major snag was an ad-lib nightmare when the cow--played by two dancers in a very sweaty costume; see here--entered late and sans the legs of the back half. From my point of view, anyway, it wasn't a fiasco.

This, among many other things, marks the first (officially) professional playwriting credit I have attained. The baby was in the works since July, if I remember correctly, and seeing it grow from conception to production has taught me five big lessons about writing for the stage.

I wouldn't bother to go into those lessons here, except that they were things I didn't learn in college (nor, arguably, could have learned). And before I make the list, I'll say that having a professional playwriting credit doesn't make me a professional playwright, just as vending muffins at a bake sale does not make someone a salesperson, nor does blogging daily make someone a writer.

I'll also say that I didn't do the writing solo; my co-playwright, Kelly G., came up with most of the ideas and really led the charge as far as creativity goes. If her main metaphorical utensil was a blank pen writing dialog, mine was the red pen, editing.

--

1.) Don't write for yourself. Temptations abound when the ink is flowing (or when the keys are clacking), and my worst tendency was to make inside jokes. This includes more than just jokes that I find funny. Into this category I'd put references to good but forgotten songs, movies, celebrities, etc. True, audiences love it when poppish allusions come at them unexpectedly, as Shrek and Will Ferrell movies have taught us, but too much turns your script into a long and insufferably bad "Family Guy" episode. Keep the jokes plot- and character-related, and don't get sidetracked by the "What if" quotient.

2.) Don't write for dummies. Especially when writing for an attention-lacking crowd of children, you may want to dumb everything down to the point that the dialog resembles a one-sided tennis match:

JOE. Hey, Walrus, did you hear?

WALRUS. No. What happened, Joe?

JOE. I'll tell you, Walrus. It involved Jackie.

WALRUS. What?

JOE. Well, I'll tell you. She dropped her groceries.

WALRUS. Oh no! Then what happened?

JOE. She had to pick everything back up again!

WALRUS. Wow! Did she succeed?

JOE. Well, I'll tell you, Walrus...

Let the information come from many sources. Detective stories are great, but even a character whose main role is to question people can get really bland, really quickly if the sleuth only asks questions of only one person. As my journalism adviser in high school told us, "Show; don't tell." Kids will remember something they see, and they will paraphrase what they hear. Dumbing your script down will accomplish only one thing: your script will seem dumb.

3.) Don't write for specific actors. Sure, it's nice to have a local celebrity who appears in your shows, but writing roles tailored to them only creates more problems. Few producers, I think, consider how having a role "written for you" affects the local celebrity's attitude towards the role; they are not expected to act anymore, just be themselves. The result is either local celebrities who feel offended by the kind of ga-ga worship that infiltrates every aspect of the production, or local divas certain that people will pay to see them no matter what show they're in. The former will continue to do your shows and feel uncomfortable because they think they're doing you a favor; the latter will give you a big headache for the same reason.

This flies in the face of most playwriting that happens in small theatres. The thought process goes like this: Director X has already asked Actor Y to play Role Z, so Z should be written for Y under the supervision of X. That's backwards; it moves Z-Y-X instead of X-Y-Z. I think a more appropriate method is to write Z as X advises, and then to ask Y if they like the role. Chances are they'll still say yes.

What happened in J&tB was this. Two local celebrities were asked to play two main characters, and we began to write for the celebrities and not the characters. Then, as rehearsals neared, both celebs dropped out suddenly, leaving us with holes in our cast and a script that no longer made sense. Recasting and rewriting followed. I must admit, the "finished" product is still full of devices that ought to have been cut when the celebrities left.

4.) Pay attention to the in-betweens. Scene changes are chores. You have to make sure you have those done before you have fun. If you don't put enough talk time over a scene change or resort to musical interludes, your show will hit tech rehearsal and grind to a halt. "Who was moving the stool?" "I was, but I couldn't make it because of a costume change."

Costume changes are even worse, because while the actor is between costumes, they can do nothing. I can remember chaotic moments in high-school theatre when I was quick-changing into a tux and delivering lines off-stage. The audiences heard mutters of "get that button" and microphone brushes instead of my lines.

Also: Give your actors breaks. No one likes to be on stage for an hour with no water/bathroom break. My mistake this time was to think playing the Narrator would be easy, so easy that I could stand behind a podium, watch the action, and recite my lines. No sir. My feet are killing me now at the end of each show because I never leave the stinkin stage.

5.) Kill puppies. A great rule I learned in high school, it is the hardest to obey. When you're being creative, you create like the end product will be flawless, and you end up with all of these little puppies that you love and they're so cute and they clutter up your show and poop all over it. Some puppies mature into obedient, reliable friends, but most of them just make life difficult for everyone involved in your show.

A general rule for identifying puppies: The more you love it, the more it needs to go.

My puppies include:

- Excessive alliterations - Applies to rhymes, too. You'd think these would always be funny, but they're not. The first one is fine, the second is fecund, and the third is a turd. As a reader, I like alliterations because they're whimsical and witty (read some chapters out of Roth's The Great American Novel for some killer alliterations). But actors use repetitive sounds to warm up their voices because they are difficult to do. Alliterations help the mind to memorize, but they tangle the tongue.

- Repetition - Again. Tennis match dialog is only interesting if it goes somewhere.

There's a spot, early in this show, where the Beanseller gives Jack the bag of magic beans. She says, "Here are five--magic--beans!" and he says, "Five?" and she says, "Yes," and he says, "Magic?" and she says, "Yes," and he says, "Beans?" and she says--? That's right. She says, "yes," just like she did the previous two times he asked a question, and by the way, his question is a repetition of what she told him he's holding in his hand. The whole thing (rhymes with "bit") eats up about twenty seconds, and each show I stand there at the podium wishing the scene would just move on already.

Guess who fought to keep that part in?

--

So, yes: Lots of lessons learned. Now that this show has begun its run, I feel freer to discuss the process of getting it here. If I ever find myself playwriting again, you can be sure I'll make a point not to repeat my mistakes.

Well. The third show happens soon. Gotta grab dinner and a decent parking space.

Hross

"...Ransom discovered how to deal with these sudden losses of confidence. They arose when the rationality of the hross tempted you to think of it as a man. Then it became abominable--a man seven feet high, with a snaky body, covered, face and all, with thick black animal hair, and whiskered like a cat. But starting from the other end you had an animal with everything an animal ought to have--glossy coat, liquid eye, sweet breath and whitest teeth--and added to all these, as though Paradise had never been lost and earliest dreams were true, the charm of speech and reason. Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view."

-- C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

--

So the hross is basically a limber seal with the mind of primordial man. The main character, a philologist, takes interest in the creature when he deciphers its vocalizations as a rough kind of language. They introduce themselves as hross and man (which the hross pronounces like "hman") in a standoff at a river. Then they get into a boat.

The linguistics in this book have already clenched me. As Ransom and the hross converse, the human learns about the structure of the vocab--masculine and feminine nouns, prefixes, suffixes, compound words, and plural forms--and brings to mind the stories of Lewis and Clark in the West, self-translating, self-defining as they explore.

--

But this business about the hross, it has me thinking about perspective, how a thing changes without changing. I think about a puppet whose face never changes structurally--I mean, everything stays fixed, the eyes and nose and stuff never moves. The mouth hinges and the hand inside the head can twist and bob to suggest different emotions, but the thing itself doesn't really change its shape, nor do its features change their spatial relationships. Yet when we watch a puppet in action, we imagine that all these things do change, that they change constantly, because we see the fixed features from different perspectives. Our brain translates these movements as, The puppet smiled, or, The puppet is making a shy face.

The same thing happens with masks. And lots of other things as well.

Like a city.

--

I have to drive fifteen minutes west to get to my second job, teaching an after-school acting class for youngish kids. Enjoyable drive--with its hills and dips, it feels like a roller coaster. The reason for the elevation dance is the road snakes over, through and under Cincinnati's viaduct, which is almost a century old. Recently there's been talk of transforming part of the viaduct into a monorail or subway system. The city sure could use one, a public transit system that can't get stuck in rush-hour traffic (i.e., buses). Locals tell me these plans may be scrapped in favor of a trolley system (a la San Francisco).

There's evidence that plans have begun only to be abandoned: cavish openings that mark the ends of tunnels dug out of the city's massive hills; rusted rails on rusted pillars; old graffiti embracing or denouncing the subway. Every once in a while, there's a local news bit about the possibility, but even the reporters seem skeptical that anything will actually happen.

--

When the idea was first pitched, people said it was going to top New York and Chicago. Innovation. Ingenuity. Other words, tossed around by architects and urban planners. But a decade has passed (maybe more--no one seems to know the idea's actual origins, as if some sage or prophet started the rumor and then skipped town) and still, no passenger trains shuttling people to and from work.

The closest thing to it is the empty squeal/screech you hear in the west side of town, usually at night. It's a wrenching sound, like metal being torn and pressed against metal. An empty noise, like a machine calling for help. When you ask what that sound was, people shrug and say, vaguely, "It's the trains."

They mean the trains carrying freight and such through the Ohio River Valley. Still, it might be more precise to say, "It's the ghost of the subway trains."

--

And so now there's the question of perspective.

When I think about this city as "where I've lived for a year and a half," I consider issues like the abandoned subway--or sanitation, homelessness, economic disparity along racial lines--to be examples of how pathetic the place is. I think, See, this is a city that doesn't know what to do with itself. It only knows what to say.

But when I'm driving back from Price Hill, approaching the skyline from the west, I realize that I won't be here much longer. I start thinking about my future destinations and it casts a sort of past-shadow on the present...if that makes sense.

And I see those holes in the hills and think, These are holes I should remember.

So when people ask me later, "What was Cincinnati like," I'll have something to say that isn't vague and travel-bookish and pretentious. I'll tell them about the holes in the hills and the squeals of ghost trains. Barges in the river, pushing along silently like they're trying not to be seen. Masses of yuppies trudging across the bridges on foot in the early mornings and late afternoons because they live on the south bank but work on the north.

--

"Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other."

Curveball

"Fate doesn't hang on a wrong or right choice;

Fortune depends on the tone of your voice."

-- Ben Folds, "Songs of Love"

--

Gotta give credit where credit's due. Curveball, which can be found on AddictingGames.com, got me through my first semester of college, and right now, it's getting me through some long and boring days at work.

My boss has seen fit, in anticipation of structural reorganization of the staff, to require everyone to create, update and submit hourly diaries. In true Office Space form, we now have to account for all the hours we are at work, to prove that we are earning our salaries.

--

I spent the greater part of today writing a rejection letter to the children who auditioned for our summer program but didn't get in. I guess it's more accurate to say I spent a half-hour writing it, and the greater part of today getting it copy-edited.

It's the kind of letter that has to be broadly specific, so that each reader feels as if he/she received personal criticism, even though you just change the name at the top and print dozens of them off.

They're signed, sealed, and as soon as they're delivered, they're theirs.

--

An oddity of this place (one among many) is that we are paid on the first of the month instead of every two weeks, and this paycheck is given in advance of the month; in other words, we get paid for February on February 1st. The result of this cumbersome (IMO) practice is the rhetoric we endure as employees--namely, that we are indebted to our employer for so many hours' worth of work. We have been paid, say, for 160 hours of work in a month, and we must spend the next four weeks filling our quotas. Now, the numbers are basically the same as in systems where people are paid after the work they do, but the language of obligation is very different.

And now that we have to account for all our work time (filling out the spreadsheet entitled "Hourly Diary" takes about fifteen minutes, and yes, we are required to note that time as well), we all feel very, very watched.

--

Was part of a photo shoot with the Enquirer. The subject of the shoot was the director of Jack & the Beanstalk, and we needed two people to stand in the cow costume while the photographer clicked away. (There's a tap-dancing cow in the show.)

Guess who was the cow butt?

--

It's beyond the accounting of hours. My boss is now searching through our server files to make sure we are updating the diaries throughout the day--"If you don't record what you did as soon as it's done," she says, "then it becomes fantasy."

Needless to say, my Curveball breaks will not be on this week's hourly diary.

Momentous

"Been in town, my baby

We just got to rock on

Yeah, darling, we just got to go home

I don't want no tutti-frutti, no lollipop,

Come on baby, just rock, rock, rock."

-- Led Zeppelin, "Boogie with Stu," Physical Graffiti

--

Paige, my baby sister, came to visit me from Wednesday to yesterday. In total, the princess spent five days in the Queen City.

Highlights:

- Ice-skating in Fountain Square

- First hockey game (viewed in the flesh, that is): Cyclones v. Chiefs

- The drive to and from Dayton, OH, to see a mediocre production of Urinetown

- Letting her drive to Wendy's

- Running to the river

- It's Just Crepes

--

On the Sad Bear Blog, Tony G. posted about what he calls "moments of clarity," those "ah-ha" moments. He was inspired by something he read to post some seemingly obvious things that became apparent to him only recently; in turn, inspired by his entry, here are some of mine:

- There never was a Pope who married a bear. (As I told Zach H., who created this hilarious rumor, I've been spreading that whopper and needlessly pissing off Catholics for years.)

- Manicurists get paid basically to do the same thing I do to my own nails; the only difference is that when I do it, it's a bad habit, and when they do it to others, it's a job.

- There are different blades used in different Olympic events like skiing, ice-skating and sledding, depending on the hazards of the event (check out the array of blades that aired on the "Today" show this morning--the $20G luge blade is especially cool).

--

Another thing, not-so-obvious, and this must be shown as it's told:

When my sister came to visit, it broke my routine in many good ways. I was propelled out of my work and apartment because I was now a host, an older brother who wanted to experience all these things with his younger sister. We did all sorts of things, almost just for the sake of doing them.

The things that I wanted to be most meaningful turned tortuous and sour, but the things I thought would be superficial and glossed-over turned out to be the most fun. And that was because my sister was there, and I was more focused on her than I was on the thing.

For instance: We went to a play (a very serious, artistic play) on Friday night, and I was excited because this was the first "real" play my sister had ever seen. But at intermission, when I asked her what she thought about the production, all she did was smile and say, "I'm sorry, I don't get it." And all my explaining turned into jargon the instant I spoke the words. My attempts to make this event momentous pushed her away and made it awkward, forced.

Two days later, we took an hour-long road trip to see another play. I promised her that if at intermission she didn't "get it," we'd go ahead and leave. On the drive, I gave her control of the music and we had a blast, singing along to songs we both knew. I wasn't trying to introduce her to anything, and there was no pressure, and we ended up enjoying the play, even if it was a textbook example of what we would've labeled "deadly theatre" in college.

That night, I took her to Dave & Buster's for some Valentine's Day arcadia. D&B's doesn't take reservations, so we stood there in the lobby for a half hour before Paige looked at me and said she'd rather just hang out at the apartment the night before her flight to Nebraska. So we left. The very thing I thought would be the climactic funfest of her trip was the last thing she wanted to do. We went back and watched the Olympics until she fell asleep.

--

So what's the moral? I don't know.

Maybe: Do what your guests want to do?

Or: You can never plan fun?

Or: Not everyone likes the things you like, stupid.

--

We were harried and hurried at the airport. There were delays because of snow, but they bumped her flight earlier again without telling us. So at first we could not check her in, and then we could, and then there was the gate rush, and suddenly, two pictures later, she was at security, and I had to stay back.

It had been so good to have someone with whom to share life. And life itself had changed for five days. I'd been propelled out of my apartment and out of myself. I missed her already.

This is gonna sound really stupid, but I felt like I'd been saved from myself. You can only watch so many movies and clean the kitchen so many times before you're bored again.

So she went through security and I watched from fifty yards away as she put up her luggage, took off her shoes, gave me a wave and was down the escalator. The rows and columns of blue TV screens told me she was boarding. We kept texting while the plane waited to taxi. I walked back to my car, where only twenty minutes before we'd been scrambling with her suitcase and avoiding slushy muddy puddles.

I got into the driver's seat and, before I knew what was happening, I began to sob. I don't mean "weep," and I don't mean "a tear came to my eye." I mean I was dry-heaving tears, vocalizing sadness, groping for a reason. I only had a vague notion as to why I was crying, and I couldn't stop. It lasted for thirty minutes and it lasted for three. It was the first time I've had an exhilarating cry, almost like a second wind, like each tear only primes the pump for the next one. It was wonderfully cathartic.

This is gonna sound even stupider, but I felt refreshed afterwards.

--

Then I got a text from my mom. "So how does it feel to be a parent for 4 days?"

Momentous, Mom.

--

So now it's back to work.

I delayed it for as long as possible, going in after I'd eaten lunch. (There are perks to working part-time.) The city is so full of snow that it's impossible to get any real running/walking done, so my exercise routine is suspended until shovels hit sidewalks. But I'm in the mood for having a routine scrapped and replaced for a time, so it's all good.

No, really. It's all good.

Boots

"Question 16. Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?

Lewis: That's a question which I cannot answer. My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn't go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn't matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it's very selfish of you and you upset the house.... I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don't know much.

Question 17. If it is true that one has only to want God enough in order to find Him, how can I make myself want Him enough to enable myself to find Him?

Lewis: If you don't want God, why are you so anxious to want to find Him? I think that in reality the want is a real one, and I should say that this person has in fact found God, although it may not be fully recognized yet. We are not always aware of things at the time they happen. At any rate, what is more important is that God has found this person, and that is the main thing.

-- from "Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, by C. S. Lewis, ed. by Walter Hooper

--

Yes, I'm reading C. S. Lewis again.

I went to a college where it seemed everyone read Lewis--and not only read him, but read him too much. I'll be the first to say that you should never read one author at the exclusion of others, especially if the topic is intellectual and so is the author, but when I read Lewis, I don't know, I feel as if there is little need to read anyone else. I find myself wanting to read too much of him. Even people who disagree with him, like the people who disagree with Orwell, have to admit their awe at the writing. The sheer majesty of it. The language is so crisp, so clear, and the writer is so unashamed of his beliefs. It's the ultimate marriage of what one means to say and what one actually says, when things come out so simply and strongly. I just love it.

That's the main reason there are four Lewis books on the desk beside my computer. Libraries; gotta love 'em.

--

I've found myself stuck in a cycle of self-righteousness lately, though. Especially on this blog. If I've offended anyone with callous words, I'm sorry. I'll try not to do it again.

I've resumed going to church, and I think that makes me a saint. I'm running three times a week, and I think that makes me healthy. I'm considering a major career change, and I think that makes me too good for the job I have.

All those things I think are simply not true. I'm not involved in the church yet, I simply attend on Sundays; I still have a spare tire wrapped around my midsection that won't go away no matter how many sit-ups and miles I achieve; I still struggle at work.

(The latest work-related debacle has been sending these notification letters to kids who have made it into our summer musical-theatre program. In Friday's snowstorm prelude, I took all 90 envelopes in a large paper shopping bag to the drop box a few blocks from my apartment. I grabbed them in bricks of letters and slid them into the slot. Halfway through, I realized that some of the envelopes didn't have the "non-profit organization postage PAID" stamp in the corner. In other words, The Children's Theatre is gonna get a lot of red-stamped envelopes on Monday or Tuesday. It's not a huge deal, it just delays the process a few days, but it's still such a simple task and my absentmindedness struck again.)

I don't think those things consciously. They're unconscious, subconscious, whatever. It's an attitude I've had for a long time, that the thing that I'm doing must be the correct thing to do, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. That's a poor way to think. I'm trying to turn from that, too.

--

"...and then you realize you aren't fit to clean those boots."

--

That being said...

A dream is coming true in this show I'm in. My number, a rewritten version of "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown," includes a dance break during which I can impersonate a performing hero of mine, Charlie Chaplin. The whole thing is under a minute, but hey--with the mustache, cane and waddle, I couldn't be happier.

That is something I can say about theatre, even as I consider--mind you, consider--giving it up. There are moments when I feel I am the happiest person in the world. Those moments are not to be forgotten, whichever way my life goes.

It's just that I've heard so many professional actors say something along the lines of, "If you can do anything else and love it, do that thing instead." Many of my friends have tried to do something else and found that they hated it.

I see that, I hear about it, I read about it. I acknowledge it.

But there are different strokes for everyone, you know? And a stroke (I'm thinking of boats and oars here) is a short, repetitive thing, and if you keep stroking (again, I'm thinking of boats and oars) the same way, you'll end up going in circles. Going in circles makes a person dizzy, and when a person is dizzy, he/she falls down. And even if the person doesn't fall down, they're not really going anywhere...just circles...in the middle of a lake or something...

(Is the metaphor mixed enough now? Jeez. I'm nowhere near Lewis when it comes to saying things directly.)

Okay. Here it is. I just want to see if there's something else I could do in this world and love it. It's a risk I'm finally willing to take.

--

So. What does any of this have to do with Lewis? (Aside from his language prowess and my linguistic powerlessness.)

Everyone knows that Lewis was an atheist who set out to pick Christianity apart intellectually, who in the process of investigating it with a cold eye discovered its warmth, and who converted and became one of the greatest Western apologetic writers ever. Fine. Go, Lewis.

What I guess this means in terms of my life is that people change all the time. Myself included. Lewis was in his thirties when he adopted a whole new religion. It took him for an amazing journey. Fortunately for us, he took pictures and wrote postcards. I've got four of them right here.

I'm in my twenties. My early twenties, at that. The Flaming Lips have a song in which they ask, "If it's not now then tell me when would be the time that you would stand up and be a man?" Now. In this moment. Always and always, now.

I've got a friend who has a wife and kids. He says he contemplated this very life change, but it was impossible because, well, he's a husband and father. He tells me that I'm young, I'm single, and why not try something else? It really affects no one's life but mine. He says now's the time.

Another friend is unmarried like me, struggling to find his way. He tells me that I'm young, I'm single, and why not really give myself to theatre? Move to a bigger city with a serious theatre crowd (no offense, Cincinnati). Restart the acting career. Hit the auditions. Really go for it. He says now's the time.

So I guess that means now's the time.

--

Gotta look ahead. Make things happen. What those things are, God only knows.

I think Lewis would tell me to get back in touch with the Source before picking a tributary. (Another metaphor...sigh.)

Ultimately, here's the bacon. I don't want to be like Prufrock:

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

--

Oh, and the Super Bowl's today. Go Colts!

Paperback

"I'm a-tell you baby,

We gonna move away from town...

I'm a-buy myself a Frigidaire

When I move, yeah, out on the outskirts of town.

That's why I don't want nobody--

Hoo, baby!--always hangin' around..."

-- Big Bill Broonzy, "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town"

--

Driving north from my apartment, passed a U-Haul truck on my right. Back was open, inside were large picture frames and bed frames, lots of furniture piled and stacked like files in a cabinet, all crammed in there, immovable. There was space between where the furniture pile ended and the truck ended, and in that three feet or so was a rocking chair, and in that rocking chair--ancient, graying brown wood, straw webbing for the back--sat a girl of about twelve, wearing overalls and Skechers whose toes tapped the floor of the truck and pushed with metronomic regularity so that the girl in the rocking chair, well, rocked, but with too much weight forward (and too little total) to get that satisfying depth of rocking that old women with weak backs seem to enjoy on autumn afternoons. She looked like a much younger, backwards-turned version of Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies." The girl read a paperback in her lap while a young boy--I assumed it was her brother--aimed the spine of a large dark-colored book (Bible? dictionary? Stephen King's The Stand?) as if it were a machine gun. She ignored him.

And this I saw in a flash as I passed, and I was driving to work.

--

My little sister visits in nine days. Gotta clean the carpet, scrub the sinks, wipe down shower and toilet, wash the extra bedsheets, fluff the extra pillows, and--latest addition to the list of preparations--buy some ground beef and Hamburger Helper (no stroganoff or lasagna, please). I'm terribly excited for her visit (he said, sounding accidentally like the heroine of an Austen novel).

--

To have found a church (maybe) and a volunteering outlet (definitely) and to start walking and running in the mornings...it's all stuff I feel like I should have done a long time ago, and it feels so completely good to be doing those things again. But it's not the doing so much as the change I feel as a result. Simple energies. Little moments.

With the early morning activity, I now have more time in the day. More productive time. Been reading a lot more (almost 100 pages, just today) for leisure, and feeling the benefits. With a full day of things done, the evenings are reserved for films. Films for leisure.

And things are just looking up in general. That's all, I guess. (Or something like that.)