"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."
8.15.2008
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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