October 31, 2005
Cashel Stuff
Unfurling below you is a Cashel Greatest Hits. There's so much more to say ... a million more things in that archive ... I just pulled out some of my personal favorites.
Any of the Aunties who are reading this ... please add your own favorites.
Happy birthday, Cashel!!
Saucy goblet nothing foul
From June, 2004
My 6 year old nephew Cashel was in town this weekend with his mother. Cashel used to live in Park Slope. While Cashel lived there, he befriended a boy named "Jack". Jack has taken on mythical qualities to all of us O'Malleys, primarily because of Cashel's undying love for Jack. They are soul mates. They are six.
They met when they were 4, and now Cashel lives far away - and yet the friendship has flourished. They have long-winded telephone conversations once a week. I said to Cashel, "I bet you guys are gonna be friends when you're grown-ups." He gave me this unbelievable look - perplexed, kind of amused, but also very confused ... trying to picture the two of them as adults. He couldn't see it. I said, "And you'll go visit Jack where he works or something, and you'll play like you're Jedi knights all over his office." Cashel thought this was a supremely hilarious image, and shook with hysterical laughter.
I'm a big hit with the 6 year old set.
I met Jack at one of Cashel's birthday parties. Jack was dressed as a Jedi knight. The primary bond between Jack and Cashel is Star Wars.
Cashel stated to my parents once, bluntly, "The first time I met Jack, I could see the twinkle of Star Wars in his eyes."
How one does not laugh when a 5 year old says something like that to you ... I simply do not know.
I love Jack. I love Jack because Cashel loves Jack.
When my sister and I drove up to see Cashel this past fall, there was a huge snowstorm in New England. I mentioned it to Cashel: "It was snowing in New York when I left!"
Cashel gasped. And then said, under his breath, "I hope Jack's okay."
Bwahaha. I said, "Oh, I'm sure he's okay."
For Cashel, it is ALL ABOUT JACK.
This past weekend, Cashel spent with Jack. On Saturday and Sunday (while I was quite ill, by the way - still not better) I kept imagining the rapture going on in Park Slope, the Star Wars orgies, the game-playing ... It made me happy to think of.
Monday morning, Siobhan made brunch for us at her apartment. It was me, Cashel's mom, Cashel and Siobhan. Still sick, I woke up early, got my act together, and traveled through the cool grey morning out to Queens. Siobhan's neighborhood is quiet, homey, and overwhelmingly green. Flags at half-mast everywhere because of Memorial Day. I kept seeing little kids in band uniforms, and little majorette girls ... traipsing off for a parade somewhere. I heard snippets of bagpipe music.
I was so excited to see the Cash-Man. How I miss seeing that little boy all the time.
My mother told me that she and Cashel had taken a walk around the neighborhood on Friday night, it was dark, they had flashlights. Cashel, who is verbose, to say the least, talked the entire time, the chattery mouse-voice coming through the darkness.
At one point he said, a propos of nothing, "Bullies aren't really bullies. They're really just cowards."
Smarty pants! MY heart cracked in two. I knew he was mouthing something that either his mother or his father had said to him, to help him make sense of playground politics.
"Bullies aren't really bullies, Cash. They're really just cowards."
Anything you say to Cash, he is liable to latch onto, make his own, and then say it right back to you. He is a knowledge and philosophy hog.
Siobhan cooked pancakes, bacon, made coffee. Cash has a scruffy short haircut that looks great. It took him a bit to warm up.
"So what did you and Jack do?"
Long silence, as he concentrated on eating a strawberry, eyes averted.
"Cash?"
Chew, chew, chew, eyes roaming the walls.
"Hello? Cash? What did you and Jack do?"
But the truth eventually came out. They saw 3 movies: Samarai Jack, Return of the Jedi - and one other, can't remember.
"And what else did you guys do?"
The casual off-handed answer? "We played."
Ah, children. God bless them. They "played".
So we ate breakfast, we all chatted, it was great fun, I have to hold myself back from attacking Cashel every other second, hugging him, kissing him, etc. It is very difficult. The good thing about a 6 year old, though, is that he will not completely object if you just reach over to him, and pull him on your lap. Such closeness can still be tolerated.
But really - the entire morning was completely enlivened by the Drama of the Refrigerator Magnets. This is what gave our brunch its special and memorable flavor.
Siobhan has those Magnetic Poetry magnets - the "Shakespeare" version. They are spread out all over the side of her fridge. Random snippets of silly verse - One was "I Like My Lady Belch" - stuff like that. Cashel noticed all of the magnets and said, "Heyyy, what's this?"
Then stood there, in his little jeans and striped shirt, looking up, and reading as many words as he could.
Because it was Shakespeare, you can imagine what Cashel's little boy voice sounded like.
"Henceforth."
"Methinks." (He said it correctly, too - which just cracked me UP - emphasis on the second syllable)
He just thought the whole thing was so funny for some reason, so fascinating. Like all the O'Malleys, he loves language.
I loved his pronunciation of "Melancholy".
Again, I have a hard time not attacking Cashel every other second, squeezing him so tight he begs for mercy.
So Cashel began messing around with the magnets, putting together random phrases - before he finally composed what amounts to a messy sonnet - which makes absolutely no sense - and which Cashel is probably still laughing about.
Every nonsensical thing he composed gave him such merriment.
He particularly found this phrase HYSTERICAL:
"saucy goblet nothing foul".
Actually, I think that's pretty funny, too, and believe the phrase could be used in all kinds of circumstances.
"How are you doing today?"
"Oh, you know. Saucy goblet nothing foul."
"Goodness, I just stepped on your foot. I beg your pardon."
"Saucy goblet, nothing foul, no problem."
Cashel kept saying it, over and over, his voice disintegrating into giggles. "Saucy goblet nothing foul..."
Love his laugh. It's the best sound in the world. No contest.
But here is Cashel's masterpiece, which he declaimed, over and over and over again that morning:
"dream & ly said mischance
let winter above light
peasant merry tempt to speak
thus curse could like you
lazy warrant and ed almost
give me manner strike his
poison deceive wherefore 'st
every fair hither hast to
must"
Now one word: If you do not find that poem to be one of the funniest things you have ever read in your life, Cashel will have no use for you.
To Cashel, his creation was HIGH COMEDY.
Clearly, there are myriad interpretations one could glean from this work. Siobhan came up with a very good dramatic reading of the last line - put a comma or a dash in between "hast to" and "must". So that, like with Shakespeare, the thought, the intention of the line is in the punctuation. One doesn't "hast to" do something, one "MUST" do something.
Cashel, though, would read the thing aloud, barely able to get through it because of his laughter, and then would state - every single time he finished it - "It doesn't make any sense!!"
That, to him, was the funniest part of it!
Actually, that's not quite the case. To Cashel, the absolute pinnacle of comedy was contained in the two words "lazy warrant".
For whatever reason, he thought that was SO FUNNY and would start to laugh about it 5 words before it came, because he could feel the comedy approaching.
"Lazy warrant".
We made a joke about how Cashel could use that as an insult on the playground (to throw at the bullies, who are not really bullies, they are just cowards.) Then when Cashel is taken to the principal's office or someone tries to tell on him, nobody will even understand what the insult means.
"Cashel called me a Lazy Warrant!"
Cashel thought this was such a funny image. "Nobody would know what it meant if I called them that!! 'You lazy warrant'!" he cried, followed by a huge burst of laughter at the thought.
I know I wouldn't like to be called a Lazy Warrant.
We then made up a game. I would call him a "saucy goblet", and his cutting rejoinder would be "Lazy warrant!"
"You saucy goblet."
"You lazy warrant!"
"You saucy goblet!"
"You lazy warrant!"
Cashel sat in the back seat of the car, as they drove off, seat belt on, looking so LITTLE, completely engrossed in his Star Wars magazine, and unaware that his two emotional Aunties were having a hard time saying good-bye.
We called at him, "You saucy goblet!"
I could see him call back "Lazy Warrant" obediently, but his mind was already elsewhere, on his magazine, but I could see his mouth form the words, "Lazy Warrant" - Couldn't hear his voice because the window was up, but it was so cute just the same.
Always does my heart good to see that little saucy goblet.
Nature and storms
March 2005
So this morning I had a loooooong teleconference with Cashel, about the book he has basically commissioned me to write. The book "on nature and storms". It started out with a heart-crack moment, because we sort of did the chit-chat thing (which I'm not good at, and neither is he). "Hi, how are you?" "Fine. Good." Dead-ends galore. Cashel's voice sounded tiny and almost monotone. There were MANY awkward pauses. Then Cashel said, in a completely different voice altogether, kind of alert and serious, "Auntie Sheila, I really hope that you will think about writing that book on nature and storms."
And with that, we were off and running. Cashel and I talked about nature and storms for 45 minutes. We planned out our book. We brainstormed. I wrote down everything he said.
Here, briefly, is what Cashel wants:
There will be two distinct sections of the book. One on STORMS. And one on NATURE. These are not one and the same and must be separated out.
We took on the "storms" part first. We started listing all the different kinds of "storms". We include "natural disasters" under this category, by the way.
Here is the list - My contributions were "hurricane", "blizzard" and "volcano eruption". All else came from Cashel:
Hurricane
Drought
Lightning
Tsunami
Flood
Earthquake
Blizzard
Mud slide
Typhoon
Volcano
Then came the NATURE discussion. Now, to me ... where I was going with the whole "nature" thing was to get into all the different elements in nature: animals, mountains, ocean, stuff like that. I was very quickly made to realize that that was not what Cashel had in mind at all.
Here is where the conversation got really deep.
I said, "Okay. So now we move on to 'Nature'. I am thinking we should have different sections in the book for - like - the beach. Or flowers. Or redwood trees."
Cashel interrupted me, and his voice dripped with scorn and irritation. "Auntie Sheila, no, not trees and flowers. Not THAT. They're not DANGEROUS."
I slowly realized that the book was actually going to be a list of dangers, throughout the planet.
"Oh ... okay ... so just dangerous stuff in nature, then?"
I felt confused. Because to me, all the dangerous stuff in nature we had already covered (typhoon, earthquake, etc.) Oh, how narrow-minded and unimaginative I am. Cashel, in an extended monologue, set me straight.
He said, "Yes - like SICKNESSES."
"Sicknesses?"
"Sicknesses can be VERY dangerous!" (Again, the irritation in his voice. I was slow on the uptake.)
"Yes, Cash-man. You're right. They can be very dangerous."
"Like tuberculosis." Cashel rattled this one off.
I wrote down, under my "Nature" heading the word: "Tuberculosis."
"Yup. Tuberculosis." (Where the hell did he get that??)
Then came this monologue from Cashel: "And here's another one. You go to China, okay? And you pick up a virus in China. Then you come home, and you get a cold, and then BOOM." (He shouted "Boom") "You're dead. Your white blood cells can't fend the virus off."
I literally wanted Cashel to keep talking in this vein FOREVER.
I said, "Right. White blood cells are very important. So what other sicknesses?"
Cashel began to brainstorm. He said, "Heart attack." I wrote it down. He clarified for me, his stupid auntie, "Basically any kind of sickness caused by NATURE."
Then, out of nowhere, Cashel said in a serious voice, "I think the most dangerous thing in nature is ourselves."
I felt that go right through me. I felt his essence, his little serious essence. It was a deep moment.
I said, "Ourselves, Cashman?"
"Yes. Mankind. Mankind is the most dangerous thing in nature."
"I think you're onto something there."
"Wars. Look at all the wars."
"I know."
There really wasn't much else to say, along those lines ... I wanted so badly to be in his presence at that moment, his little sensitive blond-headed presence, and hang out with him, and read with him, and watch movies, and stuff. He's an incredible person, he really is.
Then, after the digression into the inherently dangerous nature of mankind, we got back to our list of sicknesses.
Cashel said, "Heart burn. Also humungous fungus." There was a long pause, and then Cashel said portentously, "There's a fungus among us."
I burst into laughter, and I heard Cashel laughing silently on the other end. I only knew he was laughing (in that shaking-like-a-bowlful-of-jelly way that he was) because of the occasional gasps for breath. Other than that? Silence.
We ended the list of "sicknesses caused by nature" with the deadliest of them all:
"Onion breath."
I certainly have my work cut out for me. A book including typhoons and onion breath. I can't wait to get started.
Smarty-pants
From Feb. 2005
Cashel's latest passion is turning books into movies. In his head. He's very big on adapting stuff for the screen. He has a lot of ideas. And the movies he makes in his head are, I must inform you, completely real. He has a resume. He says stuff like, "In my next movie ..." What are you, Quentin Tarantino?? Books are being adapted into movies - all in Cashel's 7-year-old head. He even has cast lists planned out. I'm sure Marty Feldman would have been thrilled to know that he would have been asked to be in every single one of Cashel's book-to-movie adaptations.
Recently, though, Cashel has been feeling a bit uninspired. None of the books he's been reading seem adaptation-appropriate. There's no spark. Cashel knows good material when he sees it ... and lately? In the 7-year-old reading world? The well has run dry.
He shared his concerns about this to his dad (my brother). They had a serious discussion about it. Cashel talked about wanting to adapt more books into movies (I'm sorry, I just have to interject this: I THINK THIS IS SO ADORABLE. Cashel ... "adapting" books into movies and feeling bad because he doesn't have a new project.)
So he asked my brother: did he have any ideas? Did he read any books when HE was a kid that would make a good movie?
My brother started brainstorming with Cashel, remembering his childhood books, telling him the plots, seeing if it would be a good movie. Finally he said: "I remember reading a book when I was little about a boy who could move stuff with his brain."
Cashel pondered this. Seriously. Silently. Then asked: "He could move stuff with his brain?"
Brendan said, "Yeah, like - he would think to himself: Let me move the pencil across the table. And just by thinking about it, the pencil would move."
Silence from Cashel. DEEP thinking going on.
Brendan went on, "And not only could this kid move stuff with his brain - but he could also read other people's minds. He could tell what you were thinking."
Long long silence. Cashel listening, pondering.
Then Cashel spoke. And this is what he said: "So ... he was telekinetic and telepathic?"
In the world of superheroes ...
one can only assume (and demand) that there is ALWAYS room for one more.
There BETTER be, because my nephew Cashel recently had a dream where he was a superhero. A new and improved superhero. A superhero the world has never heard of before ... and in my opinion, the world is the lesser for it.
Cashel had a dream that he was a superhero with long limbs - limbs that could elongate and reach out ... stretching across the acres ...
What is the name of this new superhero? Brought to life in Cashel's subconscious mind?
Stretchy Colorado.
Yes, folks. There's a new superhero on the scene and his name is:
Stretchy Colorado.
Yes, folks. There's a new superhero on the scene and his name is:
STRETCHY COLORADO.
I can think of MANY ways that good old "Stretchy Colorado" could be of use to our society. Thank goodness he has finally arrived.
Cashel's bored
From Nov. 30, 2004
Recently, Cashel was at my parents house. My dad was sitting on the couch, watching TV, and Cashel was catapulting about the room, in his normal fashion, shooting imaginary laser guns, and battling off dark-force Jedi knights. But then he turned, and looked at the TV.
My dad was flicking through the channels, surfing, and he stopped, briefly, on one channel - probably the History Channel, or PBS or something ... On the TV-screen, there was a Renaissance-era painting of a man ... and there was a voice-over droning on ... That was ALL that was seen before my dad flipped onwards.
Cashel, seeing just that one snippet, rolled his eyes, and said in a bored over-it voice, "The Medici popes."
Then he went back into Jedi land.
Cashel is BORED and OVER the Medici Popes. Just so you know.
bananas
August, 2004
Cashel (my nephew) sent my mother a birthday card. A home-made birthday card, with an envelope he filled out himself. Cashel (who is 6) wrote my parents address (in thick blue magic-marker) on lines drawn on by Cashel's mother, obviously. To keep his crazily large handwriting in check. Most of the letters and numbers are backwards. And yet it still arrived!!! The return address, written on the back of the envelope, is also punctuated by backwards characters - and he has written his name thusly: CASH.
That's it. No last name. It's positively heart-crackingly hysterical.
But the card!!
Okay, so here's what it is:
On the front of it is a spectacular Cashel drawing. When I first saw it, all I could do was fall into silence, contemplating the image: It's obviously a banana, coming out of its peel. The 2 sides of the banana peel are curling down, as though they are arms - about to be placed on the banana's hips. This is all very apparent. The banana itself, emerging from the peel, is obviously in profile - The banana is looking to the side, and he is wearing purple sunglasses (seen in profile. Cashel's very good at perspective like that - you can see the side of the glasses hooked around the banana's "ear"). It's quite a pose. Yellow arms curling down to the sides, banana-head in profile, staring off at some indeterminate horizon, purple sunglasses cockily in place.
This is my mother's birthday card.
But then, you open it up - and there is Cashel's handwriting, sprawled across the inside. Does he say, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDMA"? No. There is no mention of "birthday", there is no "happy", there is no "love, Cashel", there is no "dear Grandma".
All it says on the inside of the card is this:
THE BANNANA SRGT. IS SAYING HE'S TOUGH.
Heh heh heh heh
We could not stop saying this phrase over the weekend. "Hey, listen. Don't argue. The banana sergeant is saying he's tough, and that's final."
Of course, once you read the inside, you then have to flip back and stare at the drawing again. Only then do you realize that yes, indeed, THAT is what is happening with that banana. I would not have realized that the banana was a "sergeant", but I could tell quite clearly that he was a tough-guy. The banana arms coming down, the cocky profile, the sunglasses - of course! The banana srgt. (love the abbreviation) is "saying he's tough".
WHAT?
Cashel's manners
From August 2004:
I was sitting on the dock, reading one of my toooo many books.
Jean and Cashel were in the water, Cashel had on his goggles, and Jean was lying on "the floatie".
A game began, and here is how it went:
Jean was speaking in a hoity-toity English accent, about how lovely the day was, how much she adored the blue sky, how it was almost tea-time, and Cashel would sneak up and splash her, or try to upend the floatie, causing GREAT distress in hoity-toity land.
Jean would flail about in the water, spluttering, making random exclamations: "How has this happened ... oh my GOODness ... Dear ME" as Cashel writhed about in laughter.
The game evolved. Jean became the actual QUEEN of England, and the "floatie" was actually the QEII. Because Cashel is insane, he knows what that is. "You're on an ocean liner, Auntie Jean - that's an ocean liner, okay??"
So Jean lay on the deck of the ocean liner, as Queen Elizabeth, musing about the loveliness of her hoity-toity British day, until along came ramrod Cashel, to sink the QEII.
Queen Elizabeth flailed about in the 2-foot-deep water, in her bikini, making random shocked exclamations, and at one point, Queen Elizabeth, clinging to the edge of the floatie, trying to save her own life, stated, "I deCLARE. Where are your manners???"
6 year old Cashel, enormous goggles on his small blonde head, screamed - in utter glee:
"I'M AN AMERICAN! I don't HAVE any manners!!!!"
Cashel highlights
From March, 2004:
Cashel - my dear little white-haired boy. In his cute little corduroys.
Okay, so here are some of the highlights:
-- I was up at 7 am one morning, and so was Cashel and his mother. Outside, the snow was falling. NPR was playing, coffee was brewing. I made Cashel some EXTREMELY complicated toast, made to his order. I had to "put the butter on where I can see it" (he likes the butter to be in chunks, not evenly melted) - then I had to sprinkle said butter-chunks with sugar - and then sprinkle over that a light frosting of cinnamon. Following the cinnamon, I had to spread it all out evenly, over the toast. And then after that, I had to go take a damn nap because putting together that toast-concoction under his watching eyes was far too much for me.
-- Second of all, during our 7 am morning-time together, there was some interview with Edmund Hillary on NPR, but it was basically background. Cashel and I were discussing Batman, among other things. But suddenly, we heard the words "Shackleton" come out of the radio. Cashel stopped, alert. Then he informed me bluntly, "Ernest Shackleton's boats got crushed in the ice because they were wood and they hadn't invented steel boats yet."
I hadn't yet had my first cup of joe. I struggled to deal with this. I said, trying to add my two cents, "Yeah, I've seen the pictures of the boat being crushed!"
I saw this hit Cashel, he pondered it seriously, and then stated, putting two and two together, "So cameras were invented then." As opposed to steel boats. Smarty-pants.
I said, "Yes. Cameras were invented then. But they weren't like your mom's, small enough to fit in her pocket. They were huge."
Cashel looked thoughtful. He was trying to work out, for himself, the timeline of technological innovation involved in Ernest Shackleton's failed journey. Then a look of enormous worry floated over his face, and he looked up at me, piercingly, "But nobody was on the boat when it got crushed."
"Oh no. They were all off, standing on the ice, watching."
Phew. Cashel was quite concerned about the fate of Shackleton's crew.
-- Somehow, over the weekend, I found myself describing the concept of the Big Bang to Cashel. I figure it's not too advanced for a boy who understands the innovation of steel, in terms of exploratory trips to the Antarctic.
It was so hilarious, because as I tried to describe it, I could see him just freaking out, with the awe of it all, trying to comprehend it. "And so everything in the universe, Cashel, EVERYTHING - even planets like Jupiter and everything - was all crushed together into a tiny tiny ball - about this big - " He gawked at the tiny-ness I showed him. "And even though it was so tiny, the ball was so heavy that if you dropped it, it would make a huge hole in the earth and fall right through--" Cashel BURST out laughing, in excitement, in fear. "And then - the pressure got too much in that small ball - and it EXPLODED - and in .546789234567 seconds the entire universe was created."
Cashel sat in stunned silence, contemplating this amazing thing. Then he stated in a ponderous important voice, "And that was the Dawn of Time."
-- Around the time of the Big Bang conversation - well, actually, after I described the Big Bang to him, it became a theme of the weekend. Jean and I were driving with Cashel and his friend in the backseat, and I could hear Cashel describing the Big Bang to his friend, using my exact words. It's scary, that power!! Anyway - Cashel had his own elaborations on the Big Bang theme, which he proceeded to share, eloquently, with his friend.
"And at first - everything was very bad - and going crazy - and the Old Gods were making everything go very bad - but then came the New Gods - the Titans - and they cleaned everything up - it was the Titans who came along and made the bad Old Gods go away..."
(Cashel's friend must have been like: "Is this what the whole afternoon is going to be like?")
Cashel kept going on his explanation: "Before the Titans came, everything was chouse." This was an unknown word - The "ch" was said the way you would say "checkers", and the "ouse" was said like "house". "Chouse."
Jean and I heard that word, glanced at each other, and then Jean said, "Everything was what, honey?"
Cashel said, "You know. Chouse. Like - everything is bad, and going crazy."
It dawned on us: Chaos.
The kid is reading Edith Hamilton's mythology, he is 6 years old, he saw the word "chaos", he calls it "chouse", but he knows it means when everything is going out of control.
We were pretty much blown away by that.
Jean said, "Chaos. That's how you say that word. Chaos. But you're right - it means everything going crazy and bad."
Cashel was not embarrassed at having gotten the word wrong - he immediately corrected it - saying it carefully - "Chaos. The Titans got rid of the Chaos."
HEART-CRACK.
-- We went to go see Cashel compete in something called "the Pinewood Derby". It's a Cub Scout thing. (Cashel's only a Tiger Cub, but they're still involved). I was never a Cub Scout so I have never heard of such a thing. I was stuck in Brownie purgatory, making stupid duffel bags, and grumbling about how there was no fun, no ceremony in Brownies. What the pinewood derby is is: All the little boys get these pinewood cars, they have to be 5 ounces each - you put wheels on them - you paint them however you want - and then they have a day of races.
There's almost too much to even describe in this experience. I sat in the stalls at a little grade school with my sister, Cashel's mother, Cashel's grandfather - and watched the pinewood derby. Watching Cashel in action, watching how he was socially - reveling in all of these little precious obnoxious little souls - It was potent, and a bit overwhelming.
We were all collectively nervous about Cashel's car. We don't know anything about making cars. We don't know how to paint a car, etc., but we all worked on it the night before, and I have to say - it looked pretty damn cool.
And Cashel made it to the semi-finals. The first time his car won a race, Cashel's mom shrieked out, "YEEEOWWW!!!" in an embarrassing display of partisanship which we all found totally hysterical. This was not a crowd really given to overt displays of enthusiasm.
Cashel, to be honest, couldn't really have cared less. All of the other little kids had to be CONSTANTLY reminded not to run when they were near the track. Cashel never needed the reminder. He strolled about the gym like he was John Wayne. He never hurries. It was hilarious - we were watching him saunter around like a cowboy. At one point, he seemed on the verge of getting upset, as he was walking to his place at the end of the track, and he called out, randomly, to no one in particular, "I'M SUCH A SLOW POKE!"
He walks to the beat of his own drummer.
The Cub Scout leaders KILLED ME. These men were amazing. They took their jobs seriously - but not too seriously. These grown men, in Boy Scouts uniforms, making sure everything got done, quieting everyone down with a signal (two fingers up in the air - they never called out, "QUIET" - you had to pay attention, and if you saw the signal, you had to put up YOUR fingers, until the whole room caught on, and quiet descended - I liked that, because it kept everyone on their toes. You were all a part of something, it takes cooperation to make a room of small Cub Scouts and Tiger Cubs be quiet - and they all cooperated when they saw the sign.)
Cashel lost when he got to the semi-finals. He shed some tears when he sat back down with us, tears of disappointment, but he soon rebounded. He is a brave little man.
I'm overwhelmed, at times, by his courage. He's been through so much, so much "chouse". He's a good little man.
-- Other things discussed and done over the weekend:
-- Major talks about Cro-Magnon man. Cashel informing us that "the husbands" went out and hunted the Wooly Mammoths. I loved that. "The husbands." As though there were little Cro-Magnon marriage ceremonies. Cashel is highly knowledgeable about Cro-Magnon man.
-- He discovered that I have an irrational fear of spiders. He took full advantage of it. He made a pipe-cleaner spider and kept placing it on my notebook, beside my cup, it kept turning up where I least expected it.
-- We all watched Toy Story 2 (for the 8 billionith time) and had a great time, laughing like maniacs. Mr. Potato Head was KILLING US. His wife packing his bag before they left on their journey to save Woody, she saying, "I'm going to pack your angry eyes..."
-- Jean spearheaded a project to make Mr. Potato Heads using real potatoes. A group trip to Wal-Mart ensued. Much fun was had by all.
-- We took turns reading out loud to him at night. His little giggles beside me, as I read Uncle Wiggly.
-- I love how he is still little enough to submit to sitting on our laps. He loves that. I read to him with him on my lap. I will MISS that when he gets too old!!
-- As I hugged him good-bye I said, "We're definitely coming up again!" He said, "Next weekend?" Heart-crack.
Emotional courage
From Dec. 2004
I have been the primary Lego assembler over this Christmas holiday. The house is now filled with my creations. Quite elaborate. Cashel and I have had fun putting them together.
This morning ...
... Cashel was, of course, up before any of us. He was wide-eyed and alert, playing up and down the hallway with his Luke Skywalker and Han Solo action figures, as though he had been up for hours.
I got up at the fiery crack of 10:30 am. I made some toast. I poured a cup of coffee. I got my 56 pound "Ring trilogy", and went to sit in the living room, for a glorious bacchanal of reading and caffeine. And QUIET.
On the edges of my consciousness, I became aware that Cashel was talking about taking apart one of the Lego constructions - so that he could have the fun of re-assembling it.
He was blabbing to my parents. "I think I want to take the Harry Potter room apart and then put it back together again ..."
My parents: "Good idea, Cash! Good for you!"
Cashel then said, calling out to me, as he set himself up at the dining room table, "Auntie Sheila - I'm gonna take this apart ... "
I knew he was telling me because I was "the one", in terms of Legos. Did he need my help? Did he want my aid? Was he okay?
Then Cashel said, "But I don't need your help, Auntie Sheila. Don't worry. I can do it. You can have some time alone."
You can have some time alone.
The sensitivity of that ... the selflessness of that ... to even notice that I wanted "some time alone" ... and to inform me that he could do it on his own ...
My heart literally cracked into a million pieces at his emotional courage.
And - of course - the second he said those words, I had no more desire for any "time alone" whatsoever! - I had to put my book down, put the toast down, and go and play Legos with Cashel.
I'd rather hang out with him than read about Hobbits any day.
Cashel Chomsky
Nephew Cashel bluntly told my brother Brendan (his dad), "I have informed a new language. Which is part Chinese, part French, part Italian, part English, part German, and part sign language. It's called Papahcoahlo." (Or something like that. The name of the language sounded distinctly Hawaiian, and Cashel had "informed" this language out of all other languages, including sign language.)
The thing that impressed Brendan the most was Cashel's word choice: "I have informed a new language."
Brendan's response to me about this was: "Woah. Okay, Chomsky."
One if by land
I read this piece on the radio a couple years ago.
Cashel and I colored for a while as we waited for the pizza to arrive. Cashel commanded me to draw a house. So I did. Cashel was basically the architect and the interior designer. Telling me what he wanted to see.
"Put a playroom in the attic."
"But Auntie Sheila -- where are the stairs??"
I drew the bathroom, and the mere sight of the toilet caused Cashel to dissolve into mirth. Yes. Toilets are hilarious.
I drew a spiral staircase which blew Cashel away. "That's so COOL." Then I drew the living room. I said, "I think there needs to be a picture on the wall. Or a portrait. Whose picture should be on the wall, you think?"
Cashel said bluntly, "Einstein."
Okay, then. Einstein. So I drew this little cartoon of Einstein, with the crazy hair coming up, and Cashel said seriously, with all of his knowledge, "That really looks like Einstein."
We ate our pizza together, talking about stuff. Star Wars, Ben Franklin. Cashel informed me, "Ben Franklin discovered lightning."
Cashel is a wealth of information. Randomly, he told my parents that Vincent Van Gogh never sold a painting while he was alive, but that after he died, he became famous.
I read him a story. It was from the book of "Disney stories" which I had given him for his birthday. He loves it. He pulled it out of the bookshelf, and I said, "Oh! I gave that to you!" Cashel said, a little bit annoyed, "I know that."
He had me read the story of the little mouse who hung out with Ben Franklin, and basically (in the world of Disney) was the inspiration for all of Ben Franklin's famous moments. Cashel would shoot questions at me. "Why is Ben Franklin's hair white?" "Well ... he's old now. But also, in those days, men wore powdered wigs. I think." Cashel's little serious face, listening, sponging this all up. Probably the next day he informed his friends that men in the olden days wore powdered wigs. He's that kind of listener, that kind of learner.
Then he put on his Obi Wan Kenobi costume which Grandma Peggy made him for Christmas. A long hooded brown cloak ... and he hooked his light saber into his waist, and galloped off down the hall. Making me laugh. A mini Jedi knight.
I had him pick out three stories to read before bedtime. He sat beside me, curled up into me, looking at the pictures as I read to him. The last one we read was Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride". This poem was a favorite of ours, when we were kids. My dad would read it to us, and even now, when I read the words, I hear them in my father's voice. A magical poem. Really. The way my dad read it to us (along with Longfellow's help) made us SEE it. The clock tower, the moon, the darkness ... the sense of anticipation, of secrecy, of urgency. It was thrilling. So I love that this is being passed on to Cashel! I've never read the poem outloud before ... so I had one of those strange moments of the space-time continuum bending ... me stepping into my father's shoes, Cashel 5 years old beside me, feeling the ghost of my own 5 year old self listening.
I also remember how Brendan and I used to chime in gleefully: "ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA!" And Cashel did the same thing. I paused before that moment in the poem, glanced down at him, and he screamed it out.
There was also a subtlety of understanding in Cashel ... I read this section:
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.
And Cashel exclaimed, in a sort of "Uh-oh" tone, "They're comin' by sea!!" Now the words don't actually SAY that, but he remembered the "one if by land two if by sea" signal, and puts it all together. That's my boy!
I remembered the first lines from memory:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Again, those are just words on the page. But to me, they are filled with the echoes of my father's voice. I have tears in my eyes.
Cashel and I, as we went through the poem, had to stop many times for discussions.
There was one illustration of all the minute-men, hiding behind the stone walls, with a troop of Redcoats marching along, walking straight into the ambush. Cashel pointed at it, and stated firmly, "That's the civil war."
"Nope. Nope. That is actually a picture from the American Revolutionary War."
Cashel pondered this. Taking it in. Then: "The minute-men were in the civil war." But less certain.
"Nope. The minute-men were soldiers in the American Revolution. Do you know why they called them that?"
"Why?"
"Cause they were just farmers, and regular people ... but they could be ready to go into battle in a minute."
Again, a long silence. As Cashel filed this away for safekeeping. He forgets nothing.
"So ... Auntie Sheila ... what is the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War?"
Woah. Okay. This will be a test. How to describe all of that in 5-year-old language. I mean, frankly, Cashel is not like a five-year-old at all. But still. Everything must be boiled down into its simplest components.
"Well. America used to be a part of England, and the American Revolutionary War was when America decided that it wanted to be free ... and Americans basically told the Brits to go home." Uh-oh. Brits? This is an inflammatory term. I corrected myself. "America told Great Britain that it wanted to be its own country. And the Civil War ... " Hmmm. How to begin ... what to say ... I know it was about more than slavery, but I decided to only focus on that one aspect. Economic theory would be too abstract. "In those days, Cashel, black people were slaves. And it was very very wrong. Can you understand that?"
He nodded. His little serious face.
"And the people in the South wanted to keep their slaves, and the people in the North said to the people in the South that they had to give up their slaves because it was wrong. And they ended up going to war. And eventually all the slaves were free."
Cashel accepted this explanation silently. Then he pointed back to the Paul Revere poem. "Read." he commanded.
A Halloween photo album
Costumes through the years. This is an old post. After the enormous post about Cashel's birth, I can't get it up for anything else. I'm done with original content for a while - it takes a lot outta me.
Okay. So Halloween.
Here goes.
Here's a photo of my brother and I. I am a bunny rabbit. He, obviously, is a clown. The height of his hat is taller than his actual body. My mom made both of those costumes.
Here I am as a flapper. This is during my junior high years, my Eight is Enough pariah years. My best friend and I were obsessed with the 1920s. We loved flappers. We had seen Bugsy Malone. We were HOOKED. So we dressed up as flappers. Sadly, though, the neighborhood mothers, opening the doors to trick-or-treaters - all assumed that we were hookers. I don't know. I think it's PERFECTLY obvious that I am a flapper!!! This was my last year trick-or-treating.
Now we move on to college, when it becomes cool to dress up again. Here I am at a party with my college boyfriend. I was a blind mute French beggar. The sign around my neck says "J'ai faime!"
My boyfriend didn't wear a costume. JUST KIDDING.
He dressed up as a nerd.
Here we are at the start of the party, costumes intact, the illusion complete.
And here we are a couple hours and many beers later.
Costumes not so pristine now. I love that picture.
At that same party - my friends Jackie and Mitchell dressed up as Jackie's grandparents - who were FAMOUS to all of us. Chester and Millie. It was like one word. Chester and Millie, Chester and Millie. They died within days of one another. Truly devoted to each other. Anyway, as a tribute - Jackie and Mitchell dressed up (or should I say channeled) Millie and Chester. Here they are.
This is one of my favorite pictures of all time. Look at Mitchell's EYES! He is completely in character. I am also particularly amused by Jackie's mouth. Like: what is Millie saying to Chester? Is she calming him down? I hope so, cause he looks a little worried.
A year later, Mitchell and I joined forces and dressed up as Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. Again, the expression on Mitchell's face in this photo KILLS me. He looks so bored, so arrogant, so OVER it.
A couple years after that - while we were living in Chicago - Mitchell and I got invited to a Halloween party. The whole Woody Allen-Soon Yi thing had just exploded, so we dressed up as Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Please note that:
1. Mitchell is carrying Crime and Punishment
2. He is using photos of Geisha girls as a bookmark
A couple years ago, I was invited to a Halloween party where we had to dress up as someone who was actually dead. A person from history, what have you.
I am going to hell.
Here's the side view. More hellatious fires licking at my heels.
I think my favorite costume I ever came up with, though, was when I was Squeaky Fromme. I don't have any pictures of it. I was living in San Francisco at the time. But I thought that was my funnest costume ever.
The Books: "In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel
So. Now we're moving into Williams' work from the mid to late 1960s... During this time, he broke away almost completely from realistic forms, and his plays get weirder and weirder, and more abstract. The language loses its accessibility, although it still has moments of sheer poetry. He is now going inward ... He also was drinking and drugging heavily in the 60s. He lost his sharpness. Full-length works of the kind of complexity he was capable of at the beginning of the 1960s (Iguana) were no longer in his reach in the mid to late 60s. He also stopped creating memorable characters. He started describing directly his own personal experience (with aging, with art, with sex) - He had ALWAYS been a very personal playwright - but he had dressed up his personal concerns and fears and hopes with 3-dimensional vivid characters. They were STORIES. He wrote PLAYS. Not tone-poems on aging and art and gay sex. The plays in the 1960s are tone poems. They're almost never performed nowadays.
Still some lovely stuff in here, though.
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel premiered off-Broadway in 1969. Clive Barnes, reviewer for the New York Times, had this to say:
Some psychiatrists have, I think, a treatment known as an abreaction, where the patient is encouraged to reenact his deepest fears. Some novelists have been known to write a novel about a novelist unable to write a novel. Yet such devices, while doubtless salutary in the case of the patient and at least useful in the case of the novelist, can be justified as art only by their human insights. And the actual human insights in this new play are regrettably obvious and shallow.Beyond the actual anecdote of a death in Tokyo, Mr. Williams seems to be hinting -- and usually very broadly hinting, almost nudging in fact -- at the nature of an artist. The nature indeed of himself, for the message here is surely nothing if not personal. The man and his wife are apparently the two sides of the artist. The man is the spiritual, and the woman, feckless creature, is the carnal. One is always betraying the other, until -- and this is the final fear flapping its wings at the window pane -- the spirit dies.
Luckily the spirit has not died. Mr. Williams can take heart. There are more flashes of genius here than in any of his later plays. Mixed with the feeble jokes -- such as a Japanese who comically confuses "public conveyance" with "public convenience" -- and all the hesitations of style the play is heir to, there is gold, gossamer and fire here, and there are bursting sharp exchanges of dialogue that recall "The Glass Menagerie" in their suddenly poignant pertinence.
Mark, a painter, has gone off the deep end. He is with his wife Miriam in Tokyo. He is already on the edge, from alcohol, and inner suffering. While in Tokyo, he basically feels like he discovers color. It is a painful discovery and he goes mad. He goes mad from being THE FIRST to ever TRULY discover color. He locks himself in his hotel room, spreads canvas on the floor, sprays paint at the canvases with a spray gun, and rolls around in it. He is a mess.
Miriam is a hot number, although no longer young. She sits in the bar of the Tokyo hotel, and she wants OUT. She wants out of her marriage to nutso Color Boy upstairs. She is sick of his dependence on her. She cables Leonard in New York - Leonard, who is Mark's art-dealer - to tell him that Mark has lost it - and "please come to Tokyo immediately to deal with your client, because I no longer can."
The whole thing takes place in the bar. Miriam and Mark have various scenes. She tries to tell him she's leaving him. He can't accept that. He arrives in the bar covered in paint. She is mortified. He has the shakes because of his nervous breakdown. They no longer make love. They have long conversations (arguments) about art, and painting and color ...
Then Leonard arrives. Leonard understands. Leonard understands that Mark has lost it. He tries to convince Miriam to stay with her husband ... chastising her for her abandonment. Miriam is firm. No. She is DONE.
The play ends with Mark dying.
I am going to excerpt the small last scene between Leonard and Miriam - the one that closes the play - because it has my favorite writing in the play. Barnes is right, there are sudden flashes of transcendence in Williams' writing in this play - most of the writing is hesitations, stop-starting - no finished sentences ... but then suddenly: whoosh. You hear that Williams voice.
Anyway. Here's the scene! Mark has just died. Staggered out of the hotel bar, and died.
EXCERPT FROM In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel
LEONARD. Miriam, he's.
MIRIAM. I know. -- A long ten minutes.
LEONARD. The concierge is making the. Arrangements.
MIRIAM. Released!
LEONARD. -- Yes, he's released from.
MIRIAM. I meant that I am released.
LEONARD. If that's you feeling, it's one that shouldn't be spoken even to me. -- How do you know I won't repeat what you said? We live in a gossipy world. I might, accidentally, but.
MIRIAM. I'm sure that you will repeat but it doesn't concern me aat all.
LEONARD. I think we should leave this room, and.
MIRIAM. I've never been to a mortuary and I'm not going to visit one now.
LEONARD. Let's get out of the bar and sit in the garden. The Barman hears and understands the savage things you're saying. [She lights a cigarette] Miriam.
MIRIAM. Leonard. [The wind chimes are heard] -- There's an edge, a limit to the circle of light. The circle is narrow. And protective. We have to stay inside. It's our existence and our protection. The protection of our existence. It's our home if we have one.
LEONARD. Not to be trusted always.
MIRIAM. You know and I know it's dangerous not to stay in it. There's no reason to take a voluntary step outside of the. Do you understand that? [He nods] Miriam Conley is not going to step outside the circle of light. It's dangerous, I don't dare to or care to. This well-defined circle of light is our defense against. Outside of it there's dimness that increases to darkness: never my territory. It's never been at all attractive to me. When someone at a party says, "Let's all go to the new club or something street, or even out of the country," I say, "Wonderful. Let's go." With Mark? No! Mark was bored with this party before it started. But oh I go. Do I go! The circle of light stays with me. Until. Until can be held off but not forever eluded. You've seen how fatal it is to step out of the.
LEONARD. I'm not sure I know what you mean.
MIRIAM. Animation. Liveliness. People at a smart restaurant talking gaily together. Interested in jewelry, clothes, shopping, shows. Leonard, you know it's imperative for us to stay inside of. As for the others. You know and I know incurably ill people, especially those with dreaded diseases such as. And people gone mad that need an acre of pacifying meadows, trees around them. [The tinkling chimes are heard] A few perfunctory visits is all that they can expect and all that they'll receive. Ask God if you don't believe me. It's like they'd violated a law that's.
LEONARD. Inviolable.
MIRIAM. Yes. Double yes. The circle of light won't be and can't be extended to include them. The final black needle is their visitor, Leonard.
LEONARD. Take this handkerchief and pretend to cry.
MIRIAM. I'll pretend to do nothing.
LEONARD. Let me tell you something that. When my grandmother died, after an agony of several hours, my mother called a correct undertaker, and then said to us, "She put up a good fight. Now come downstairs and I will make us some cocoa and some cinnamon toast." We were children, but even so I thought the suggestion was shockingly inappropriate to the agony and death of her mother. Completed a minute before.
MIRIAM. She was in the circle that attends us faithfully as long as our bodies don't betray us and our minds don't make excursions of a nature that's incompatible with the.
LEONARD. Well.
MIRIAM. He was removed so quickly. If I should say that the circle of light is the approving look of God it would be romantic which I refuse to be. The program for today should not be changed except for the.
LEONARD. Absence of Mark.
MIRIAM. Mark that made the mistake of deliberately moving out of the.
LEONARD. Yes, Mark's absence.
MIRIAM. Of the man who has made a crossing that neither of us but each of us. I will bow my head to the table as an appearance of being stricken with. Then when we go to the street, put your arm about me as if I were overcome with the expected emotion.
LEONARD. Have you got everything, dear?
MIRIAM. It would be strange but possible if later I discovered that I cared for him deeply in spite of. He thought that he could create his own circle of light.
LEONARD. Miriam, what are your actual plans?
MIRIAM. I have no plans. I have nowhere to go.
[With abrupt violence, she wrenches the bracelets from her arms and flings them to her feet. The stage darkens.]
CURTAIN
October 30, 2005
The day
The clock was ticking. It had been ticking for months. The anticipation was enormous. As the day approached, it was as though the upcoming event washed away all other thoughts and concerns in my mind, and in the collective mind of my whole family. We flat out could not wait. We could not talk of anything else.
The baby was coming! The baby was coming! We didn't know if it was a boy or a girl ... but we knew that it was coming, and we loved it to death already.
This is a post about what I remember about that day. And it involves the day before (it always does, doesn't it?) But it's really about that day. THE day. Certainly one of the most important days of my life, because it was the day that Cashel was born. Cashel, whose birthday is tomorrow.
I was in my third year of grad school. It was a vigorous and energetic time. I was living in Hoboken with my dear friend Jen. It was the late 1990s and my sister-in-law, the one who was carrying the most IMPORTANT BABY WHO WOULD EVER BE BORN, had gotten me a freelance gig my first year in New York, to make extra cash while I was slogging away in grad school. This was the dot com era, and there was major money to be made for doing ... basically ridiculous meaningless things. She got me a freelance gig, doing Rainman programming for AOL, and it paid 30 bucks an hour. I made friends doing that insane gig that I still have today.
Our dot com was somehow affiliated with New Line Cinema so we had our insane offices (with mannequins dressed in school girl slut clothes, and no overhead lights, and dart boards, and beanbag chairs) attached to New Line corporate. You would walk up the spiral staircase into New Line proper, and there you were surrounded by cubicles, and fluorescent lights, and white boards, and perky girls in form-fitting suits and alligator pumps. But down that spiral staircase? You were full-on in wacko dot com world. We were barely presentable. If "corporate" was coming down to visit, we'd really have to clean up the joint, and take the cigarette out of the mannequin's hand, etc., so the place would look presentable.
I used to work beside a guy named Pat, who was a surfer, a writer, a music-lover, and kind of brilliant in a very chaotic way. He was an online personality. He was born to be an online personality. He had nutso hair that was a different color each week, and he was doing literally MEANINGLESS things online on a daily basis, hosting chats, writing articles about stuff that he found interesting, and he made shitloads of money. He was a crazy Irishman. He's now married to a no-nonsense tough Irish chick who grew up with 8 older brothers. Imagine. 8 older brothers. She's hot, too. Her brothers were always beating guys up because they felt the dude had fucked with their little sister. She finally had to be like, "Guys, STOP BEATING UP MY BOYFRIENDS." hahahaha She is PERFECT for Pat, because she knows how to handle men. No gamey shit with that one. No nagging gamey shit. She's straight up cool. The two of them together are hysterical. When I knew him, though, during the dot com mania, he was single.
Pat and I were friends. We sat side by side, at our respective computers, and he would reach out with his left hand and play with my ear lobe as we worked. He never asked permission. It was just something we did.
Upstairs was corporate America. Downstairs was Pat, with jet black hair standing up straight, or blonde streaked surfer dude locks, or totally bald having shaved it all off in a drunken frenzy. Downstairs was Pat touching my ear lobe as he typed with his other hand. I never said, "Uhm ... what's up with my ear lobe?" I can't remember the first day he did it, but I didn't slap him away, and so the ear lobe play went on for months, as darts flew towards the dartboard behind our head, as people sat around us working at their computers, with huge headphones on listening to music, as people lay in the beanbag chairs eating Krispy Kremes and having "integration meetings" ... and we all were working on ... what, exactly?
None of the companies I originally worked for are in existence today. What a crazy time.
I told you this would be a post about what I remember.
When I think about "that day" - all of this stuff surrounds it. Dim lights, crazy offices, free-spirited funky dot com people, and Pat playing with my earlobe as he ran online chats. I worked 20 hours a week, I think ... taking the subway to 59th Street from my school in the Village. And I had a full course load.
I would spend my weekends out in Park Slope with my brother and his wife ... and her belly was growing ... and we would feel the baby kicking ... and the baby was so REAL to us ... I had a relationship with the baby from the moment they told us she was pregnant, of course. It was real. I didn't know who it was in there, but I couldn't WAIT to find out. But meanwhile ... during the pregnancy ... I had a huge huge love for the creature in there. I loved it so much.
The C-section was scheduled, finally, for October 31. Calendars were marked throughout the O'Malley and Sullivan family. That was THE day.
Maybe 4 or 5 days before Halloween, I was at my freelance job, getting my earlobe stroked by Pat the surfer, doing my work. hahaha I called my voice mail service on this particular day to get my messages.
And - like a bolt from the blue - I heard an all-too-familiar voice. A voice that made my heart burst out of my chest. A man I once loved. I still loved him. But it was over. We were across the country from one another. He had my number, but never called it. It was over. It was over in the biggest way possible. But there he was calling me, telling me that he would be in New York for one day only to do a show ... I could barely understand the message because I was out of my mind at the sound of his voice. The earlobe-stroking stopped as Pat looked over at me, curious as to my response. I was saying into the phone as I listened, "Oh my God. Oh my God." Surfer Pat mouthing at me, "What? Who is it?" All I heard was that HE would be in town for one day. And he was calling me to let me know that and to let me know the hotel he would be staying in. I was a wreck. I was instantly a wreck. I had to listen to the message again because I had barely understood a word. I wrote down the address of the hotel. He also gave me his itinerary, he had to be here at this time, and there at that time, he would be checking in at that time ... and his voice was so jaunty and cheerful (I am sure he knew I would freak out, but he wanted to just make it sound friendly and cheerful, and A-okay ... he was always great with me that way) ... "So ... I know you're ... like, a really busy ACTRESS and everything ..." (making fun of me) "but ... if you're around ... well ... that's where I'll be ..."
I made Pat the surfer listen to the message. He listened to it with no response, and then flatly said, "The dude's in love with you," as he turned back to his computer screen.
So.
October 30. HE would be in town on October 30.
It was so bewildering to me, so emotional, so intense ... because my main focus of that autumn had been the upcoming birth. I had not heard from HIM in months. I didn't expect to. It was over. But now ... he would be here. In only a couple of days.
I had class the morning of October 30. Classics. Shakespeare, Marlowe, yadda yadda. My outfit had been painstakingly chosen, with much help from my roommate. I wore a tight houndstooth skirt, and high brown heels - very retro - a fitted brown sweater. The outfit was very 1940s leading lady.
No man has ever had such an effect on me as this man had. Once I'm actually WITH him I am always relaxed - but the anticipation has always driven me insane. I would forget about it for a second, and then remember and feel this swooshing vertigo take over. Literally vertigo. I couldn't eat. I drank water like it was going out of style. HE was coming!
I went to my class on October 30. I had a great class. And then I walked out into the blinding autumn morning, and headed uptown to go meet him at his hotel.
I walked into the hotel lobby. It was a very chi-chi small hotel, with deathly slippery marble floors ... and I remember this perfectly; they must have been having a Halloween party in a private room or something ... because I remember I walked into the lobby, and I was having cardiac arrest ... we had no meeting place ... I didn't know where he would be, he didn't know if I would show up, I hadn't responded because he hadn't given me a phone number (and I didn't have his number, long story) ... so it was either going to happen or it wasn't ... so I walked into the lobby, and he could have been ANYWHERE ... and I remember these workmen walked by, carrying this enormous Halloween decoration ... it was so big it took 3 guys to carry it ... and it was all silvery and covered in pearls, and there were long streaming silver ribbons, and sparkley gems covering it ... It was completely psychedelic. It didn't look like a Halloween decoration at all. Random. And once the workmen passed by, there he was. He had entered the room somehow shielded by the massive pearl-encrusted extravaganza, and once it was gone - there he was. It was as though the silver-glitter thingamabob was a curtain or something - going up - signifying the start of the theatrical event that would obviously be our day together.
He saw me. I saw him. And it was as dramatic a moment as you would imagine. We were never sentimental, we were never gushy - I don't think we ever had a gushy moment together ... we're both too Irish and wise-cracky for that ... but it was full. A full moment of greeting after a long long time apart.
Within 10 minutes it was as though we had never been apart. However, everything was different now. We knew that. We didn't speak of it, we didn't have to.
He was up for anything. He had hours free until he had to his show. He said, "I kinda wanna see your school. I want to see where you spend all your time. Show me the coffee shops where you go. So I can picture it."
And so that's what we did.
I took him downtown and I "showed him my school". I took him into my classrooms, I introduced him to my acting teacher, I showed him my coffee shop ... It was ridiculous. He walked into the coffee shop which was completely generic - you would find such a coffee shop in any town anywhere ... and he walked into it, stared around him, taking it in, and then nodded, to himself. Like: "Okay. Got it." Like he had memorized it for safe keeping.
We walked and walked and walked. We talked. He made me laugh so hard I cried. Some things I won't share. They're too precious. The sun was shining, it was Indian summer, everyone was out, the NYU students, the locals ... it was a day when you suddenly were happy to be alive. It was also as though New York City put on its best outfit ... just for my guest. So he could see it in all its glory.
I remember we went to Washington Square Park. We watched the street performers. We sat on a stone bench, and soaked up the atmosphere. Time stood still with him. It stretched out. It couldn't have only been 5 hours that I was with him. That CANNOT be right.
We had no deep conversations. We didn't have to. We talked about books and music and stuff. Beautiful.
A drug dealer wearing a Rasta hat came up to us. He was stoned out of his mind and very friendly. "Smokes, smokes?" he offered.
The two of us smiled at him regretfully. "No thanks." we said together.
He shrugged, sadly, then took another look at us. He stated, "You two are in love."
We froze. Neither of us knew what to say or do. We didn't respond. We sat there, consumed with awkwardness. It was weird. He was like this wise Rasta sage who came over and spoke the SUBTEXT of what was happening. He saw it.
We both kind of awkwardly said, "Oh ... well ... you know ...."
Rasta guy said, seriously, not looking at me, but looking at my companion, "She's the only woman for you, my friend."
We both laughed (so awkwardly, though - very fake) and my friend kind of awkwardly put his arm around me. It was an act. We didn't, obviously, feel like going into our situation, and why we actually were NOT the only ones for each other ... but we kind of put on the act ... so he would go away. His arm around me was like a stiff automaton.
Rasta guy walked away, and then called back at us, "Today is a day for lovers, you know!"
And he was gone.
And my friend and I didn't speak to each other for 5 minutes after that. We ALWAYS know how to talk to each other. But suddenly, in the wake of the Rasta truth, we were awkward, quiet, and kind of ... itchy and restless ... We sat there silently, we didn't know where to look (certainly not at each other), we drank our sodas, looking around us, nibbling on pretzels ... It was a cliche. We both might as well have started whistling, staring up at the sky "nonchalantly". Suddenly, for the first time the whole day, I tried to think of something to say. We were like awkward teenagers.
The Rasta's words sort of sat there with us for a good 5 minutes until ...
"Wanna go see The Bottom Line?" I asked.
He leapt up, all excited and not awkward anymore. "Yes!!"
We walked around the city for a couple more hours. I showed him stuff. We staggered around laughing. He asked quesitons. I answered. I asked questions. He answered.
It was exquisite. I had missed him so much. I didn't realize until that gold and blue October day how much.
We said goodbye on a corner near his hotel. We were suddenly very formal with each other. We had a stiff hug (we're not huggers. We can't touch casually, AT ALL. Still can't. Even now when we see each other, we can't just have a friendly normal hug. Nope. No way. Not because of animosity but ... well, you'll just have to figure it out yourselves, people.) - "Good to see you!" "Oh, it was so great to see you in your element!" "Have a great show!" blah blah blah.
And he was off. And I was off.
I walked back to school, and it was as though I had this anvil, or anchor, suddenly pulling me down into the deep, into the cold blue deep. Literally, the second I turned away from him I could feel myself fall. And it was a far fall. My heart. My heart was heavy.
I couldn't bear it.
My love for him. My love for him was something else, I'll tell ya.
I came back to Hoboken that night ... the day before THE DAY ... and cried myself to sleep. I lay in bed, howling to the moon. How hard it was to let him go ... how much I love that man ... how much I love that man ... how much I love that man ... how hard it was to let him go ...
I was proud of myself, though, that I had kept it together during our time that day. There were no meltdowns. He didn't have any either. We kept it together. We had a nice time. We enjoyed each other's company. We kept it light. We made jokes. We laughed, we didn't ruin it. I was proud of both of us for that.
I woke up the next morning. It was THE DAY. That was all that was in my mind.
My eyes were puffed out of my head, and my heart still felt like a leaden anvil in my chest ... a sick and dead feeling in my stomach ... the whole world gone grey now that he is gone again ... and yet ... today is the day. The day I have been waiting for for NINE MONTHS.
I made my way to the crazy New Line office, with its mannequins wearing kilts and biker boots ... and the constant dart games going on ... and all the nutso talented people working there ... I sat at my computer, wearing my sunglasses INSIDE because my eyes were so messed up from crying. I had a couple of hours there before I headed down to the hospital where I would be there for the birth.
I do remember (weird what you remember) going to work that morning and looking forward to Pat playing with my earlobe. I had taken the earlobe thing for granted, it was a normal part of my everyday life (please, don't ask me why. You think Surfer Pat was crazy? I'm crazy, too.) I needed a nice tender friendly touch that day. And there he was. Why it was cool - now that I'm thinking about it - (and i have never sat down to analyze the Surfer Pat earlobe thing): it wasn't sexual. It wasn't a come-on. It started as an affectionate joke thing, and it kind of just stayed in that realm. We were buddies. He's the kind of guy I get along with really well. Big, loud, politically incorrect, funny, unselfconscious, kind of nuts, loves women, would kick the ass of ANYONE who messed with his sister or his girlfriend, goofy, not afraid to be a goofball ... He was that guy. He liked me. We made each other laugh.
So I sat there, on THE DAY, with my heart somewhere down around Houston Street, doing my Rainman programming for 30 bucks an hour, drinking up the touch of Pat's hand on my earlobe, with tears rolling down my face. Pat never mentioned the tears. He was too much of a gentleman for that.
Then.
It was time.
The moment we all had been waiting for. For nine months.
I left the office. It was 5 o'clock at night. I was kind of hysterical, truth be told. I hadn't fully segued yet. I was still crying about the man. I would stop and get out of the line of foot traffic, and just do some deep breathing, and try to calm down.
Believe it or not, I had completely forgotten it was Halloween. The REALLY important event of that day was the birth. So I emerged onto the street, and I remember watching a witch walk by me, with a tall pointed hat, and then I remember watching a guy walk by me, fully dressed as an Oompa Loompa, with bright orange face. I was so out of it, so hysterical, that I didn't know what was going on for a second. Why is there a witch on the sidewalk ... oh my God, why is there an Oompa Loompa?
I remember, too, that it was sunset, and the sky was a bright PINK. A crayola pink. With no other colors blended in, no soft wash of lavenders or lilacs ... no. Just a flat Pepto Bismol pink sky. With witches and Oompa Loompas coming at me.
Of course I remembered in a second that it was Halloween, but I didn't really get into it. I was too self-consumed, too upset. I started walking down one of the Avenues - I had time to walk - I didn't feel fit to get onto the subway. I was too hysterical. And the sky was a glaring pink, and goblins and ghouls filled the streets. It was truly fantastic. Everything was so WEIRD. NOTHING was normal. People in masks, ghosts, wizards, warlocks, vampires, Medusas ... strolling up 6th Avenue under the pink sky.
Truth be told, I kind of felt like I was losing my mind for about 20 minutes.
By the time I reached Beth Israel Hospital, the segue was finished. I was out of tragic mode, and into celebration mode. The goblins and ghouls had helped, turns out. Nothing was normal. And so it was COMPLETLEY fine that I was crying as I walked down the street. I cried as I walked. And the goblins passed me by, not noticing. I was in public. But I was totally in private.
It wasn't ALL out by the time I reached the hospital, but let's just say the first wave was out. I was completely wrung dry by the time I reached Beth Israel ... but I had no idea ... I had no idea how much feeling I would eventually have when that child arrived. I mean, I was excited, and I had SOME idea, but until it happens ... you just can't know what that joy will feel like. It's not even like joy. It's so BIG.
I made my way to the maternity ward, and ... slowly ... as I took the elevator up ... I shed the day before like an old snake skin ... I let it go ... and I accepted the day I was actually in. It was the day.
The substance of things hoped for.
My heart was no longer an anvil sitting on the corner of Houston and Sullivan Street. It pounded against my rib cage, adrenaline, impatient, excited ... It was time ... it was time ...
My parents were there in the waiting room. Maria's parents were there in the waiting room. I joined them. There were other families waiting there, too. We got very involved in their stories. We shared our stories. We waited. We paced. We talked about nothing. We made chit-chat. We were completely in the moment. ALL we were doing was WAITING.
I'm very emotional right now. Tears are in my eyes.
We loved this baby so much. We couldn't wait to meet ... him? Her?
I feel so so blessed that I was able to be there.
The other family, whose daughter had had a labor of 24 hours or something and then had to have an emergency C-section, was anxious and exhausted ... and I think it rubbed off on us. I held onto my dad's hand as we waited. The anticipation was unbelievable.
And then ...
The moment came.
Brendan, in his doctor's scrubs, came out of the delivery room wheeling a little tub ... We all LEAPT to our feet. The moment was indescribable. I can't do it justice.
In the tub ... was a small cocoon. A white cocoon of a human being. With HUGE eyeballs staring out of it. HUGE STARING EYEBALLS.
Brendan whispered, excitedly, "It's a boy!"
Oh, we had never heard such miraculous words. Never! The burst of emotion that followed ... it was operatic. I saw Maria's mother turn to Maria's father and throw her arms around him in a total abandonment of joy. My parents hugged each other, hugged my brother, hugged Maria's parents, I was hugging Brendan, with tears streaming down my face ... different tears now ... glad tears ... The joy I felt was fierce. It was a stabbing knife of life-affirming joy. The anxious family, waiting for word of their daughter, got caught up in our joy, and hugged each other, hugged us. And we all just kept peeking at the small white cocoon ... this PERSON ... this person we had all been waiting for, and loving so hard for 9 months ...
this wee still white-swaddled being with HUGE STARING EYEBALLS ...
who was now ... undeniably ...
HERE.
The Books: "The Night of the Iguana" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Night of the Iguana
With Night of the Iguana, produced on Broadway in 1961, Williams is back in familiar territory - after his strange departure TO THE SUBURBS the year before.
Night of the Iguana is a powerful feckin' play, and, I believe, one of Williams' best. It has a hallucinatory quality - everyone is on the edge - everyone is at the end of their ropes ... and, like all of his great plays, the setting is a character in the play. You can't imagine Streetcar
Absolutely. It is THERE.
I think this is one of his best. It's hypnotic. I've read it a gazillion times, and am always discovering new things.
I would imagine that this play is nearly impossible to do well. I've actually never seen a production of it, and I would like to - because there are so many elements in it which MUST occur - and which, to put it mildly, could drive any production designer to distraction.
A couple of the things that have to happen:
-- there needs to be a heavy rainfall, on stage. The rain has to be lit up by the moonlight so it looks like a sheer silver curtain. Good luck, production designer.
-- there has to be a live iguana on stage. It has to break free of its captors and run around the stage ... and then it has to be caught and tied up.
Not to mention the acting challenges. I think the lead male - the Reverend Shannon - has to be one of Williams' most difficult parts. I cannot imagine an actor pulling it off. There is so much going on, so many layers - and he has to be riiiiiiight on the verge of a mental crackup - on the verge but not there yet ... and he's weaning himself from alcohol, and he also is haunted by a spooky mask of death (that he calls "the spook") - he climbs into bed and it's there, he lies on the hammock and it's above him - There are so many more layers, too - and all of them have to be going on simultaneously. You can't just play "oooh, I'm haunted by the spook" on the lines where you say, "The spook is with me again". Or, you can, but that's bad acting. Shannon is haunted by the spook AT ALL TIMES ... whether he references it or not. He is shaking from withdrawal from alcohol AT ALL TIMES ... whether he discusses his "thirst" or not. It's a lot of balls to keep in the air. The Reverend Shannon is a great great character - one of Williams' best.
One of the lead females, Maxine Faulk, was played by Bette Davis in the original production - and it sounds like it was almost written for her, tailored to her natural tendencies. She has a habit of barking out a laugh at random moments: "Hah!" And listen to Tennessee's description of her: "She is a stout swarthy woman in her middle forties -- affable and rapaciously lusty ... Maxine always laughs with a harsh, loud bark, opening her mouth like a seal expecting a fish to be thrown to it". It's an amazing role for her. Would love to have seen it.
Plot:
It takes place on top of a jungle-covered mountain in Mexico. It's 1940. So World War II is going on. Maxine Faulk runs an inn on top of this mountain - with the jungle pretty much encroaching onto her property on a daily basis. Her husband died a week before the play begins. She had a deep respect for him, but they did not have a sexual relationship - and she's a lusty woman, and that didn't work for her. She goes skinny-dipping with the young Mexican boys who are her kitchen staff.
The only people staying at her inn are a group of Germans - who constantly listen to the radio, listen to the accounts of London in flames, and then cheer happily for their Fuhrer. They are meant to be psychedelic presences - they are not realistic. They troop behind in the background of other scenes, singing marching songs, all wearing bathing suits, and holding huge rubber horses - on their way down to the beach. Bizarre. Nazis on the run. They speak solely in German and occasionally you hear the words "Goering" or "Fuhrer" - Everyone else pretty much ignores them.
Reverend Shannon, someone who goes a long way back with Maxine, arrives at the top of the mountain at the very beginning of the play. He is a de-frocked priest who now runs tours through Mexico. But the company who hired him is always extremely upset with him, because instead of taking the little church groups he is in charge of to see the tourist sites - he drags them into the poverty-struck areas, makes them eat the local food, they all get dysentery ... And there is also the small problem that he has a penchant for seducing the youngest girl on every tour. He likes teenage girls. Which is, of course, why he is DE-frocked priest. There's also a little problem that he despises God. He despises God and he loves teenage girls. Not a good mix for a priest. He's also a raging alcoholic, and has had multiple nervous breakdowns. He's in the middle of one when he arrives at the top of the mountain. He and Maxine go way back ... he comes to her place whenever he needs to "relax" - which means lie in a hammock and drink rum, and have no responsibilities. Sadly, though, he is in the middle of conducting a tour - and he forces the busload of Baptist women to sit at the bottom of the mountain while he climbs up it to go see his friend. He has kept the ignition key in his pocket. He is insisting that the entire tour stay at Maxine's inn for the next couple of days. This causes a huge brou-haha - because Maxine's inn is primitive. It's not in a city. It's bug-infested. Also; the Reverend Shannon seduced the youngest girl on the tour bus, as always - a 17 year old music prodigy traveling with her stuffy Baptist music teacher. So basically Shannon is in big BIG trouble. Add on to this the fact that he is constantly haunted by a grinning face of death ... and you've got a man on the edge of an abyss.
Maxine, in her own way, has a thing for Shannon. She pretty much wants him to stay on at her inn, lie in her hammock, and fuck her. She needs sex. She knows that he is a sex-pot (although of course consumed with guilt about it ... also, she is about 25 years too old for him - but she figures that he is a desperate man, and will take what he can get). He arrives - in a state of panic and frenzy - you can hear the shouts of the pissed-off tourists at the bottom of the mountain - he's out of his mind ... Maxine just laughs her big laugh, and keeps trying to make him drink. "Have a rum coco ..." He keeps refusing.
Two other people arrive ... looking for lodgings ... a 40 year old spinster named Hannah and her ancient deathly-ill grandfather, called Nonno. The two of them are basically hustlers - with a genteel edge. They travel the world and hustle people out of their money. Hannah is a watercolorist. She will set herself up in some chi-chi restaurant, or square, or cafe - and paint people for money. And Nonno was once a minor poet 15 years before. He is now on the verge of death ... is losing his sight, can't see, is losing his memory ... and every night he dictates lines of what he says will be "his last poem" to his granddaughter. He has been working on the same poem for 15 years.
Hannah is a professional virgin. Chaste. But not innocent. She knows how to get what she needs. She knows her grandfather will never leave Maxine's mountaintop. He is going to die. She doesn't have the money to pay the bill - and Maxine is less than friendly to her - mainly because from the moment they met, Hannah and Shannon felt connected to one another. They've never met before ... but there is immediately some deep strain of sympathy between the two characters and Maxine will have NONE of that. Shannon will be HERS or NO ONE'S.
I'll excerpt the scene where Maxine pretty much lays down the law with Hannah. See if you can hear Bette Davis saying Maxine's lines. I know I can.
EXCERPT FROM The Night of the Iguana
[Maxine has pushed one of those gay little brass and glass liquor carts around the corner of the verandah. It is laden with an ice bucket, coconuts and a variety of liquors. She hums gaily to herself as she pushes the cart close to the table]
MAXINE. Cocktails, anybody?
HANNAH. No, thank you, Mrs. Faulk, I don't think we care for any.
SHANNON. People don't drink cocktails between the fish and the entree, Maxine honey.
MAXINE. Grampa needs a toddy to wake him up. Old folks need a toddy to pick 'em up. [She shouts into the old man's ear] Grampa! How about a toddy? [Her hips are thrust out at Shannon]
SHANNON. Maxine, your ass -- excuse me, Miss Jelkes -- your hips, Maxine, are too fat for this veranda.
MAXINE. Hah! Mexicans like 'em, if I can judge by the pokes and pinches I get in the busses to town. And so do the Germans. Ev'ry time I go near Herr Fahrenkopf he gives me a pinch or a goose.
SHANNON. Then go near him again for another goose.
MAXINE. Hah! I'm mixing Grampa a Manhattan with two cherries in it so he'll live through dinner.
SHANNON. Go on back to your Nazis, I'll mix the Manhattan for him. [He goes to the liquor cart]
MAXINE. [to Hannah] How about you, honey, a little soda with lime juice?
HANNAH. Nothing for me, thank you.
SHANNON. Don't make nervous people more nervous, Maxine.
MAXINE. You better let me mix that toddy for Grampa, you're making a mess of it, Shannon.
[With a snort of fury, he thrusts the liquor cart like a battering ram at her belly. Some of the bottles fall off it; she thrusts it right back at him]
HANNAH. Mrs. Faulk, Mr. Shannon, this is childish, please stop it!
[The Germans are attracted by the disturbance. They cluster around, laughing delightedly. Shannon and Maxine seize opposite ends of the rolling liquor cart and thrust it toward each other, both grinning fiercely as gladiators in mortal combat. The GHermans shriek with laughter and chatter in German]
HANNAH. Mr. Shannon, stop it! [She appeals to the Germans] Bitte! Nehmen Sie die Spirtuosen weg. Bitte, nehmen Sie die weg.
[Shannon has wrested the cart from Maxine and pushed it at the Germans. They scream delightedly. The cart crashes into the wall of the verandah. Shannon leaps down the steps and runs into the foliage. Birds scream in the rain forest. Then sudden quiet returns to the verandah as the Germans go back to their own table]
MAXINE. Crazy, black Irish Protestant son of a ... Protestant!
HANNAH. Mrs. Faulk, he's putting up a struggle not to drink.
MAXINE. Don't interfere. You're an interfering woman.
HANNAH. Mr. Shannon is dangerously ... disturbed.
MAXINE. I know how to handle him, honey -- you just met him today. Here's Grampa's Manhattan cocktail with two cherries in it.
HANNAH. Please don't call him Grampa.
MAXINE. Shannon calls him Grampa.
HANNAH. [taking the drink] He doesn't make it sound so condescending, but you do. My grandfather is a gentleman in the true sense of the word, he is a gentle man.
MAXINE. What are you?
HANNAH. I am his granddaughter.
MAXINE. Is that all you are?
HANNAH. I think it's enough to be.
MAXINE. Yeah, but you're also a deadbeat, using that dying old man for a front to get in places without the cash to pay even one day in advance. Why, you're dragging him around with you like Mexican beggars carry around a sick baby to put the touch on the tourists.
HANNAH. I told you I had no money.
MAXINE. Yes, and I told you that I was a widow -- recent. In such a financial hole they might as well have buried me with my husband.
[Shannon reappears from the jungle foliage but remains unnoticed by Hannah and Maxine]
HANNAH. [with forced calm] Tomorrow morning, at daybreak, I will go in town. I will set up my easel in the plaza and peddle my water colors and sketch tourists. I am not a weak person, my failure here isn't typical of me.
MAXINE. I'm not a weak person either.
HANNAH. No. By no means, no. Your strength is awe-inspiring.
MAXINE. You're goddam right about that, but how do you think you'll get to Acapulco without the cabfare or even the busfare there?
HANNAH. I will go on shanks' mare, Mrs. Faulk -- islanders are good walkers. And if you doubt my word for it, if you really think I came here as a deadbeat, then I will put my grandfather back in his wheelchair and push him back down this hill to the road and all the way back into town.
MAXINE. Ten miles, with a storm coming up?
HANNAH. Yes, I would -- I will. [She is dominating Maxine in this exchange. Both stand beside the table. Nonno's head is drooping back into sleep]
MAXINE. I wouldn't let you.
HANNAH. But you've made it clear that you don't want us to stay here for one night even.
MAXINE. The storm would blow that old man out of his wheelchair like a dead leaf.
HANNAH. He would prefer that to staying where he's not welcome, and I would prefer it for him, and for myself, Mrs. Faulk. [She turns to the Mexican boys] Where is his wheelchair? Where is my grandfather's wheelchair?
[This exchange has roused the old man. He struggles up from his chair, confused, strikes the floor with his cane and starts declaiming a poem]
NONNO:
Love's an old remembered son
A drunken fiddler plays,
Stumbling crazily along
Crooked sideways.
When his heart is mad with music
He will play the --
HANNAH. Nonno, not now, Nonno! He thought someone asked for a poem. [She gets him back into the chair. Hannah and Maxine are still unaware of Shannon]
MAXINE. Calm down, honey.
HANNAH. I'm perfectly calm, Mrs. Faulk.
MAXINE. I'm not. That's the trouble.
HANNAH. I understand that, Mrs. Faulk. You lost your husband just lately. I think you probably miss him more than you know.
MAXINE. No, the trouble is Shannon.
HANNAH. You mean his nervous tate and his ...?
MAXINE. No, I just mean Shannon. I want you to lay off him, honey. You're not for Shannon and Shannon isn't for you.
HANNAH. Mrs. Faulk, I'm a New England spinster who is pushing forty.
MAXINE. I got the vibrations between you -- I'm very good at catching vibrations between people -- and there sure was a vibration between you and Shannon the moment you got here. That, just that, believe me, nothing but that has made this ... misunderstanding between us. So if you just don't mess with Shannon, you and your Grampa can stay on here as long as you want to, honey.
HANNAH. Oh, Mrs. Faulk, do I look like a vamp?
MAXINE. They come in all types. I've had all types of them here.
[Shannon comes over to the table]
SHANNON. Maxine, I told you don't make nervous people more nervous, but you wouldn't listen.
MAXINE. What you need is a drink.
SHANNON. Let me decide about that.
HANNAH. Won't you sit down with us, Mr. Shannon, and eat something? Please. You'll feel better.
SHANNON. I'm not hungry right now.
HANNAH. Well, just sit down with us, won't you?
[Shannon sits down with Hannah]
MAXINE. [warningly to Hannah] O.K. O.K. ...
NONNO. [rousing a bit and mumbling] Wonderful ... wonderful place here ...
[Maxine retires from the table and wheels the liquor cart over to the German party]
SHANNON. Would you have gone through with it?
HANNAH. Haven't you ever played poker, Mr. Shannon?
SHANNON. You mean you were bluffing?
HANNAH. Let's say I was drawing to an inside straight. [The wind rises and sweeps up the hill like a great waking sigh from the ocean] It is going to storm. I hope your ladies aren't still out in that, that ... glass-bottomed boat, observing the, uh submarine ... marvels.
SHANNON. That's because you don't know these ladies. However, they're back from the boat trip. They're down at the cantina, dancing together to the jukebox and hatching new plans to get me kicked out of Blake Tours.
HANNAH. What would you do if you ...
SHANNON. Got the sack? Go back to the Church or take the long swim to China. [Hannah removes a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She discovers only two left in the pack and decides to save them for later. She returns the pack to her pocket] May I have one of your cigarettes, Miss Jelkes? [She offers him the pack. He takes it from her and crumples it and throws it off the verandah] Never smoke those, they're made out of tobacco from cigarette stubs that beggars pick up off sidewalks and out of gutters in Mexico City. [he produces a tin of English cigarettes] Have these -- Benson and Hedges, imported, in an airtight tin, my luxury in my life.
HANNAH. Why -- thank you, I will, since you have thrown mine away.
SHANNON. I'm going to tell you something about yourself. You are a lady, a real one and a great one.
HANNAH. What have I done to merit that compliment from you?
SHANNON. It isn't a compliment, it's just a report on what I've noticed about you at a time when it's hard for me to notice anything outside myself. You took out those Mexican cigarettes, you found you just had two left, you can't afford to buy a new pack of even that cheap brand, so you put them away for later. Right?
HANNAH. Mercilessly accurate, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON. But when I asked you for one, you offered it to me without a sign of reluctance.
HANNAH. Aren't you making a big point out of a small matter?
SHANNON. Just the opposite, honey, I'm making a small point out of a very large matter. [Shannon has put a cigarette in his lips but has no matches. Hannah has some and she lights his cigarette for him] How'd you learn how to light a match in the wind?
HANNAH. Oh, I've learned lots of useful little things like that. I wish I'd learned some big ones.
SHANNON. Such as what?
HANNAH. How to help you, Mr. Shannon ....
SHANNON. Now I know why I came here!
HANNAH. To meet someone who can light a match in the wind?
SHANNON. [looking down at the table, his voice choking] To meet someone who wants to help me, Miss Jelkes ... [He makes a quick embarrassed turn in the chair, as if to avoid her seeing that he has tears in his eyes. She regards him steadily and tenderly, as she would her grandfather]
HANNAH. Has it been so long since anyone has wanted to help you, or have you just ...
SHANNON. Have I -- what?
HANNAH. Just been so much involved with a struggle in yourself that you haven't noticed when people have wanted to help you, the little they can? I know people torture each other many times like devils, but sometimes they do see and know each other, you know, and then, if they're decent, they do want to help eacah other all that they can. Now will you please help me? Take care of Nonno while I remove my water colors from the annex verandah because the storm is coming up by leaps and bounds now.
[He gives a quick jerky nod, dropping his face briefly into the cup of his hands. She murmurs "Thank you" and springs up, starting along the verandah. Halfway across, as the storm closes in upon the hilltop with a thunderclap and a sound of rain coming, Hannah turns to look back at the table. Shannon has risen and gone around the table to Nonno]
SHANNON. Grampa? Nonno? Let's get up before the rain hits us, Grampa.
NONNO. What? What?
[Shannon gets the old man out of his chair and shepherds him to the back of the verandah as Hannah rushes toward the annex. The Mexican boys hastily clear the table, fold it up and lean it against the wall. Shannon and Nonno turn and face toward the storm, like brave men facing a firing squad. Maxine is excitedly giving orders to the boys]
MAXINE. Pronto, pronto, muchachos! Pronto, pronto! Llevaros todas las cosas! Pronto, pronto! Recoje los platos! Apurate con elmantel!
PEDRO. Nos estamos dando prisa!
PANCHO. Que el chubasco lave los platos!
[The German party look on the storm as a Wagnerian climax. They rise from their table as the boys come to clear it, and start singing exultantly. The storm, with its white convulsions of light, is like a giant white bird attacking the hilltop of the Costa Verde. Hannah reappears with her water colors clutched at her chest]
SHANNON. Got them?
HANNAH. Yes, just in time. Here is your God, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON. [quietly] Yes, I see him, I hear him, I know him. And if he doesn't know that I know him, let him strike me dead with a bolt of his lightning.
[He moves away from the wall to the edge of the verandah as a fine silver sheet of rain descends off the sloping roof, catching the light and dimming the figures behind it. Now everything is silver, delicately lustrous. Shannon extetnds his hands under the rainfall, turning them in it as if to cool them. Then he cups them to catch the water in his palms and bathes his forehead with it. The rainfall increases. The sound of the marimba band at the beach cantina is brought up the hill by the wind. Shannon lowers his hands from his burning forehead and stretches them out through the rain's silver sheet as if he were reaching for something outside and beyond himself. Then nothing is visible but those reaching-out hands. A pure white flash of lightning reveals Hannah and Nonno against the wall, behind Shannon, and the electric globe suspended from the roof goes out, the power extinguished by the storm. A clear shaft of light stays on Shannon's reaching out hands till the stage curtain has fallen, slowly.]
October 29, 2005
Today in history: October 29, 1929
Otherwise known as Black Tuesday.
HUGE post below the fold.
October 29, 1929, a compilation.
"Sooner or later a crash is coming, and it may be terrific."-- Roger Babson, September 5, 1929, speaking before his Annual National Business Conference
Ouch.
All speculative bubbles go through four stages, each with its own internal logic. The first stage, which is sometimes referred to as the "displacement", starts when something changes people's expectations about the future -- a shift in government policy, a discovery, a fabulous new invention. A few well-informed souls try to cash in on the displacement by investing in the new vehicle of speculation, but most investors stay on the sidelines. The early investors make extremely high returns, and this attracts the attention of others. Next comes the boom stage, when prices are rising sharply and skepticism gives way to greed. The sight of easy money being made lures people into the market, which keeps prices rising, which, in turn, attracts more investors. Eventually, those upstanding citizens who haven't joined in the festivities feel left out. Not just left out. They feel like fools. If their daughter's boyfriend, who does nothing all day but sit around and play with his computer, can make fifty thousand dollars on his America Online stock, why can't they? Boom passes into euphoria. Established rules of investing, and often more common sense, are dispensed with. Prices lose all connection with reality. Investors know this situation can't last forever, and they vie to cash in before the bubble bursts. As Charles Kindleberger, an MIT economic historian, wrote in his book Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crisis, "Speculation tends to detach itself from really valuable objects and turns to delusive ones. A larger and larger group of people seeks to become rich without a real understanding of the processes involved. Not surprisingly, swindlers and catchpenny schemes flourish." Finally, inevitably, comes the bust. Sometimes there is a clear reason for the break; sometimes, the market implodes of its own accord. Either way, prices plummet, speculators and companies go bankrupt, and the economy heads into recession. A few months later, everybody looks back in amazement, asking: "How did that happen?"-- John Cassidy, "Dot.con"
Until the beginning of 1928, even a man of conservative mind could believe that the prices of common stock were catching up with the increase in corporation earnings, the prospect for further increases, the peace and tranquility of the times, and the certainty that the Administration then firmly in power in Washington would take no more than necessary of any earnings in taxes. Early in 1928, the nature of the boom changed. The mass escape into make-believe, so much a part of the true speculative orgy, started in earnest.-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash"
"There is no cause for alarm. The high tide of prosperity will continue."-- Andrew W. Mellon, late September, 1929
Some of those in positions of authority wanted the boom to continue. They were making money out of it, and they may have had an intimation of the personal disaster which awaited them when the boom came to an end. But there were also some who saw, however dimly, that a wild speculation was in progress and that something should be done. For these people, however, every proposal to act raised the same intractable problem. The consequences of successful action seemed almost as terrible as the consequences of inaction, and they could be more horrible for those who took the action.A bubble can easily be punctured. But to incise it with a needle so that it subsides gradually is a task of no small delicacy. Among those who sensed what was happening in early 1929, there was some hope but no confidence that the boom could be made to subside. The real choice was between an immediate and deliberately engineered collapse and a more serious disaster later on. Someone would certainly be blamed for the ultimate collapse when it came.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash
The rich man's chauffeur drove with his ears laid back to catch the news of an impending move in Bethlehem Steel; he held fifty shares himself on a twenty-point margin. The window-cleaner at the broker's office paused to watch the ticker, for he was thinking of converting his laboriously accumulated savings into a few shares of Simmons. Edwin Lefevre (an articulate reporter on the market at this time who could claim considerable personal experience) told of a broker's valet who made nearly a quarter of a million in the market, of a trained nurse who cleaned up thirty thousand following the tips given her by grateful patients; and of a Wyoming cattleman, thirty miles from the nearest railroad, who bought or sold a thousand shares a day.-- Frederick Lewis Allen, "Only Yesterday", a history of the 1920s, published in 1932
Thursday, October 24, is the first of the days which history -- such as it is on the subject -- identifies with the panic of 1929. Measured by disorder, fright, and confusion, it deserves to be so regarded. That day 12,894,650 shares changed hands, many of them at prices which shattered the dreams and the hopes of those who had owned them. Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell. October 24, 1929, showed that what is mysterious is not inevitable. Often there were no buyers, and only after wide vertical declines could anyone be induced to bid.The panic did not last all day. It was a phenomenon of the morning hours. The market opening itself was unspectacular, and for a while prices were firm. Volume, however, was very large, and soon prices began to sag. Once again the ticker dropped behind. Prices fell further and faster, and the ticker lagged more and more. By eleven o'clock the market had degenerated into a wild, mad scramble to sell. In the crowded boardrooms across the country the ticker told of a frightful collapse. But the selected quotations coming in over the bond ticker also showed that current values went far below the ancient history of the tape. The uncertainty led more and more people to try to sell. Others, no longer able to respond to margin calls, were sold out. By eleven-thirty the market had surrendered to blind, relentless fear. This, indeed, was panic.
Outside the Exchange in Broad Street a weird roar could be heard. A crowd gathered. Police Commissioner Grover Whalen became aware that something was happening and dispatched a special police detail to Wall Street to insure the peace. More people came and waited, though apparently no one knew for what. A workman appeared atop one of the high buildings to accomplish some repairs, and the multitude assumed he was a would-be suicide and waited impatiently for him to jump. Crowds also formed around the branch offices of brokerage firms throughout the city and, indeed, throughout the country. Word of what was happening, or what was thought to be happening, was passed out by those who were within sight of the board or the Trans-Lux. An observer thought that people's expressions showed "not so much suffering as a sort of horrified incredulity." Rumor after rumor swept Wall Street and these outlyinhg wakes. Stocks were now selling for nothing. The Chicago and Buffalo Exchanges had closed.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash"
We were crowded in the cabin
Watching figures on the Board;
It was midnight on the ocean
And a tempest loudly roared."We are lost!" the Captain shouted,
As he staggered down the stairs."I've got a tip," he faltered,
"Straight by wireless from the aunt
Of a fellow who's related
To a cousin of Durant."At these awful words we shuddered,
And the stoutest bull grew sick
While the brokers cried, "More margin!"
And the ticker ceased to tick.But the captain's little daughter
Said, "I do not understand --
Isn't Morgan on the ocean
Just the same as on the land?"-- anonymous poem, published in "The Literary Digest", August 31, 1929
On Sunday [October 27] there were sermons suggesting that a certain measure of divine retribution had been visited on the Republic and that it had not been entirely unmerited. People had lost sight of spiritual values in their single-minded pursuit of riches. Now they had had their lesson.Almost everyone believed that the heavenly knuckle-rapping was over and that speculation could be now resumed in earnest. The papers were full of the prospects for next week's market.
Stocks, it was agreed, were again cheap and accordingly there would be a heavy rush to buy. Numerous stories from brokerage houses, some of them possibly inspired, told of a fabulous volume of buying orders which was piling up in anticipation of the opening of the market. In a concerted advertising campaign in Monday's papers, stock market firms urged the wisdom of picking up these bargains promptly. "We believe," said one house, "that the investor who purchases securities at this time with the discrimination that is always a condition of prudent investing, may do so with utmost confidence." On Monday the real disaster began.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash"
On September 3, 1929, by common consent, the great bull market of the nineteen twenties came to an end. Economics, as always, vouchsafes us few dramatic turning points. Its events are invariably fuzzy or even indeterminate. On some days that followed -- a few only -- some averages were actually higher. However, never again did the market manifest its old confidence. The later peaks were not peaks but brief interruptions of a downward trend.-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash"
The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune. The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost ...The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash"
Transcript from Senate Hearings, April - June, 1932:Senator Couzens: Did Goldman, Sachs and Company organize the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation?
Mr. Sachs: Yes, sir.
Senator Couzens: And it sold its stock to the public?
Mr. Sachs: A portion of it. The firm invested originally in 10 per cent of the entire issue for the sum of $10,000,000.
Senator Couzens: And the other 90 percent was sold to the public?
Mr. Sachs: Yes, sir.
Senator Couzens: At what price?
Mr. Sachs: 104. That is the old stock ... the stock was split two for one.
Senator Couzens: And what is the price of the stock now?
Mr. Sachs: Approximately 13/4.
Until 1928, stock exchange prices had merely kept pace with actual industrial performance. From the beginning of 1928 the element of unreality, of fantasy indeed, began to grow. As Bagehot put it, "People are most credulous when they are most happy." People bought and sold in blissful ignorance. In 1927 the number of shares changing hands, at 567,990,875, broke all records. The figure then rose to 920,550,032.Two new and sinister elements emerged: a vast increase in margin-trading and a rash of hastily cobbled-together investment trusts. Traditionally, stocks were valued at about ten times earnings. During the boom, as prices of stocks rose, divident yields fell. With high margin-trading, earnings on shares (or dividend yields), running at only 1 or 2 percent, were far less than the interest of 8-12 percent on loans used to buy them. This meant that any profits were on capital gains alone. Over the past 125 years of American history, divident yields have averaged 4.5 percent. The figures show that, whenever the divident yield sinks to as low as 2 percent, a crack in the market and a subsequent slump is on the way. That had been true of the last two bear markets before 1929 came, and investors or market analysts who studied historical performance, the only sure guide to prudence, should have spotted this. There were indeed some glaring warnings. Radio Corporation of America, which had never paid a divident at all, and whose earnings on shares were thus zero, nonetheless rose from 85 to 420 points in 1928. That was pure speculation, calculated on the assumption that capital gains would continue to be made indefinitely, a manifest absurdity. By 1929 some stocks were selling at fifty times earnings. As one expert put it, "The Market was discounting not merely the future but the hereafter."
-- Paul Johnson, "A History of the American People"
Among the speculators' favorites during the 1920s were issues like Wright Aeronautics, Boeing, and, especially, Radio Company of America (or Radio, as it was then known), which was the most glamorous and fastest-growing corporation of the 1920s. Commercial radio was a revolutionary medium that shrunk the country like nothing before it, and Radio was the major player in the industry; it both manufactured radio sets and provided the programming they transmitted. In 1921 it's stock hit a low of 11/2. Thereafter, it climbed steadily until 1927, when it headed for the stratosphere. In April 1929, Radio hit a high, after adjusting for stock splits, of 570. During the stunning ascent, old-timers shook their heads in disbelief. Despite its rapid growth, Radio had never paid a cent in dividents, and many of its shareholders were professional gamblers. In October 1929, the stock lost 75 percent of its value. It recovered a bit during 1930, but then collapsed again, and remained collapsed for the rest of the decade. Despite the strong growth of commercial radio, RCA's stock didn't recover its April 1929 level until 1964 -- thirty-five years later.-- John Cassidy, "Dot.Con"
On Monday, October 21, for the first time, the ticker-tape could not keep pace with the news of falls and never caught up. In the confusion the panic intensified (the first margin calls had gone out on the Saturday before) and speculators began to realize they might lose their savings and even their homes. On Thursday, October 24 shares dropped vertically with no one buying, speculators were sold out as they failed to respond to margin calls, crowds gathered on Broad Street outside the New York Stock Exchange, and by the end of the day eleven men well known in Wall Street had committed suicide. Next week came Black Tuesday, the 29th, and the first selling of sound stocks in order to provide desperately needed liquidity.Business downturns serve essential purposes. They have to be sharp. But they need not be long because they are self-adjusting. All they require on the part of governments, the business community, and the public is patience. The 1920 recession had adjusted itself, helped by Harding's government cuts, in less than a year. There was no reason why the 1929 fall should have taken longer, for the American economy was fundamentally sound, as Coolidge had said. On November 13, at the end of the immediate four-week panic, the index was at 224, down from its peak at 452. There was nothing wrong in that. It had been only 245 in December 1928 after a year of steep rises. The panic merely knocked out the speculative element, leaving sound stock at about their right value in relation to earnings. If the recession had been allowed to adjust itself, as it would have done by the end of 1930 on any earlier analogy, confidence would have returned and the world slump need not have occurred. Instead the market went on down, slowly but inexorably, ceasing to reflect economic realities -- its true function -- and instead became an engine of doom, carrying into the pit the entire nation and, with it, the world.
-- Paul Johnson, "A History of the American People"
So long sad times
Go long bad times
We are rid of you at last
Howdy gay times
Cloudy gray times
You are now a thing of the pastHappy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here againAltogether shout it now
There's no one
Who can doubt it now
So let's tell the world about it now
Happy days are here againYour cares and troubles are gone
There'll be no more from now on
From now on ...Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So, Let's sing a song of cheer againHappy times
Happy nights
Happy days
Are here again!-- recorded in late 1929 - it became the #1 hit of 1930. In the new context of 1930 the song lyrics DRIP with sarcasm.
Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9)
fight call
So every night before our rehearsal, we have what is known as a 'fight call'. Where the actors run through all the fights in the play - but not with any acting, or anything - they just run through the fully choreographed moves. Like it's a dance. Or a tricky trapeze maneuver. Our fight choreographer is incredible. He's also doing The Color Purple right now - which is about to open on Broadway - so he is one busy busy man. We had one rehearsal devoted to the fights. Just move to move to move ... He showed up with everything plotted out, based on his multiple readings of the script, nothing done on the fly here, he had it all written out on a piece of paper, who does what, who goes where, and each move was numbered. So when they would go back to run stuff again, he refers to the number: "We need to run 3 again - that punch was a little sloppy ..." And everyone moves back into position, as if on rewind. It's FASCINATING. The fights need to be choreographed so specifically so that no one gets hurt, obviously. And you have to run the fights a ton of times with NO ACTING - because when you start acting - you start to have emotions - of rage, and fear - an adrenaline rush - and that can make you more sloppy when executing the moves. You have to run it plainly, and with no emotion - as though it were a dance move you were practicing. You have to be able to eventually have the rage that you would have - in the middle of a fight - but still be able to go from number to number to number through the choreography. That takes a lot of practice. If you get a bit sloppy and grab someone by the shoulders as opposed to by the biceps - that could mess everything up. People could get hurt. If your timing is off, and you are one foot to the left of where you are supposed to be ... then the sequencing and placement is off ... and someone eventually could get hurt. Fights (on stage) need to be CLEAN. But they need to LOOK messy. It's a bit different in films. Fights need to actually be realler in films, because of the medium. Also - because you have multiple takes - you can work it out and then just go for it - once - full-out - and then you're done with it. But on stage, if you have a long run - you have to be able to run the damn thing over and over, ad nauseum, you have to be a bit more calculated. It's fascinating to watch actors work on this, and it's fascinating to watch our wonderful choreographer coach them through it. (I'm not in any of the fights - but I still show up for fight call, because I love to watch it.) And now - the fights are starting to come alive. They are able to do them "at speed". During the fight call, they are not run "at speed", which means - as fast as it will happen during the performance. It can't look like fight choreography, it has to look real. We've all seen shows where the fights look embarrassing, and fake. But for fight call, they are slowed down - and the actors "mark it" - meaning they go through the choreography from number to number to number, with no acting. Just the fight moves. One of the actors in the show has been chosen as "fight captain" - because our fight choreographer will obviously not be there throughout our run, and we have to have a fight call before every performance. Things inevitably get sloppy during the run of a play ... and with fights, you need to keep them crisp, and specific. So someone needs to keep an eye on the fights - and our fight captain was coached by the fight choreographer in how to look for certain things, what to keep his eye on ...
And then, during our run-thrus, of course, the fights are run "at speed". They are no longer isolated pieces of choreography - they are a part of the plot. They happen within the context of the play. There is acting going on. People are attacking one another. Punches flown, people choking each other, what have you. And now, they're saying their lines as well, they're not just doing choreography - they're pursuing their objectives, and playing the scene. What is thrilling is that you can STILL see them going from number to number to number through the choreography - but because they have worked it so hard in isolation, worked each move so specifically, and so repeatedly - you no longer can see the specific numbers of the choreography moves standing out. The fights flow together.
And this is a credit to our fight choreographer. The fights look REAL.
There's one moment where one of the actors picks up an actress - who has been struggling with him - and he scoops her up in his arms and drags her struggling towards the car. She is flailing about, fighting back at him, and he is being a caveman, basically, dragging her off. Last night I got goose bumps watching it. Because I could see that they were being faithful to the choreography - there was NOTHING in their movements that was spontaneous. But it LOOKED spontaneous.
Fantastic.
A bold statement
I think that Barbara Stanwyck is the best American actress we have ever had.
Hands down.
Her work is uniformly exquisite. It gets me right in the throat. It's complex, layered, powerful, funny, trampy, heartfelt, and ultimately TOTALLY mysterious ... You never get to the bottom of her. She never gives it all away. She holds something back. She holds THE thing back, whatever it is. And it is that one held-back thing, never defined, never spoken, never pinned down, that makes a truly great enduring actress.
She has no equal.
October 28, 2005
Today in history: October 28, 1886
The Statue of Liberty was unveiled to the public.
A description of that day from Writers Almanac:
The day of the dedication was cold and rainy, but huge crowds came out for the celebration anyway. The hotels were full throughout New York City, and many of the tourists who arrived for the occasion were French. The sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi was alone in the statue's crown, waiting for the signal to drop the veil. A boy down below was supposed to wave a white handkerchief at the end of the big speech. The boy accidentally waved his handkerchief before the speech was over and Bartholdi let the curtain drop, revealing the huge copper lady. A salvo of gunshots rang out from all the ships in the harbor. The speaker, who had been boring everybody, just sat down.
Happy birthday, O Lady of the Harbor!
[picture taken from the observation deck of the World Trade Center]
Yeah. Riiiiiiiight. Okay.
Alex has had the nerve to say to me on occasion: "I'm not really a writer."
Genius
I mean ... the images that those words call up ... it is so spot ON!
Diary Friday
I hesitate to even post this in its entirety because ... I read it and literally cringed with embarrassment. Especially the whole last section. hahahaha HOWEVER. It is cathartic, I find, to post this stuff ... and it seems like other people get a lot out of my - uhm - self-exposure. People can say, "Oh my God, I see myself in that ..." or "I felt that way too!" So I will take the fall for the rest of you, how's that??
Okay, so this is from my junior year in high school. (Diary Friday archive here)
Try to follow the roller coaster of moods. It's dizzying.
COLUMBUS DAY - No school
I'm starting to perk up. I mean, it really is up to me, you know. I got up at 9 today, took a shower, dressed in my new sweats and sweatshirt and came up to my room and did aerobics. [You took a shower first?? Okay, so there's your problem right there ...] It sort of gets the blood going - instead of curling up in a corner by the window and just looking out at the sky. [I honestly don't remember ever "curling up in a corner by the window and just looking out at the sky". Methinks I was exaggerating for effect.] That's my major problem. I let myself get so so so so depressed and I wallow in it. I mean, I don't enjoy it but I don't do anything to get out of it. Why am I like this? Does Cris D. ever get depressed?? [This is hysterical, in retrospect. My friends will know why. "Cris D" comes up a lot in these journals. She was the goddess of the high school, and actually a friend of mine because we both were in the Drama Club.]
All in all, I'm feeling pretty good. On Saturday I met Beth at Kingston Pizza. We ate and talked. She passed a few compliments on to me, from others - and it made me feel good. She's good that way. Like Cindy C. - this girl on my bus - I really like her - I don't think I could ever be her best friend, but we sit together on the way home and talk about General Hospital and boys. I used to not tell her anything because I was afraid she had an enormous gossipy mouth. I like her - and I don't think she blabs. We were talking about the Sadie Hawkins dance and she asked me if I was asking anyone. (Cindy always has a boyfriend.) And I said, "Nope. I've asked guys for 2 years in a row and they always say No. So no, thank you!" She leaned toward me. "Who'd you ask?" I murmured, "Oh ... Toby Kimball ..." [HAHAHAHA That name!! I had completely forgotten about him until this very moment and I have no memory of asking him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.] "and last year I asked ..." (with a roll of the eyes) "JW." And she gave me this scorning look and said, "Well ... John ... I mean ... Don't worry about him. He's too stuck on himself for anyone else." Which is more or less true. [I love how Cindy was like this wise-talking woman of the world at ... what ... 15?] She was a very comforting sort of person. I mean, I doubt that she has ever spent a Saturday night at home, by herself, like I do, but she doesn't automatically suspect that a guy could never like me like other people do. She didn't think it was out of the question that a guy could say Yes to me. She got frustrated - said, "Sheila, if you ask someone, they'll say yes! Of course they will!" I said, "Cindy, no. I have been rejected twice now. I won't do it again. You ... sorry, Cindy, but it seems like you've never been rejected." She bolted up, her eyes wide. She shouted at me: "SHEILA! That's NOT true! I've been turned down! Believe me! Like the time when ---" Long pause. "Wait a minute. Maybe I haven't been." I burst out laughing. So did she when she realized what she sounded like.
We've got really nice popular kids at our school. Like Erin F., class officer. On the field trip, MW (really unpopular kid, computer whiz) sat alone at McDonalds - and I remember watching Erin leaving all her popular friends to sit with him. And it wasn't like she was making fun of him. She was sincere. [I saw Erin at my high school reunion and we talked about how much we wished MW had come. They were friends - she thought he was one of the coolest kids in our school. And I'm telling you: the abuse that that kid took in junior high was shattering. I saw it. People were merciless to him. Merciless. Awful.]
So anyway, back to me and Beth. Bet said that Cindy said to her, "Sheila O'Malley is the most huggable person in SK." That is so nice. She was a really comfy person to confide in.
The cast list is going up tomorrow. Oh, I hope Mere gets in ! [Mere, sorry to bring up the disappointing memory of the show that never was ...] That would be SO COOL to see her as THE LEAD in the school play! Of course I hope I get in too - but it would be a dream come true if we both got in together. [Actually, the words "dream come true" has FOUR underlines beneath it. I just am unable to get that effect with my computer. ]
I am not going to think about J "The Truck" W [apparently, this JW person had a nickname of "The Truck".] Did you know he hasn't been asked to the Sadies yet? I am never going to ask anyone to that stupid dance ever again. [And I didn't. I'm no fool.] You know, I honestly wonder: God, why do you give some people popularity, boyfriends, and leave other people nothing? I mean, maybe there is a time for everything - to be born, to plant, to harvest, to sacrifice, to die - [I am LAUGHING OUT LOUD right now. "To plant"??? "To harvest"??? Harvest what? You don't live in an agrarian society, Sheila ... what the hell are you talking about? Also: "to sacrifice", "to die"???? WHAT? How about "there is a time for happiness, for celebration, to get married ..." No. In my world view, you are born, you plant, you then harvest, you sacrifice, and then you die. JESUS. No wonder I got depressed.] When will my time come???? I have waited a long time. I am almost 16. [hahahaha. Little did I know that I would still be waiting 20 years later. Uh-oh. Now I really am depressed.] I have no experience. I have never been on a date. No one has ever looked at me, and decided to go after me, pursue me. No one has ever "liked" me in that way. Kate says, "Sheila, think of all the guys that you have liked and they never knew. For as many times you've done that, there's a shy guy out there who has liked you but hasn't told you." I don't think it's totally the problem of the guys - I mean, it CAN'T be just them! What am I doing wrong?? What is it about me? I think about JW a lot - and how much I felt for him. Maybe - this is a huge maybe cause I've never even talked to the bum - but maybe JW somehow knew how MUCH I really felt and that sort of scared him. [I really don't think that was it, sweetheart, sorry to say. What it really was was that he literally did not know who you were.]
I'm just trying to make sense of this whole she-bang. Cause I can't figure it out! It's sort of scary. I mean, if anything had happened between JW and me - if he had said yes or whatever - I feel like I would have done anything! At the time I honestly didn't know where I was because I liked him so massively. But I can't figure him out. I want to know: what am I doing wrong? Honestly! I mean, I'm not doing ANYTHING. Maybe that's my trouble.
God, I get so frustrated sometimes!
2:35 It is freezing today and really windy. The air is crisp and cold. I spent the afternoon curled up on the couch ["just looking at the sky??"] with a glass of Coke and Wrinkle in Time. [Okay, that makes me want to cry. My love for that book will never die.]
I feel sick to my stomach whenever I think about the cast list. I'm not gonna get in. I KNOW IT!
3:15 - Here's my French composition. I got an A! [I copied it as best I could - My handwriting is so damn teeny that I cannot tell what word is what at times. I could kind of make sense of the story told in the composition - and I actually remember that night very well!]
J'aime mes amies. Quand je suis avec mes amies, je m'amuse merveilleusement toujours. Je me souvienes d'une belle nuit en hiver quand Jayne W, Meredith W et Dolores T sont venues chez moi pour aller au Edwards Cinema avec moi pour voir Les Raideurs d'Arche Perdu. [HAHAHAHAHAHA] La route au cinema était fantastique - rirant, parlant, et glissant sur la rue glaciale. Nous sommes allées au Tarte Italienne de Kingston. Nous avons mangé trop de tarte Italienne! Quand nous sommes allées au cinema. Les couleurs du ciel etaient du la rose et du la lavende. Le clair de lune et incelait sur la neige. Il existe le sentiment spécial entre nous. Jayne et moi adorons Harrison Ford mais Mere et Dolores ne l'aimons pas, donc, pendant le filme entire, pendant que Jayne et moi nous nous evanouions. Mere et Dolores nous ont ris. Après le filme, nous avons attendu mes parents. Il a beaucoup neige et naturallement nous avons commencé une grande bataille criant de neige. Mon frère Brendan et son ami Brian nous ont joint. Nos habits sont devenues trempès. Quel combat hysterique!
I smell the popcorn downstairs. Bye.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN BY ROLLER COASTER EMOTIONS? I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW HOW MY BRAIN WORKS! I CAN'T KEEP UP WITH MY STUPID SELF!
6:25 Just had a great conversation with JL. How comforting to talk to someone who feels the way I do. We talked the entire time about sex. We laughed about how, while working in the library [we were both "pages" at the local public library] we would sneak back to peek at The Joy of Sex. We talked for so long about our fears, and our hopes. I'm a fish out of water. I swear, until I looked at that book - I thought sex was simple and beautiful - but they've got all these positions - and they tell you what to wear - It makes me feel like a real prude, but I really don't think I am! I think that the people who wrote that book are weirdos. [hahahahaha Funny how tame that book seems now. It's the tamest sex book in the world, frankly.] But what if they aren't the weirdos? What if they represent the whole population? How can people have been doing that for so long and I've never known? J and I were talking about our wedding night. I mean, if sex is that, and if my husband looks like that bearded ikky man in Joy of Sex - then I will not ever be able to concentrate on the walk down the aisle. I will be thinking: "Oh God, dear God, please help me through tonight!" I don't want my wedding night to be humiliating. That doesn't seem like a good start to marriage. [Strange that I would choose to post this today - in light of the Tennessee Williams excerpt below.] I want my future husband to be a virgin too. I don't want it to be like I'm just learning from him because that would be just Ew. J and I were laughing about that so hard! "Wait a minute here! Where did all your experience come from! I want their phone numbers, eye color, vital statistics!" Seriously, though, I get really scared. I mean - birth control? I don't know anything. I don't know anything about anything. That's one good thing about maybe having sex before the wedding night. Then there wouldn't be so much pressure. Sex just seems kind of massive to me. I've read articles where it says - wait a minute - let me find the article. OK: "Sexual sharing between two people who care about each other, who know their bodies and how to give and receive sexual pleasure, generally n eeds no chemical enhancement." "When you choose freely and responsibly to share sexually with another, you will not need chemicals to enhance your pleasure and joy." [Okay, again, I am laughing out loud. What the hell kind of article was I reading?? "How to wean yourself off of heroin and have an intimate relationship"? What the HELL is going on with the "chemical" talk? How would that have been relevant to a 16 year old virgin person? hahahahahaha] "A virginal female who has been sufficiently aroused, physically and emotionally, generally offers no great physical or nervous resistance." Hmmmm. We'll see about that. I know I want it to be on my wedding night. I want it to be special. I mean, I watch Hill Street Blues - in every episode there's a sex scene between Furillo and Joyce Davenport - and they finally get married - but whatever. Their wedding night after all that sex must have been like - nothing! They've been doing it for 3 years already! [Furillo and Joyce Davenport. Man. What a blast from the past]
Where is my future man right now? What is he like? What does he think about?
I swear, I have a huge problem. I NEVER stop thinking about boys.
Cast list up tomorrow.
[hahahaha "I never stop thinking about boys. Cast list up tomorrow." Uhm, Sheila ... does the cast list have anything to do with boys? No. So ... you actually DO think about other things. Anyway - that's the end of the roller coaster ride! That's a doozy of a journal entry. Hope you enjoyed it.]
The Books: "Period of Adjustment" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Period of Adjustment
This play was produced in 1960 - and it was directed by the legendary producer from the Group Theatre - Cheryl Crawford. I feel disloyal saying this - but I'm not wacky about this play. I wonder if he needed a hit at this point in his life. I wonder if he was going for a commercial success. That's what it feels like, to me, a bit - and it doesn't work. Williams has to write for himself, write out of himself - or it seems hollow. I feel strange, like I'm one of the critics saying to him, "Why don't you write another Streetcar??" but that's not what I mean at all. I love his later experimental work, I love his forays into non-realistic settings ... But Period of Adjustment is none of that. It's a realistic two-act "serious comedy" - and it just seems like Williams was trying to please middle America. Or the Broadway audiences. He was looking to have broad appeal.
Does not work for an artist like him to care about that stuff. If you care about stuff like "middle America" (what the hell is that, anyway? It's kind of a myth - but let's just call it: broad appeal, mass appeal) then plays like Streetcar
Tennessee Williams was an outcast. He described himself that way, and uses that word quite pointedly in many of his plays. He chose to live that way. He chose to, and he had to. He was gay, he was an artist. He could have hidden his gayness, he could have given up the art and been a steno clerk. He didn't. He went the other way. His sympathy is NOT with the "everyman". His sympathy is always with those on the fringe. Those on the edge. Those about to fall off the edge. Etc. His sensibility lies THERE, in flop-houses, and casinos, and 2-dollar hotels. Those are the people that make him come alive - as a playwright.
Period of Adjustment takes place in a suburb. A SUBURB. This is the only Williams play that takes place in a middle-class suburb, and it just doesn't really ... It's not that it doesn't work. There are truly beautiful moments in this play, and a couple of really great characters created. It's just that that kind of locale does not set Williams' imagination and creativity free. He's a deep-South rural or small-town playwright. Nature is ever-present in all of his plays. It's almost another character - the heat, the mugginess, the sounds of the country night, the sunset ... He puts all of these things into all of his plays. It's part of the atmosphere, part of what lets the audience into the world of the play.
Anyhoo. Period of Adjustment stands out so clearly from all the rest of his plays - and I do wonder at why he wrote it. It doesn't FEEL like a Williams play, except for a few of the themes explored (men and women trying to connect, and sex - a "frigid" woman on the verge of sexual hysteria, etc. Those are classic Williams calling-cards, but the rest?
Stuff that doesn't "feel" like Williams:
-- It takes place in a suburb.
-- Two of the main characters are veterans from the Korean War - and they talk about it all the time. This wasn't Williams' real style. He wasn't Odets. He wasn't Miller. He wasn't writing about "the issues of the day". At least not so directly.
-- THERE IS A TELEVISION in the house where the play takes place. Hahahaha Man, just goes to show you how much the world had changed. The television plays a pretty big part in the whole play, it's turned on occasionally, you can hear the dialogue of whatever show is on ... There's a fascination with the television, and also there's an attempt to look at the symbolic ramifications of "a television in every household". What will that mean?? But still: imagine Stella and Stanley sitting down to watch TV. I mean ... I guess they WOULD ... but still, it's hard to imagine. They don't do that. They are from another universe - the universe of the FIRST half of the 20th century. No TVs there. At night Stanley plays poker, or he takes Stella bowling. Or they have sex. They don't sit around and watch TV. But ANYWAY: in the house in Period of Adjustment, there is a television.
You can tell that, with these three elements (suburb, Korean war, television) - Williams is grappling with some new concepts, grappling with the new American culture - the 1950s American culture. Again, he's an outcast. That culture wanted no part of him. That culture STILL wants no part of outcasts. But because he's an outcast, he can't really get inside the world of the suburb, the two-car garage, the neat little mini-bar, and etc. etc. This is just my judgment. Tennessee Williams remains outside this play. He can't "get in" there. He couldn't in real life, and he can't in his art.
The plot is creaky and mechanical - the symbolism overdone. Isabel and George are newlyweds. They show up on Ralph's doorstep on Christmas Eve - the day after they got married. Ralph and George are old war buddies from Korea. Ralph's wife actually just left him - and she took their son with her. Ralph is perturbed because his wife apparently has turned their son into a "sissy". This embarrasses him. (Another Williams calling card). Ralph and his wife's marriage was going down the toilet. Ralph had basically married her because her father was going to set him up in business- which he did. Ralph was never really attracted to his wife - so their sex life was no great shakes, either - although his wife, a homely woman, apparently LOVED sex. She just "took to it". hahaha Ralph has done well for himself. Except for the fact that he lives in a house which is built over a hollow cavern in the earth, and every year the ground sinks about a foot. (Uhm - symbolism alert!!) So throughout the play, occasionally you hear this deep earth rumble - and a picture will fall off the wall - or the glasses will shake ... This is the house sinking. George and Isabel have not gotten off to a ringing start. As a matter of fact, George basically dumps Isabel on Ralph's doorstep (she has never met Ralph) - and drives off into the night. For a drink? To abandon her? We don't know why. Isabel is a wreck. She and George had a disastrous wedding night. She is a virgin, and her father made her so terrified of the opposite sex that she was completely unprepared for that side of marriage - even though she was a nurse, and she also loves George. And George, on the wedding night, instead of being patient with her, tried to just "take her" - and she flipped OUT. So now they have arrived in a full-blown crisis on Ralph's doorstep. It is Xmas Eve. Ralph's wife has just walked out on him. By the end of the play, though - Ralph's wife has come back. The two of them circle each other like old war horses, and realize that there is a lot of affection between the two of them. He actually loves her. And Isabel and George work it out. Happy ending!! What? In a Williams play? Where am I?
Ralph, I do have to say, after all my bitching about this play, is a lovely character. He's kind of coarse, but what you really get from him is that he is a realistic man, and he is someone you would feel COMPLETELY comfortable going to with your problems. You could even cry on his shoulder. He would make you feel better. He would get you laughing. He would fix you a drink, keep things light ... and let you be in the crisis the whole time.
So I'll excerpt a bit from the first scene - which is Isabel being dropped off at Ralph's house ... without her husband ... not knowing Ralph at all ... and Ralph trying to make her feel welcome, comfortable, all that ... until he finally realizes that Isabel is in the middle of some kind of a meltdown. There's a couple of LOVELY moments when the two of them connect ... they're my favorite moments in the play. Look for the one in the following scene where she confesses to him why she became a nurse - her fantasies about being a Florence Nightingale ... watch how he not only "gets it" - but joins in the fantasy with her. It's a beautiful moment - warm and human.
EXCERPT FROM The Period of Adjustment
ISABEL. My philosophy professor at the Baptist college I went to, he said one day, "We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going?
RALPH. When did you say you got married?
ISABEl. Yesterday. Yesterday morning.
RALPH. That lately? Well, he'll be back before you say -- Joe Blow.
[He appreciates her neat figure again]
ISABEL. What?
RALPH. Nothing.
ISABEL. Well!
RALPH. D'you like Christmas music?
ISABEL. Everything but "White Christmas".
[As she extends her palms to the imaginary fireplace, Ralph is standing a little behind her, still looking her up and down with solemn appreciation]
RALPH. Aw, y'don't like "White Christmas"?
ISABEL. The radio in that car is practically the only thing in it that works! We had it on all the time. [She gives a tired laugh] Conversation was impossible, even if there had been a desire to talk! It kept playing "White Christmas" because it was snowing I guess all the way down here, yesterday and -- today ...
RALPH. A radio in a funeral limosine?
ISABEL. I guess they just played it on the way back from the graveyard. Anyway, once I reached over and turned the volume down. He didn't say anyting, he just reached over and turned the volume back up. Isn't it funny how a little thing like that can be so insulting to you? Then I started crying and still haven't stopped! I pretended to be looking out the car window till it got dark.
RALPH. You're just going through a little period of adjustment to each other.
ISABEL. What do you do with a bride left on your doorstep, Mr. Bates?
RALPH. Well, I, ha ha! -- never had that experience!
ISABEL. Before? Well, now you're faced with it, I hope you know how to handle it. You know why I know he's left me? He only took in my bags, he left his own in the car, he brought in all of mine except my little blue zipper overnight bag, that he kept for some reason. Perhaps he intends to pick up another female companion who could use its contents.
RALPH. Little lady, you're in a bad state of nerves.
ISABEL. Have you ever been so tired that you don't know what you're doing or saying?
RALPH. Yes. Often.
ISABEL. That's my condition, so make allowances for it. Yes, indeed, that sure is a mighty far drugstore ...
[She wanders back to the window, and parts the curtains to peer out]
RALPH. He seems gone twice as long because you're thinking about it.
ISABEL. I don't know why I should care except for mym overnight bag with my toilet articles in it.
RALPH. [obliquely investigating] Where did you spend last night?
ISABEL. [vaguely] Where did we spend last night?
RALPH. Yeah. Where did you stop for the night?
ISABEL. [rubbing her forehead and sighing with perplexity] In a, in a -- oh, a tourist camp called the -- Old Man River Motel? Yes, the Old Man River Motel.
RALPH. That's a mistake. The first night ought to be spent in a real fine place regardless of what it cost you. It's so important to get off on the right foot. [He has freshened his drink and come around to the front of the bar. She has gone back to the window at the sound of a car] If you get off on the wrong foot, it can take a long time to correct it. [She nods in slow confirmation of this opinion] Um-hmmmm. Walls are built up between people a hell of a damn sight faster than -- broken down ... Y'want me to give you my word that he's coming back? I will, I'll give you my word. Hey. [He snaps his fingers] Had he bought me a Christmas present? If not, that's what he's doing. That explains where he went to. [There is a pause. She sits sadly by the fireplace] What went wrong last night?
ISABEL. Let's not talk about that.
RALPH. I don't mean to pry into such a private, intimate thing, but --
ISABEL. No, let's don't! I'll just put it this way and perhaps you will understand me. In spite of my being a student nurse, till discharged -- my experience has been limited, Mr. Bates. Perhaps it's because I grew up in a small town, an only child, too protected. I wasn't allowed to date till my last year at High and then my father insisted on meeting the boys I went out with and laid down pretty strict rules, such as when to bring me home from parties and so forth. If he smelled liquor on the breath of a boy? At the door? That boy would not enter the door! And that little rule ruled out a goodly number.
RALPH. I bet it did. They should've ate peanuts befo' they called for you, honey. [He chuckles, reflectively poking at the fire] That's what we done at the Sisters of Mercy Orphans' Home in Mobile.
ISABEL. [touched] Oh. Were you an orphan, Mr. Bates?
RALPH. Yes, I had that advantage.
[He slides off the high stool again to poke at the fire. She picks up the antique bellows and fans the flames, crouching beside him.]
ISABEL. So you were an orphan! People that grow up orphans, don't they value love more?
RALPH. Well, let's put it this way. They get it less easy. To get it, they have to give it: so yeah, they do value it more.
[He slides back onto the bar stool. She crouches at the fireplace to fan the fire with the bellows. The flickering light brightens their shy tender faces]
ISABEL. But it's also an advantage to have a parent like my daddy. [She's again very close to tears] Very strict but devoted. Opposed me going into the nursing profession but I had my heart set on it, I thought I had a vocation, I saw myself as a Florence Nightingale nurse. A lamp in her hand? Establishin' clinics in the -- upper Amazon country ... [She laughs a little ruefully] Yais, I had heroic daydreams about myself as a dedicated young nurse working side by side with a --
[She pauses shyly]
RALPH. With a dedicated young doctor?
ISABEL. No, the doctor would be older, well, not too old, but -- older. I saw myself passing among the pallets, you know, the straw mats, administering to the plague victims in the jungle, exposing myself to contagion ...
[She exhibits a bit of humor here]
RALPH. Catchin' it?
ISABEL. Yais, contractin' it eventually m'self ...
RALPH. What were the symptoms of it?
ISABEL. A slight blemish appearing on the -- hands? [She gives him a darting smile]
RALPH. [joining in the fantasy with her] Which you'd wear gloves to conceal?
ISABEL. Yais, rubber gloves all the time.
RALPH. A crusty-lookin' blemish or more like a fungus?
[They laugh together]
ISABEL. I don't think I -- yais, I did, I imagined it being like scaa-ales! Like silver fish scales appearing on my hands and then progressing gradually to the wrists and fo'-arms ...
RALPH. And the young doctor discovering you were concealing this condition?
ISABEL. The youngish middle-aged doctor, Mr. Bates! Yais, discovering I had contracted the plague myself and then a big scene in which she says, Oh, no, you musn't touch me but he seizes her passionately in his arms, of course, and -- exposes himself to contagion.
[Ralph chuckles heartily getting off stool to poke at the fire again. She joins him on the floor to fan the flames with the bellows]
ISABEL. And love is stronger than death. You get the picture?
RALPH. Yep, I've seen the picture.
ISABEL. We've had a good laugh together. You're a magician, Ralph, to make me laugh tonight in my present situation. George and I never laugh, we never laugh together. Oh, he makes JOKES, YAIS! But we never have a really genuine laugh together and that's a bad sign, I think, because I don't think a married couple can go through life without laughs together any more than they can without tears.
RALPH. Nope. [He removes his shoes] Take your slippers off, honey.
ISABEL. I have the funniest sensation in the back of my head, like --
RALPH. Like a tight rope was coming unknotted?
ISABEL. Exactly! Like a tight rope was being unknotted!
[He removes her slippers and puts them on the hearth, crosses into the bedroom and comes out with a pair of fluffy pink bedroom slippers. He crouches beside her and feels the sole of her stocking]
RALPH. Yep, damp. Take those damp stockings off.
ISABEL. [unconsciously following the suggestion] Does George have a sense of humor? In your opinion? Has he got the ability to laugh at himself and at life and at -- human situations? Outside of off-color jokes? In your opinion, Mr. Bates?
RALPH. [taking the damp stockings from her and hanging them over the footlights] Yes. We had some good laughs together, me an' -- "Gawge", ha ha ...
ISABEL. We never had any together.
RALPH. That's the solemnity of romantic love, little lady, I mean like Romeo and Juliet was not exactly a joke book, ha ha ha.
ISABEL. "The solemnity of romantic love"! -- I wouldn't expect an old war buddy of George's to use an expression like that.
RALPH. Lemme put these on your feet, little lady. [She sighs and extends her feet and he slips the soft fleecy pink slippers on them] But you know something? I'm gonna tell you something which isn't out of the joke books either. You got a wonderful boy in your hands, on your hands, they don't make them any better than him and I mean it. [He does.]
ISABEL. I appreciate your loyalty to an old war buddy.
RALPH. Naw, naw, it's not just that.
ISABEL. But if they don't make them any better than George Haverstick, they ought to stop making them, they ought to cease production! [She utters a sort of wild, sad laugh which stops as abruptly as it started. Suddenly she observes the bedroom slippers on her feet] What's these, where did they come from?
RALPH. Honey, I just put them on you. Didn't you know?
ISABEL. No! -- How strange! -- I didn't. I wasn't at all aware of it ... [They are both a little embarrassed] Where is your wife, Mr. Bates?
RALPH. Honey, I told you she quit me and went home to her folks.
ISABEL. Oh, excuse me, I remember. You told me ...
[Suddenly the blazing logs make a sharp cracking noise; a spark apprently has spit out of the grate onto Isabel's skirt. She gasps and springs up, retreating from the fireplace, and Ralph jumps off the bar stool to brush at her skirt. Under the material of the Angora wool skirt is the equal and warmer softness of her young body. Ralph is abrtuptly embarrassed, coughs, turns back to the fireplace and picks up copper tongs to shift the position of the crackling logs.
This is a moment between them that must be done just right to avoid misinterpretation. Ralph would never make a play for the bride of a buddy. What should come out of the moment is not a suggestion that he will or might but that Dotty's body never felt that way. He remembers bodies that did. What comes out of Isabel's reaction is a warm understanding of his warm understanding; just that, nothing more, at all.]
ISABEL. Thank you. This Angora wool is, is -- highly inflammable stuff, at least I would -- think it -- might be.
RALPH. Yeah, and I don't want "Gawge" to come back here and find a toasted marshmallow bride ... by my fireplace.
October 27, 2005
You know what?
I never ever ever EVER get tired of looking through this.
It NEVER gets old.
Don't just look at the pictures - read the commentary - I have too many favorite parts to mention. I think my personal favorite, the one that has withstood the test of time, is # 3.
I look at that gallery probably once a week.
There's really no way ...
... to prepare any of you for the following images.
I just have to link to it.
And you just have to leap right in, no questions asked.
You ready?
Here it is:
(via Anne)
Happy birthday: "Let it not come by word of mouth"
Today is Sylvia Plath's birthday - it feels a bit strange to say "Happy birthday" to ... uhm ... someone who was so ultimately unhappy, and someone who took her own life ... But I saw that it was her birthday today and I had to say something.
That's a sketch she did of her own hands.
I haven't yet written a real piece on Sylvia Plath - because I know when I finaly get to it, it'll be a doozy. It'll take me hours of research, and compiling quotes, and snippets, and poems, and yadda yadda. I need to have the time to invest. That's just the deal with certain topics - and Sylvia Plath is one of them.
In honor of the birthday of this eventually astonishing poet (she didn't start out that way, although she was certainly precocious - but NONE of her early work could prepare you for what her work became in the last 2 years of her life - it's like another PERSON came out of her ....) - I have dug up some wonderful old photographs of her. I put them below the excerpt because there are quite a few of them. She was a chameleon. She was an all-American girl. She was a bleached blonde beach-blanket-bingo girl. She was an intense prodigy. She was a depressive who had survived a suicide attempt her junior year in college. She was the woman who married the big brash outdoorsman, and suddenly found herself fishing, and hunting, and tromping through the woods in galoshes. Who was she? I have no idea. But you can take a look at all the photographs and see how startling are the transformations. This is not just about the passage of time, and someone looking different as they grew older ... this really seems to be about a shedding of selves (like she writes in Lady Lazarus, in one of my favorite lines: "my selves dissolving, old whores petticoats") - I look at the picture of the bodacious blonde at the beach, and then I look at the picture of her with her two kids (taken a month or so before she committed suicide) - and it's hard to believe it's the same person. Perhaps there's something similar in the smile - there's something phony in both smiles, to my eye. Anyway, I find it fascinating - perusing the photos of Sylvia Plath.
Not nearly as fascinating as her poems themselves which have never lost their power - no matter how times I have read them.
I have gone through a bunch of Plath phases - and I am sure I will go through more. I continue to re-visit her work, every couple of years ... and re-read all those 1960-1963 poems again - sometimes in order - sometimes muddling it up - and every single time, even though I always have different responses, and sometimes one poem suddenly seems THE BEST when a couple years before it was another poem that was obviously HER BEST - but anyway, every single time I read those poems from her last 3 years, they take my breath away. They're no picnic - they are bleak bleak bleak - especially if you read them chronologically. If you read them chronologically - you can feel herself get manic - in October of 62 - and she starts cranking out 2, 3, sometimes 4 poems a day. These were not pot-boilers, folks. These poems are now taught in colleges. These are the poems that would make her name. She wasn't just scribbling out insane manic fantasies - these are highly intricate, passionate, unbeLIEVable poems. Obviously manic - when you see how many she was putting out a day ... and then there is a brief falling away for a month - December ... she was still writing, but obviously it was the calm before the storm. Then January and February 1963 came along - and I believe it was the coldest winter London had ever had - and her pipes froze - and she had no help, and two young babies - and things started getting worse and worse in her mind. And her art kicked in yet again - with ferocity and power. She would write these poems at 4 in the morning - her only time to herself. So you can feel the wheels start cranking again - in January, February - she wrote some of her best poems then. They are more frightening, however, than the October poems. She is staring at death, she is beginning to embrace the idea of death ... Death is always a factor in Plath's poems, but it takes on a new form in those last couple of poems. It is no longer just a fantasy, death is no longer a dream-lover in the night ... she is now making plans. The rage of October (which gave us such poems as Daddy, and Poppies in October, and the entire fanTASTIC bee-keeping sequence) is now gone. And you can feel a chilling resolve creep into her work. She is getting ready to go.
I have interspersed the photos of Plath I found with some of my favorite of her poems.
I still need to do a big old Plath fest one day - I have too much to say about her, and need to get my thoughts together better.
In honor of her birthday, here's one that she actually wrote about her upcoming birthday - in 1962. She wrote this poem, now one of her most well-known, on Sept. 30 1962 ... right before the blast of creativity and rage that would fuel her through that painful next month. Sylvia always had a fatalistic thing with birthdays:
A Birthday Present
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.
Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!'
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.
Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed--I do not mind if it is small.
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.
I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine-----
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
The moon and the yew tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence
Little Fugue
The yew's black fingers wag:
Cold clouds go over.
So the deaf and dumb
Signal the blind, and are ignored.
I like black statements.
The featurelessness of that cloud, now!
White as an eye all over!
The eye of the blind pianist
At my table on the ship.
He felt for his food.
His fingers had the noses of weasels.
I couldn't stop looking.
He could hear Beethoven:
Black yew, white cloud,
The horrific complications.
Finger-traps--a tumult of keys.
Empty and silly as plates,
So the blind smile.
I envy big noises,
The yew hedge of the Grosse Fuge.
Deafness is something else.
Such a dark funnel, my father!
I see your voice
Black and leafy, as in my childhood.
A yew hedge of orders,
Gothic and barbarous, pure German.
Dead men cry from it.
I am guilty of nothing.
The yew my Christ, then.
Is it not as tortured?
And you, during the Great War
In the California delicatessen
Lopping off the sausages!
They colour my sleep,
Red, mottled, like cut necks.
There was a silence!
Great silence of another order.
I was seven, I knew nothing.
The world occurred.
You had one leg, and a Prussian mind.
Now similar clouds
Are spreading their vacuous sheets.
Do you say nothing?
I am lame in the memory.
I remember a blue eye,
A briefcase of tangerines.
This was a man, then!
Death opened, like a black tree, blackly.
I survive the while,
Arranging my morning.
These are my fingers, this my baby.
The clouds are a marriage of dress, of that pallor.
The Bee Meeting (this is one of the poems in her famous "bee sequence" - which she cranked out at 1 or 2 a day, during October of 1962.)
Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers ---
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.
I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.
Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.
Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?
Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?
Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,
Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.
Their smiles and their voces are changing. I am led through a beanfield.
Strips of tinfoil winking like people,
Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,
Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.
Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?
No, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.
Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
And a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them.
They are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle of hives.
Is it the hawthorn that smells so sick?
The barren body of hawthon, etherizing its children.
Is it some operation that is taking place?
It is the surgeon my neighbors are waiting for,
This apparition in a green helmet,
Shining gloves and white suit.
Is it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?
I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me
With its yellow purses, its spiky armory.
I could not run without having to run forever.
The white hive is snug as a virgin,
Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.
Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.
The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.
Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.
If I stand very still, they will think I am cow-parsley,
A gullible head untouched by their animosity,
Not even nodding, a personage in a hedgerow.
The villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen.
Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever.
She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.
While in their fingerjoint cells the new virgins
Dream of a duel they will win inevitably,
A curtain of wax dividing them from the bride flight,
The upflight of the murderess into a heaven that loves her.
The villagers are moving the virgins, there will be no killing.
The old queen does not show herself, is she so ungrateful?
I am exhausted, I am exhausted ---
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold.
Fever 103 (another Oct. 1962 poem)
Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple
Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean
The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell
Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright
One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,
But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak
Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,
Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.
Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.
Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.
Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ---
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.
Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.
I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ---
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.
Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ---
To Paradise.
The Couriers (written in Nov. 1962)
The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
It is not mine. Do not accept it.
Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
Do not accept it. It is not genuine.
A ring of gold with the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.
Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
Cauldron, talking and crackling
All to itself on the top of each
Of nine black Alps.
A disturbance in mirrors,
The sea shattering its grey one -
Love, love, my season.
I think the following poem is the saddest she ever wrote. Now who can ever say what is in the mind of another - and it is always a dangerous thing to read too much into these poems (at least in a biographical way). They are, after all, art. But I believe that one of the reasons she killed herself is to spare her children a mother whose face was "a ceiling without a star". Not that that excuses her actions. But she wrote this poem in January of 1963, 2 weeks before she put her head in the oven. I find this poem nearly unreadable in its sadness. Yet - wonderful writing as well.
Child
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose names you meditate ---
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little
Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.
And this is the last poem that Sylvia Plath completed. It's chilling, yes, but standing alone - as a poem - I think there's a lot to talk about here, a lot of stuff - not just biographical.
And I'm sorry - but the line "her blacks crackle and drag" is ... I mean, I can't describe it. It's just fantastic genius-level imagery, that's all. Goosebumps. The last two lines give me goosebumps. So scary. "Her blacks crackle and drag." (And yes ... let me just throw a shout-out to Paul Westerberg - who has also recognized the genius imagery in that line.) It's scary. "Crackle"? "Drag?" All kinds of very frightening images come to mind in those two simple words ... and the internal rhyme of "blacks" and "crackle" make it seem even more eerie. I'm not a literary critic but I will NEVER be done reading this last poem. She completed it on February 4, 1963. She killed herself on February 11.
Edge
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
October 26, 2005
Missing my wings
As a child, I was a Brownie. All of my friends were Brownies. It was part of being a kid. My memories of Brownie meetings and Brownie activities are rather dim. I have other memories from those long-ago days, very vivid ones, stuff that has to do with sitting on the hot bulkhead eating a popsicle, and running through the sprinkler in the backyard - wearing a swimming cap - why? - and the smell of the mud in the woods where Jen and Katy and I would play and make up games, and the sound of the screen door slamming on summer nights, and the time I crashed my bike into a mailbox and got a huge cut, and skating with Andrew in the pond in the woods and how he would steal my hat and I would chase him - we were 11 - but even now, as an adult, I can't think of anything more romantic than cavorting across the ice in the middle of the woods - ON ICE SKATES - trying to get my hat back ... I have a lot of vivid sensoral memories from childhood, but very little remains in my head about "being a Brownie".
What does remain is how it all ended.
At the end of my sojourn as a Brownie there came a moment which I think of now as my first loss of innocence, my first real disappointment. I can laugh at it now, whatever, I can turn it into a cute story, but it absolutely crushed me when I was 8 years old. It was the first time that a dearly-held illusion of mine was shattered. It wouldn't be the last, but like Cat Stevens wrote so eloquently: "The first cut is the deepest." I suppose I should be grateful that it came from something as benign as a Brownie meeting, and not something more ominous. But whatever, this is my blog, my story, and this is the story of my first encounter with the inevitable disappointments of life.
You don't lose your innocence all at once. It's a gradual process. Bits and pieces are chipped away, as you go through your life. This story is about that first piece ... being chipped away.
So here, briefly, are the memories of Brownie-hood before "the Fall" -
-- I remember having meetings in the big cafeteria ("caf")/gymnasium at South Road School - which was called "the Multi-Purpose Room". In retrospect, I just love that name. It really tells it like it is. "Okay, so we're all going to go watch a play now in the Multi-Purpose Room!" "Let's go eat in the Multi-Purpose Room." "It's rainy today - so we have gym in the Multi-Purpose Room!" And of course: "After school Brownie meeting - Multi purpose room." All of us little Brownies sat in a circle as the troupe leaders (who were mothers of my friends) led the meeting. It's hilarious to think: I have friends now, old old friends, from college, etc., who have kids of their own, and are now Brownie troupe leaders. Those women seemed so OLD to me! They were younger than I am now. I remember too that the mothers who led Brownies (and this is neither here nor there - I'm not making a judgment - it just happened to be that way in my little troupe) were the kinds of women who had bleached done hair, Lee Press-on nails, and were tanned, year-round. They were also the kinds of women who didn't go to the big public beach - like my family did, and most other people did - but were members of "beach clubs", where they rented "cabanas". It was a foreign world, I tell ya. They smoked long thin cigarettes and when I played with their daughters at their houses, sometimes they would put out bowls of candy for us. CANDY. A far cry from the Saltines and popsicles available at my house. To use my mother's terminology - these women were "jazzy". Again, this is neither here nor there, this is just a post about what I remember, and that's one of the things that I remember.
Other things:
-- I remember marching in the Parade, and feeling so proud of my little brown uniform, my little beanie hat. I particularly loved holding the flag - Oh, my heart swelled with importance. I tripped on my shoelaces, however, and fell while holding the flag. But you know what? I loved telling that story when I met up with my parents at the end of the parade route. I turned it into a rollicking good tale. I was good at that: turning moments of adversity into jokes - where the joke was on me. I loved (and still love) jokes where the joke is on me.
-- I remember being absolutely entranced with the "Brownie book" - which I don't think they use anymore. Probably because it had too much of a pagan slant and religious parents would object. I mean, fine, whatever floats your boat, but please: I came from a religious family, but I always appreciated a good fairy tale. The book tells the story of the Brownies, with illustrations - I can still see those illustrations in my mind. They were so evocative. The Brownies were small fairies who would creep out into the moonlight around a magical pool in the middle of the woods - and dance and sing their Brownie songs ... Well, that for me was the ENTIRE appeal of being a Brownie. I wanted to be part of that pixie fellowship. I could see the silver moonlight, I could hear the rustling of the leaves, I loved the darkness, the cool dew, the feeling of a secret special ritual ... I was totally in the Brownies for THAT.
Little did I know that, in actuality, being a Brownie had nothing to do with shimmering moonlit nights and pagan rituals around a mirrored pool. It was more about gluing interminable amounts of spray-painted macaroni onto random pieces of cardboard.
I was never into prose, especially in terms of life-style, even back then. I always preferred poetry. The romance of the moonlit woods. I wanted life itself to be poetic. I suppose I still do. There's a beautiful moment in Postcards from the Edge when Meryl Streep says, in a moment of revelation, "I want life to be art." Count me in. I wanted to crawl into the illustrations of my Brownie book. I wanted the poetry, the possibility of something magical happening.
I accepted the "prose" nature of being a Brownie, mainly because that was what you did. I didn't really question it. I didn't really enjoy Brownies, truth be told, but everyone was in Brownies. So I had to be there. But our meetings in the Multi-Purpose Room were a pale ghost of the extravaganzas that went on in my imagination, secret meetings in the middle of the night, out in the woods.
But all lukewarm things must end, and it was time to move on and become a Girl Scout.
The moment when we would become Girl Scouts was referred to as "flying up". The troupe leaders also talked about how we would "get wings". There would be a "flying up ceremony".
All of this was never explained to us in literal terms. Or if there ever was a literal explanation of what "flying up" actually meant - I was out that day. I took it all completely literally - since no one explained to me that the whole thing was basically just an elaborate metaphor for a "graduation" ceremony. This "flying up" thing, to me, resonated and shimmered with magic. "The flying up ceremony"....It sounded so ... fantastical. So exciting! What did it mean? What would happen at the ceremony? What were the "wings" we were going to get? It all was so mysterious.
I truly believed that somehow - during the ceremony - I would "fly up". To where was still unknown, but I would "fly up". There were "wings" that I would get that would help me to do this.
Some sort of transformation was going to take place. THAT was clear.
I pictured the wings in my mind and I imagined that they would be elaborate huge constructions - wings that would make Icarus envious. They would HAVE to be big if they were going to carry us up off the ground. I imagined them into reality in my brain. I worked it all out. What I imagined was real to me - not something that I HOPED would happen, but something that WOULD happen. I got very specific in my imaginings. Some of the wings (we each would get two, one to fit over each arm) were made of actual feathers, soft as down. But there were other wings made of sparkles, and glitter. It would only be revealed on the day of the "flying up ceremony" what kind of wings each of us would get. I wondered if mine would be the feathered kind. I thought that I would prefer big feathery wings to the glittery ones - but I told myself that I wouldn't mind either way. I made a promise to myself that I would be happy with whatever pair of wings I got, even though I preferred feathers. I talked myself down from disappointment beforehand. "It'll be okay if the wings I get are glittery. It won't matter." It is amazing to me, in looking back, how realistic I was with myself, in the days leading up to the "flying up ceremony", preparing myself for the disappointment ... It's like somewhere I knew. I knew that disappointment was going to inevitable ... with the kind of soaring hope I harbored in my heart ... No way could the "substance of things hoped for" ever live up to what was in my mind.
The fantasies about the wings went even further. (And this element, to me, is the most interesting thing about the entire memory) Not only did I imagine what the wings would look like, the wings which would help us "fly up" to be Girl Scouts during the "flying up ceremony" - but I also imagined what the wings would be like a couple months after the ceremony, crushed in the bottom of my closet, once the novelty of them wore off. That, to me, was THE most pleasing fantasy of all: to be "over" the wings, to be lackadaisacal about what was going to prove to be a transcendent experience. "What are those feathery things in my closet? Ah, those are nothing ... no big deal ... just my wings from my flying-up ceremony ... No big deal ..." I LOVED that fantasy. Even more than dreaming about the upcoming "flying up ceremony" - I LOVED fantasizing about being "over" the wings, and seeing them crushed in a heap in the bottom of my closet.
So the big day comes. The day when all the Brownies will "fly up".
The ceremony was held in the Multi-Purpose Room. I had wondered to myself: How will we get high enough up, so that we will actually be able to fly? I had thought, Well, maybe they will stack some of the lunch tables on top of each other, and then put them on the stage ... Maybe that will be high up enough for when we put on our wings ...
Again: This all may sound incredibly silly. But nobody had ever actually told me what the ceremony was going to be, none of those jazzy tanned mothers had ever explained to me that "flying up" was just a metaphor. I was in the world of poetry, you understand. Nobody told me the whole thing would be prose.
I suppose I was eager, even then, even as a little girl, for transformation. For transcendence. I look back on that little girl ... and see myself now. No change. No difference at all. I've just got a few more miles on me, that's all.
I wasn't sure how the Powers-that-Be were going to handle the challenge of getting all us Brownies up to a good height so that we wouldn't fall like stones when we leapt - but I was sure that SOMEONE would figure it out.
I was a bit ... stunned ... to see how few people were in attendance. I believe my mother was there ... and a couple of other mothers ... but it seemed to be a VERY thin crowd for such an extraordinary ceremony of transformation.
The reality did not match the magnitude in my mind. It was very disheartening.
I'll just say this, for those of you who were never Brownies, I'll tell you what the real thing is: The "flying up ceremony" is when each Brownie gets a small badge, a badge of two outstretched wings, pinned onto their sash. This wing-badge means: You are now a Girl Scout.
That's IT. That's all it was.
It had never been said to me: "You will get a wing-badge, and then you will make the Girl Scout vow, and then you will be a Girl Scout, and that is what the flying-up ceremony is all about."
They spoke in shorthand. "So, girls, when you fly up ..." "During the flying up ceremony..." "After you get your wings..." They assumed we knew the terms. I didn't have an older sister who would have clued me in a bit earlier. I was moving into unchartered waters.
And there I was, making up elaborate fantasies of Icarus wings, tables stacked on top of each other, little girls flying through the air of the Multi-Purpose Room, convincing myself that it would be okay if my wings were glittery and not feathery, and then looking forward to the day when said wings were crushed in a heap in my closet.
The ceremony began.
In a flash, when the first girl "flew up" and became a Girl Scout - the veil was pulled back from my eyes irrevocably. I saw the teeny wing-badge, I heard her say the Girl Scout vow, and then I saw her step aside to let the next person go - and I realized that that was it. That was it. That was all the "flying-up ceremony" was going to be.
Furtively, I glanced around the Multi-Purpose Room, hoping to see a big cardboard box ... I remember looking for that box ... the box that contained the REAL wings ... that they had ordered from some magical Brownie warehouse ...
but already I knew it wasn't there.
It was never there.
I went through my "flying up ceremony" with a huge smile on my face - I acted like I was really happy about my little wing-badge. I didn't want to show how much my heart had just cracked, how unbelievably disappointed I was, how grey the entire world suddenly became.
I hid my heart from everyone. I was immediately very ashamed of my fantasies. I was ashamed of my fantasies AS I said the Girl Scout vow. I felt stupid. Like - of course, everybody else knew what the "flying up ceremony" was going to be. I was the only one who didn't know. I was the only one who was devastated. Everybody else was giggling, and excited to be a Girl Scout. Inside - inside - I was crying with disappointment. I thought about the crushed wings in my closet, and felt a piercing mixture of longing, despair, and shame.
Where are my wings??? Where are my REAL wings?
There weren't going to be any wings, feathery or glittery. There would never be wings crumpled up in my closet.
There would be no transformation.
Oh, and here's a Coda:
The disillusion was complete. I only made it as a Girl Scout for a couple of months. I quit the day after we spent an entire meeting making duffel bags.
There ain't no poetry in duffel bags.
I was GONE.
It's not often that you have a photo of yourself at the very moment a dream dies.
You'd never know from looking at the picture that that is what is going on.
Good game face. Too good.
Overheard in New York
I just have to pull this one out of the Wed. one-liners - I LOVE THIS:
Chick on cell: Oh my lord, I am walking down the street wearing all black, talking on my cell, gesturing with my pumpkin spice latte, and freaking out about whether I want to marry my investment banker boyfriend. Kill me now. Shoot me and send me back to Mexico. Seriously. I think I need to go live with my grandmother and take care of the goats or something.--19th & Irving
HAHAHAHAHA Love that girl. She has a moment of self-awareness and it is her saving grace. That is classic.
Another "overheard" snippet (from this compilation) that kind of blew me away is:
Bag lady: Man, don't you know Sherlock Holmes was a Presbyterian? Dang.--34th & 7th
I mean - WHAT??? I SO want to know the context of that last one, how they got onto that topic, etc. That is genius.
I'm still all caught up in my love for the girl with the pumpkin latte. I love her.
The 1960s
Michele has been going strong with her own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominations - it's been so much fun to read - she polls her readers and eventually comes up with a winner.
The latest category: Best album of the 1960s.
The first album I thought of - perhaps my favorite album of all time - is Rubber Soul. But I, admittedly, do not have a vast database of music in my mind. Rubber Soul is my pick, though.
Go over there and cast a vote!
"Fasten your seatbelts" ...
A post about All About Eve that you do not want to miss. I love it because it makes me see the film in a new way ... it makes me want to see it again. That "fasten your seatbelts" line is so imitated - and so distorted through all the imitations - that when I first saw the film I was amazed at how REAL the moment actually is. The way she says it is not at ALL like all the imitations! I laughed with Mitchell about this once, and said, "The queens have overtaken that line!! It's the queens' fault!" The moment in the film is actually very real - although heightened, of course - but certainly not the bitchy campy flouncing monstrosity that I was expecting!!!
If you've seen the movie, and you are interested in an encyclopedic take on it, go and read Alex's post.
Elephant Love
I love this poem. ("the sympathy in their vast shy hearts" ... I love that line) It's by DH Lawrence, and it's called "The Elephant is Slow to Mate".
The Elephant is Slow to Mate
The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.
The Books: "Sweet Bird of Youth" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is Sweet Bird of Youth
Anyone ever see this film? I think it's one of Paul Newman's better performances. He's really wonderful in it. But everyone's good in it. It's one of those times when pretty much the entire Broadway cast was transplanted into the film. It's all the same - Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Newman ... That so rarely happens - so in a way, when I see the film I feel like I get a glimpse of what it must have been like to see them all do it live.
The production was in 1959 (sorry - jumping around in chronology - not that anyone cares or notices - but I'm obsessive and I started out with the idea that I would take us through Williams' body of work in chronological order - but then I tragically left one of my books at another location, an undisclosed location - and had to wait until I could retrieve it.) So now we're back on the timeline. Again: NOBODY CARES BUT ME.
Paul Newman plays Chance Wayne - the young stud. Literally. He's a guy who basically makes a "living" off of his looks. He's not a gigolo - at least he doesn't SAY that he is one - but that's pretty much the deal. I mean, Paul Newman played him - so you can get a sense of the level of beauty Williams was talking about here. Chance Wayne is, ultimately, a TRAGIC character. He's the kind of character that is usually female. Williams' plays are full of these on-the-verge-of-aging pretty boys - who have corrupted their souls - who latch on to rich lonely people - who sell their bodies for money - but who have also sold their soul somewhere along the line. Chance has big dreams. He wants to be an actor. He has latched on to one of Tennessee Williams' greatest creations: an aging flamboyant actress who goes by the name of The Princess Kosmonopolis (played by Geraldine Page). She likes to have him around because she likes having sex with him and he makes her feel young. She is desperate. Losing her youth is no joke to her. She cannot accept growing old gracefully. Bit by bit, she is losing her power - not just over men, but over her own career. It's a great portrait of what women go through in show business - how they "disappear" after a certain date. Chance has latched on to her with the hopes that she can help him along in his career. He hates himself for who he has become. He is actually in love with someone else. But his ambition, his dying hope that he will have a meaningful life, that he will be famous, overrides his purer emotions. He's an animal, basically. Both of them are. They are desperate clawing animals - who need each other - but who also DESPISE each other - because of all they are reminded of. The Princess looks at Chance and sees that she is no longer young. And yet ... she cannot let him go, because at the same time he is the only thing that makes her feel young - Also, it can't hurt to have someone who looks like Paul feckin' Newman on your arm! It gives you power. Chance despises her, despises who he is with her, despises being around someone who is so desperate - he refuses to believe that it is the end of the line for him.
Another thing about Chance, and this is his main secret - his main reason for his intense self-loathing - is that he was in love with a girl named Heavenly - a beautiful pure Southern belle. And they slept together (she was a virgin, and only 15 years old) and he gave her a horrible venereal disease. I forget which one. And it was so bad that she was given a full hysterectomy. (Her father refers to it as "a whore's operation".) Chance ruined her life, basically. And he was run out of town by her powerful family. He is DEAD to the town. But in this play ... he has returned to the town ... again, I forget why ... but he is with the Princess ... and they hole themselves up in the hotel in the town, and he tries to get back in good with Heavenly (her family does not make this easy) - and he struggles, every single second, with his shame and self-hatred ... Being back in the town makes him realize how far he has fallen, and just how low he is.
And the Princess is a pot-smoking neurotic frenzied head-case - who pretty much has lost her short-term memory. At any moment, she is bound to look around her and have no idea where she is, who she is with, and how she got there. She is LOSING it.
Chance and the Princess have scene after scene after scene where they fight and make love and bitch at each other and hurt each other ... it's just incredible. Tennessee Williams, man ... I know he was shy around actors. He never quite knew what to say to them, he was a bit afraid of them, and he was also intimidated by what they did - acting remained, essentially, mysterious to him. He never get over it. He thought it was amazing. He didn't understand the craft of actors - and so to watch actors basically transform themselves, and put themselves out there, and expose themselves so brutally - was, to him, nothing less than a miracle. All of that being said, it is obvious, through his writing, how much he LOVED actors. How much he KNEW what they would need. How much he GAVE them to latch onto. He never ever leaves actors hanging. He never leaves things vague. He creates vivid characters, with massive objectives - and then just throws obstacle after obstacle in their paths. And through that comes great drama. I had a great acting teacher once who described good acting as: "trying to achieve your objective despite the obstacles". You may not succeed in reaching your objective - but you have to TRY. This is true of the silliest movie - and of the deepest drama. Hamlet must avenge his father's death. And yet - of course - the universe doesn't make that easy for him. He has to deal with one obstacle after another. Without obstacles, there is no drama. An objective is NOTHING without the obstacle. A lot of times, if the playwriting is weak, then the actor has to make shit up. Like: "Okay, what is my objective in this scene? Uhm ... okay, I will choose that I want to fuck her. That is my objective." And then, if the playright is weak, the actor also has to make up the obstacle: "Okay, I want to fuck her - that is all I want - but ... because of my messed-up past, I can't ever make a move on her. I am afraid. I am paralyzed." Now all that is fine - and an actor who knows how to take care of himself will always give himself tasks like that. If it's not in the script - then you MUST make something up so that it seems real, and you can latch onto the situation. But with Williams (and all the great playwrights) - you don't EVER have to make stuff up. It's there. Just say the words and play the scene. Just GO. Play the damn scene like a bat out of hell. He gives BOTH sides equally strong objectives - (I'm thinking of Summer and Smoke
That same acting teacher I mentioned earlier said once that there are really only two objectives to choose from, when you boil all the choices down: Fight or Fuck. Every scene is either a fight scene or a fuck scene - and you have to figure out which one it is. And if you're not sure - because sometimes it's not clear - (there are "fuck" scenes that feel like "fight" scenes, etc.) - anyway, if you're not sure - then just choose one and play that objective (in a rehearsal, please, not a performance) and see what happens. See if it works. If it doesn't, then try the other one. Usually, with a good playwright it's obvious - and it helps to keep things simple. An objective should never be intellectual. Because that makes for boring acting. And it usually should be life or death. The stakes need to be huge. Again, with weak playwrights you have to turn up the heat under the stakes yourself ... but with someone like Williams, or Shakespeare, or Chekhov - you don't have to. Just figure out your objective - and I have found my teacher's advice to be true: Do you want to fight the other person in the scene or do you want to fuck them? And then go for your objective wiht all your might. The obstacles will keep coming - but keep going for that objective. Exciting stuff.
You can relax when you're in a Williams play. I mean, you better have some talent and all that ... but you don't have to turn yourself inside out, making up for the lacks in the writing. Just relax, say his words, and take the leap.
I'll post an excerpt from Scene Two - when Chance tells Princess about what happened with Heavenly.
EXCERPT FROM Sweet Bird of Youth
CHANCE. -- I was born in this town. I was born in St. Cloud.
PRINCESS. That's a good way to begin to tell your life story. Tell me your life story. I'm interested in it, I really would like to know it. Let's make it your audition, a sort of screen test for you. I can watch you in the mirror while I put my face on. And tell me your life story, and if you hold my attention with your life story, I'll know you have talent, I'll wire my studio on the Coast that I'm still alive and I'm on my way to the Coast with a young man named Chance Wayne that I think is cut out to be a great young star.
CHANCE. Here is the town I was born in, and lived in till ten years ago, in St. Cloud. I was a twelve-pound baby, normal and healthy, but with some kind of quantity "X" in my blood, a wish or a need to be different ... The kids that I grew up with are mostly still here and what they call "settled down," gone into business, married and bringing up children, the little crowd I was in with, that I used to be the star of, was the snobset, the ones with the big names and money. I didn't have either ... [The Princess utters a soft laugh in her dimmed-out area] What I had was ... [The Princess half turns, brush poised in a faint, dusty beam of light]
PRINCESS. BEAUTY! Say it! Say it! What you had was beauty! I had it! I say it, with pride, no matter how sad, being gone, now.
CHANCE. Yes, well ... the others ... [The Princess resumes brushing her hair and the sudden cold beam of light on her goes out again] ... are all now members of the young social set here. The girls are young matrons, bridge-players, and the boys belong to the Junior Chamber of Commerce and some of them, clubs in New Orleans such as Rex and Comus and ride on the Mardi Gras floats. Wonderful? No boring ... I wanted, expected, intended to get, something better ... Yes, and I did, I got it. I did things that fat-headed gang never dreamed of. Hell when they were still freshmen at Tulane or LSU or Ole Miss, I sang in the chorus of the biggest show in New York, in "Oklahoma", and had pictures in LIFE in a cowboy outfit, tossin' a ten-gallon hat in the air! YIP ... EEEEEEE! Ha-ha ... And at the same time pursued my other vocation ... Maybe the only one I was truly meant for, love-making ... slept in the social register of New York! Millionaires' widows and wives and debutante daughters of such famous names as Vanderbrook and Masters and Halloway and Connaught, names mentioned daily in columns, whose credit cards are their faces ... And ...
PRINCESS. What did they pay you?
CHANCE. I gave people more than I took. Middle-aged people I gave back a feeling of youth. Lonely girls? Understanding, appreciation! An absolutely convincing show of affection. Sad people, lost people? Something light and uplifting! Eccentrics? Tolerance, even odd things they long for ... But always just at the point when I might get something back that would solve my own need, which was great, to rise to their level, the memory of my girl would pull me back home to her ... and when I came home for those visits, man oh man how that town buzzed with excitement. I'm telling you, it would blaze with it, and then that thing in Korea came along. I was about to be sucked into the Army so I went into the Navy, because a sailor's uniform suited me better, the uniform was all that suited me, though ...
PRINCESS. Ah-ha!
CHANCE. [mocking her] Ah-ha. I wasn't able to stand the goddam routine, discipline ... I kept thinking, this stops everything. I was twenty-three, that was the peak of my youth and I knew my youth wouldn't last long. By the time I got out, Christ knows, I might be nearly thirty! Who would remember Chance Wayne? In a life like mine, you just can't stop, you know, can't take time out between steps, you've got to keep going right on up from one thing to the other, once you drop out, it leaves you and goes on without you and you're washed up.
PRINCESS. I don't think I know what you're talking about.
CHANCE. I'm talking about the parade. THE parade! The parade! the boys that go places that's the parade I'm talking about, not a parade of swabbies on a wet deck. And so I ran my comb through my hair one morning and noticed that eight or ten hairs had come out, a warning signal of future baldness. My hair was still thick. But would it be five years from now, or even three? When the war would be over, that scared me, that speculation. I started to have bad dreams. Nightmares and cold sweats at night, and I had palpitations, and on my leaves I got drunk and woke up in strange places with faces on the next pillow I had never seen before. My eyes had a wild look in them in the mirror ... I got the idea I wouldn't live through the war, that I wouldn't come back, that all the excitement and glory of being Chance Wayne would go up in smoke at the moment of contact between my brain and a bit of hot steel tha thappened to be in the air at the same time and place that my head was ... that thought didn't comfort me any. Imagine a whole lifetime of dreams and ambitions and hopes dissolving away in one instant, being blacked out like some arithmetic problem washed off a blackboard by a wet sponge, just by some little accident like a bullet, not even aimed at you but just shot off in space, and so I cracked up, my nerves did. I got a medical discharge out of the service and I came home in civvies, then it was when I noticed how different it was, the town and the peopl ein it. Polite? Yes, but not cordial. No headlines in the papers, just an item that measured one inch at the bottom of page five saying that Chance Wayne, the son of Mrs. Emily Wayne of North Front Street had received an honorable discharge from the Navy as the result of illness and was home to recover ... that was when Heavenly became more important to me than anything else ...
PRINCESS. Is Heavenly a girl's name?
CHANCE. Heavenly is the name of my girl in St. Cloud.
PRINCESS. Is Heavenly why we stopped here?
CHANCE. What other reason for stopping here can you think of?
PRINCESS. So ... I'm being used. Why not? Even a dead race horse is used to make glue. Is she pretty?
CHANCE. [handing Princess a snapshot] This is a flashlight photo I took of her, nude, one night on Diamond Key, which is a little sandbar about half a mile off shore which is under water at high tide. This was taken with the tide coming in. The water is just beginning to lap over her body like it desired her like I did and still do and will always, always. [Chance takes back the snapshot] Heavenly was her name. You can see that it fits her. This was her at fifteen.
PRINCESS. Did you have her that early?
CHANCE. I was just two years older, we had each other that early.
PRINCESS. Sheer luck!
CHANCE. Princess, the great difference between in this world is not between the rich and the poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy. The spectators and the performers. I don't mean just ordinary pleasure or the kind you can buy, I mean great pleasure, and nothing that's happened to me or to Heavenly since can cancel out the many long nights without sleep when we gave each other such pleasure in love as very few people can look back on in their lives ...
PRINCESS. No question, go on with your story.
CHANCE. Each time I came back to St. Cloud I had her love to come back to ...
PRINCESS. Something permanent in a world of change?
CHANCE. Yes, after each disappointment, eacah failure at something, I'd come back to her like going to a hospital ...
PRINCESS. She put cool bandages on your wounds? Why didn't you marry this Heavenly little physician?
CHANCE. Didn't I tell you that Heavenly is the daughter of Boss Finley, the biggest political wheel in this part of the country? Well, if I didn't I made a serious omission.
PRINCESS. He disapproved?
CHANCE. He figured his daughter rated someone a hundred, a thousand percent better than me, Chance Wayne ... The last time I came back here, she phoned me from the drugstore and told me to swim out to Diamond Key, that she would meet me there. I waited a long time, till almost sunset, and the tide started coming in before I heard the put-put of an outboard motor boat coming out to the sandbar. The sun was behind her, I squinted. She had on a silky wet tank suit and fans of water and mist made rainbows about her ... she stood up in the boat as if she was water-skiing, shouting things at me an' circling around the sandbar, around and around it!
PRINCESS. She didn't come to the sandbar?
CHANCE. No, just circled around it, shouting things at me. I'd swim toward the boat, I would just about reach it and she'd race it away, throwing up misty rainbows, disappearing in rainbows and then circling back and shouting things at me again ...
PRINCESS. What things?
CHANCE. Things like, "Chance, go away." "Don't come back to St. Cloud." "Chance, you're a liar." "Chance, I'm sick of your lies!" "My father's right ab out you!" "Chance, you're no good any more." "Chance, stay away from St. Cloud." The last time around the sandbar she shouted nothing, just waved goodby and turned the boat back to shore.
PRINCESS. Is that the end of the story?
CHANCE. Princess, the end of the story is up to you. You want to help me?
PRINCESS. I want to help you. Believe me, not everybody wants to hurt everybody. I don't want to hurt you, can you believe me?
CHANCE. I can if you prove it to me.
PRINCESS. How can I prove it to you?
CHANCE. I have something in mind.
PRINCESS. Yes, what?
CHANCE. Okay, I'll give you a quick outline of this project I have in mind. Soon as I've talked to my girl and shown her my contract, we go on, you and me. Not far, just to New Orleans, Princess. But no more hiding away, we check in at the Hotel Roosevelt there as Alexandra Del Lago and Chance Wayne. Right away the newspapers call you and give a press conference ...
PRINCESS. Oh?
CHANCE. Yes! The idea briefly, a local contest of talent to find a pair of young people to star as unknowns in a picture you're planning to make to show your faith in YOUTH, Princess. You stage this contest, you invite other judges, but your decision decides it!
PRINCESS. And you and ...
CHANCE. Yes, Heavenly and I win it. We get her out of St. Cloud, we go to the West Coast together.
PRINCESS. And me?
CHANCE. You?
PRINCESS. Have you forgotten, for instance, that any public attention is what I least want in the world?
CHANCE. What better way can you think of to show the public that you're a person with bigger than personal interest?
PRINCESS. Oh, yes, yes, but not true.
CHANCE. You could pretend it was true.
PRINCESS. If I didn't despise pretending!
CHANCE. I understand. Time does it. Hardens people. Time and the world that you've lived in.
PRINCESS. Which you want for yourself. Isn't that what you want? [She looks at him and then goes to the phone. In phone:] Cashier? Hello, Cashier? This is the Princess Kosmonopolis speaking. I'm sending down a young man to cash some travelers' checks for me. [She hangs up]
CHANCE. And I want to borrow your Cadillac for a while ...
PRINCESS. What for, Chance?
CHANCE. [posturing] I'm pretentious. I want to be seen in your car on the streets of St. Cloud. Drive all around town in it, blowing those long silver trumpets and dressed in the fine clothes you bought me ... can I?
PRINCESS. Chance, you're a lost little boy that I really would like to help find himself.
CHANCE. I passed the screen test!
PRINCESS. Come here, kiss me, I love you. [She faces the audience] Did I say that? Did I mean it? [Then to Chance, with arms outstretched] What a child you are ... Come here ... [He ducks under her arms, and escapes to the chair]
CHANCE. I want this big display. Big phony display in your Cadillac around town. And a wad a dough to flash in their faces and the fine clothes you've bought me, on me.
PRINCESS. Did I buy you fine clothes?
CHANCE. [picking up his jacket] The finest. When you stopped being lonely because of my company at the Palm Beach Hotel, you bought me the finest. That's the deal for tonight, to toot those silver horns and drive slowly around in the Cadillac convertible so everybody that thought I was washed up will see me. And I have taken my false or true contract to flash in the faces of various people that called me washed up. All right that's the deal. Tomorrow you'll get the car back and what's left of your money. Tonight's all that counts.
PRINCESS. How do you know that as soon as you walk out of this room I won't call the police?
CHANCE. You wouldn't do that, Princess. [He puts on his jacket] You'll find the car in back of the hotel parking lot, and the left-over dough will be in the glove compartment of the car.
PRINCESS. Where will you be?
CHANCE. With my girl, or nowhere.
PRINCESS. Chance Wayne! This was not necessary, all this. I'm not a phony and I wanted to be your friend.
CHANCE. Go back to sleep. As far as I know you're not a bad person, but you just got into bad company on this occasion.
PRINCESS. I am your friend and I'm not a phony. [Chance turns and goes to the steps] When will I see you?
CHANCE. [at the top of the steps] I don't know -- maybe never.
PRINCESS. Never is a long time, Chance, I'll wait.
[She throws him a kiss]
CHANCE. So long.
[The Princess stands looking after him as the lights dim and the curtain closes]
October 25, 2005
Just for kicks
Sigh. This movie solidified what I felt during Murray's stint on Saturday Night Live ... basically that I LOVED HIM.
I'm not sure ...
... but I think I could be good friends with the person who did this.
Wow.
This is a major fight. I am very impressed with the shit-flinging abilities of both parties. Well done!
Mary Gaitskill
Anne reminds me of how much I admire Mary Gaitskill's writing. Her collection of short stories, Bad Behavior
The film Secretary was based on one of the short stories in that first collection. I'm such a Gaitskill fan that I was afraid to see the film, afraid they would water down that story - which is - ahem - pretty OUT there ... but I was very very pleased to see that they didn't. The film WENT there. Hard to believe that film actually got made, come to think of it. Very very good.
Gaitskill's an incredible writer. I will have to pick up a copy of her latest book.
Here's the review in The Times.
Excerpt:
Gaitskill's work is far more humanistic than a reader given to sunnier fare might first suppose. And her palpable talent puts her among the most eloquent and perceptive contemporary fiction writers. The stories in "Bad Behavior," her 1988 debut, are Chekhovian in their quietude, inviting us to complicate our frameworks for questions of individual and social responsibility. Is the bullied always a victim? Is love always intimate? Why does weakness make us uncomfortable - or excited? A lesser writer might have sentimentalized or valorized the "bad behavior" Gaitskill has continued to make her terrain over the past 17 years; she has instead worked to make us more aware of our own uninterrogated assumptions. Currents of empathy pool beneath the icy surface of her prose - a surface that is itself very beautiful indeed: her sentences are flinty and bright. In a curious way, Gaitskill may be among the more old-fashioned of our writers, a documentarian for a hypersexualized age in which Jenna Jameson's memoir is a best seller and appearances matter more than ever.
True, true. Very well put. She is an old-fashioned writer.
I love this:
A book about superficiality might easily be fueled by fumes. But in Gaitskill's hands "Veronica" is a masterly examination of the relationship between surface and self, culture and fashion, time and memory. Gaitskill has long been interested in what she once called the "great ferocity latent in women," and the best passages in "Veronica" detail the young Alison on the prowl, at once hunter and prey as a young runaway in San Francisco. Gaitskill is enormously gifted at depicting youthful impatience and the dangerous, febrile sensuality that accompanies it, and throughout the book are passages of plainly spectacular beauty.
It's almost like her prose VIBRATES. It's that good.
Lastly, from the review:
Even so, Gaitskill is reaching further into her preoccupations than ever before, and the novel is full of very real pleasures. Her prose has a perfumed clarity. She tacks against the upright dichotomies of our historical moment - dichotomies that shape how we think and who we are but are often more contingent than we know. In "Veronica," as ever, Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's. And it constitutes some of the most incisive fiction writing around.
Yup. She's damn good. She's also one of those writers that I could recognize - or, I mean - I could recognize her prose, even if I didn't know the author. She's distinctive. But it's not a gimmick, or a trick. It's her style, it's her natural way of expressing herself. It's unmistakable.
World Series
Yeah, I've been watching. I thoroughly enjoyed Bill Simmon's observations. It's so stream-of-consciousness - it's hilarious - but I also find myself just nodding in agreement at so many of his points.
Like this random SPOT ON observation:
The awkward cut to "Prison Break" star Stacy Keach in the stands during the sixth inning ... it's almost like Fox is trying to parody itself at this point. I don't even think ESPN would do something like that. Seriously, can you imagine Mike Patrick pointing out Michael Madsen and the stars from "Tilt" in the stands during a Sunday Night Football game as Paul Maguire chimed in, "I'm gonna tell you something right now, that's a good TV show!"
hahahaha
Also:
The non-controversy of Jermaine Dye's 3-and-2 HBP which may or may not have hit his bat, immediately followed by a truly fantastic baseball moment -- Konerko's grand slam -- followed by Buck immediately calling it a controversy (umm, can I enjoy the grand slam replays?) and 400 replays of the last Dye pitch. OK, this wasn't funny. Not at all. But does everything have to be a controversy? Who's to say Dye wouldn't have walked on the next pitch? Wasn't the story there how Houston switched pitchers in the biggest moment of the game -- against the only legitimately dangerous hitter on the White Sox -- and brought in a guy who immediately gave up a grand slam? No second-guessing at all there?
It did hit his bat, though. But man. That grand slam was something. I don't have a horse in this race, but I felt two things at the same time watching that occur: I felt the THRILL of the White Sox fans, the absolute hysteria ... and I felt the gut-clenching misery of the Astros fans ... grand slam. Wow. Devastating. Exhilarating.
More observations on the general suckiness of the broadcasters:
Speaking of announcers noticing things, I was on the phone with my buddy Gus during the top of the ninth, when the Astros rallied for two to tie the game. Before Jose Vizcaino came up to pinch-hit, Gus points out that we were in "Jose Vizcaino territory" and adds, "Remember, he had the big hit in Game 1 of the 2000 World Series against the Mets." Well, that's a significant piece of information -- you would think that this would come up at some point during the at-bat, with video cued and everything. Nope. So Vizcaino singles to tie the game, and about 3-4 minutes later, McCarver makes the Vizcaino/2000 connection. Interesting.
Watching Joe Buck and McCarver interact - is sometimes so embarrassing that I find myself looking away. To spare them my seeing and perceiving their craven hollowness.
The rain was pouring down in Chicago, it looked like the game might not go on, they cut away to a reporter standing there with a huge umbrella, blithering on about "well, the tarp came out ... then they took the tarp off ... and now we don't know WHAT the hell is going on, guys! Back to you!" Cut back to Joe Buck who literally says something like, "Yes, but your hair looks amazing." Did anyone else hear that? I swear, he said some stupid banter about "gee, your hair looks terrific" to the rain-beleaguered dude standing in the monsoon. It was so STUPID.
I know it gets monotonous - everyone criticizes those guys - but they deserve it.
Today in history: October 25, 1764
John Adams married Abigail Smith. They were married for 54 years. They were partners for 54 years. They moved from colonial Boston, spend most of the American Revolution apart (but they wrote letters - oh MAN did they write letters), they lived in Paris, in London, and also in the brand-new muddy swampy capital of Washington D.C. They retired to Quincy after Adams' term as President.
In a funny way, we should be grateful that these two extraordinary individuals were forced to spend so much time apart - as wrenching as it was for the both of them. Because they left behind their letters ... In the times when they lived in the same house, they obviously did not need to correspond. It's selfish of me to say that, but there you have it. The sacrifices they made, in terms of being together, was - in terms of history - worth it, because of the unprecedented correspondence they left behind.
I've read their letters more times than I can count. Every time I go back to them, I find something new. They are amazing, and if you haven't read them - all I can say is: find yourself a copy of The Book of Abigail and John and go to it. You won't be sorry.
It is a marriage that just breathes off the written page. Adams was a warm, temperamental, emotional guy. He poured his heart out to his wife. There was true intimacy between them. He is revealed, in all his wounded vanity, his pettiness, and also his humor, his bawdiness. It is very unlike Thomas Jefferson who - although human, of course, hahaha - was much more reserved and formal in his correspondence. Jefferson wasn't intimate with ANYONE the way Adams was intimate with his wife.
Again: we are lucky that we have these letters. How much we can learn from them!
Happy anniversary, John and Abigail!!
Excerpts from their letters below:
-- "Is there no way for two friendly souls to converse together, although the bodies are 400 miles off. Yes, by letter. But I want a better communication. I want to hear you think, or to see your thoughts. The conclusion of your letter makes my heart throb more than a cannonade would. You bid me burn your letters. But I must forget you first." -- John Adams to Abigail
-- Years subdue the ardor of passion but in lieu thereof friendship and affection deep-rooted subsists which defies the ravages of time, and whilst the vital flame exists. -- Abigail to John, 1793
-- Your letter is like laudanum. -- John to Abigail
-- You apologize for the length of your letters. They give me more entertainment than all the speeches I hear. There are more good thoughts, fine strokes, and mother wit in them than I hear in the whole week. -- John to Abigail
-- I am warm enough at night, but cannot sleep since I left you." -- John to Abigail
-- "There must be, however, more employment for the press in favor of the government than there has been, or the sour, angry, peevish, fretful, lying paragraphs which assail it on every side will make an impression on many weak and ignorant people." -- John in a letter to Abigail
-- "I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is grasping ... The great fish swallow up the small and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances. -- Abigail Adams, in a letter to John
-- "You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the half was not told me. Dignity with ease and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face." -- Abigail to John - on first meeting George Washington in 1774
-- The following is from the letter John wrote to Abigail on July 3, 1776 ... after the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 2 - look at the window he provides posterity - look at how openly he expresses himself - THANK YOU, John Adams!!:
"The Delay of this Declaration to this Time, has many great Advantages attending it. – The Hopes of Reconciliation, which were fondly entertained by Multitudes of honest and well meaning tho weak and mistaken People, have been gradually and at last totally extinguished. – Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their Judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act. – This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats, and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.
But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. – I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfire and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil, and Blood, and Treasure that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the Gloom, I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means, and that Posterity will triumph in that Day's Transaction, even though We should not rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
-- Here is a letter John wrote to Abigail on Sept. 30 1764 ... a month before their marriage:
"Oh my dear Girl, I thank Heaven that another Fortnight will restore you to me -- after so long a separation. My soul and Body have both been thrown into Disorder, by your Absence, and a Month of two more would make me the most insufferable Cynick in the World. I see nothing but Faults, Follies, Frailties and Defects in any Body, lately. People have lost all their good Properties or I my Justice or Discernment.
But you have always softened and warmed my Heart, shall restore my Benevolence as well as my Health and Tranquility of mind. You shall polish and refine my sentiments of Life and Manners, banish all the unsocial and ill natured Particles in my Composition, and form me to that happy Temper, that can reconcile a quick Discernment with a perfect Candour."
What he describes here would always be true. He found equilibrium when he was with her. He was able to talk about his problems, hash stuff out, and temper some of his responses. When he was President - she remained back up in Quincy for some time until finally he begged her to come down to Washington. He needed her there. His colleagues and cabinet members also thought: Dammit, get Abigail down here, NOW - because he is LOSING it without her.
-- Letter from Abigail to John - August 19, 1774 - John had left for Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress: "The great anxiety I feel for my Country, for you and for our family renders the day tedious, and the night unpleasant. The Rocks and quick Sands appear upon every Side. What course you can or will take is all wrapt in the Bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great Scope. Did ever any Kingdom or State regain their Liberty, when once it was invaded without Blood shed? I cannot think of it without horror.
Yet we are told that all the Misfortunes of Sparta were occasiond by their too great Sollicitude for present tranquility, and by an excessive love of peace they neglected the means of making it sure and lasting. They ought to have reflected, says Polibius, that as there is nothing more desirable, or advantages than peace, when founded in justice and honour, so there is nothing more shameful and at the same time more pernicious when attained by bad measures, and purchased at the price of liberty...
I want so much to hear from you. I long impatiently to have you upon the Stage of action. The first of September or the month of September may be of as much importance to Great Britan as the Ides of March were to Ceaser."
-- John to Abigail: Hartford May 2d 1775 - on his way down to Philadelphia. Adams is hoping that the disaster growing in Boston will bind the colonies together. That's eventually what happened, but at the time, he wasn't sure if it were a done deal.: "It is Arrogance and Presumption in human Sagacity to pretend to penetrate far into the Designs of Heaven. The most perfect Reverence and Resignation becomes us. But, I can't help depending upon this, that the present dreadfull Calamity of that beloved Town is intended to bind the Colonies together in more indissoluble Bands, and to animate their Exertions, at this great Crisis in the Affairs of Mankind. It has this Effect, in a most remarkable Degree, as far as I have yet seen or heard. It will plead, with all America, with more irresistible Perswasion, than Angells trumpet tongued.
In a Cause which interests the whole Globe, at a Time, when my Friends and Country are in such keen Distress, I am scarecely ever interrupted, in the least Degree, by Apprehensions for my Personal Safety. I am often concerned for you and our dear Babes...
In case of real Danger, of which you cannot fail to have previous Intimations, fly to the Woods with our Children."
Incredible, inspiring - what these people went through - for us, essentially. Abigail even wrote, at one point, "I hope future generations appreciate the sacrifices we made ..."
-- Abigail to John June 16 1775 - Listen to her practicality in the last paragraph. Love her. : "We now expect our Sea coasts ravaged. Perhaps, the very next Letter I write will inform you that I am driven away from our yet quiet cottage. Necessity will oblige Gage to take some desperate steps. We are told for Truth that he is now Eight thousand strong. We live in continual expectation of allarms.
Courage I know we have in abundance, conduct I hope we shall not want, but powder -- where shall we get a sufficient supply? I wish we may not fail there."
-- Abigail to John June 18 1775 - She writes to him the day after the Battle of Bunker Hill begins. She and John lost a dear friend in the Battle.
"The Day; perhaps the decisive Day is come on which the fate of America depends. My bursting Heart must find vent at my pen... Great is our Loss...
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Trust in him at all times, ye people pour out your hearts before him. God is a refuge for us. -- Charlstown is laid in ashes. The Battle began upon our intrenchments upon Bunkers Hill, a Saturday morning about 3 o'clock and has not ceased yet and tis now 3 o'clock Sabbeth afternoon...
I cannot compose myself to write any further at present."
-- John to Abigail July 7, 1775: "Your Description of the Distresses of the worthy Inhabitants of Boston, and the other Sea Port Towns, is enough to melt an Heart of Stone. Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it...
I am forever yours ---"
-- John to Abigail Oct. 19 1775: "When I shall come home I know not. We have so much to do, and it is so difficult to do it right, that We must learn Patience. Upon my Word I think, if ever I were to come here again, I must bring you with me. I could live here pleasantly if I had you, with me... What if We should? Let me please myself with the Thought however."
-- JOHN ADAMS, on being Vice President, in a letter to Abigail: "My country in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."
-- Abigail Adams wrote the following to John - months before the Declaration of Independence was in existence: "A people may let a King fall, yet still remain a people, but if a King let his people slip from him, he is no longer a King. And as this is most certainly our case, why not proclaim to the world in decisive terms of our own importance."
-- Letter of John Adams, to Abigail: "It has been the will of Heaven that we should be thrown into existence at a period when the greatest philosophers and lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live ... a period when a coincidence of circumstances without example has afforded to thirteen colonies at once an opportunity of beginning government anew from the foundation and building as they choose. How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children? How few have ever had anything more of choice in government than in climate?"
The Books: "Two-Character Play" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Two-Character Play
I'm nervous to even start discussing this play. It's too personal.
Let me just say this: this play has my 'dream role' in it. I have a couple of "dream roles" - and Miss Alma is one, from Williams' Summer and Smoke
I feel like no one likes this play - or GETS it - The only people who GET IT are me and my dear friend Ted - actor, and director. I'm sure there are more of us out there - but that's how it feels to us. We have dreamed of doing a production of this play for YEARS. Nobody cares about this play. It's like we're members of a small two-persona cult.
I will say this: I WILL do a production of this play someday. I WILL. Even if it's just a damn reading in my apartment and only 3 people see it. I don't care.
This play is SO IMPORTANT TO ME.
AHHHHHHHHHHHH HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!
I CAN'T SPEAK ABOUT IT IN ANY NORMAL WAY! IT MEANS TOO MUCH TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wonder if only actors would really 'get' it. It's about life in the theater. It reminds me of one of my favorite movies - Opening Night - by John Cassavetes. If you weren't "in the theatre" you might see that movie and think: Jesus, lady, what is the big deal??? That movie, and this play, describes one of the deepest parts of me ... a part of me that I hesitate even going into here on the blog. Because it's private. It's the artist part of me. The part of me that thinks that art is, hands down, THE MOST important thing on earth. It is THE MOST important endeavor that humans can participate in. It's the cave drawings that let us know what ancient cultures cared about, who they were. It's the crumbling statues of civilizations long gone. How MUCH we learn from those crumbling statues. It is the artists who pass along information ... about the culture from which they sprung ... it is the artists who let us know what concerned the people of their age ... This is what art means to me. This is what Tennessee Williams attempts to delve into in this play.
It is the story of a brother and sister - Felice and Clare. They are the only two characters in the play (duh. look at the title). They are aging actors ... Felice is the playwright, he is also an actor. Clare is the actress. Felice writes plays for the two of them.
But they are both so insane, so out of it, that they cannot keep an acting company going. Everyone keeps quitting on them. Nobody wants to be around them. For a while, they were able to keep afloat but now ... at the opening of this play ... everyone has abandoned them. It is just the two of them now. That's it. They are alone.
Felice and Clare grew up in the South ... and their father was an astrology expert ... and a wacko, frankly. He ended up shooting his wife (their mother) - and then shooting himself - in front of the two of them. They saw this happen.
So now... it is 40 years later ... and they have not moved past it at all. It is like it just happened yesterday - and every moment of their lives they have to re-enact the moment before ... the moment before the murder-suicide. Felice is working on his great masterpiece - a play called "The Two-Character Play" - where they act out what it was like for them in the aftermath of this thing that happened with their parents.
And yet there's a problem. Neither of them ever want to END the play. They act out the play ... avoiding the ending ... they know it's coming ... they know the gun is a prop and it's there ... ready for their father to pick up ... but both of them resist it like there's no tomorrow. So basically the essential problem of the play, the "two-charactre play" - is that they are unable to act it. They are unable to give over to the circumstances - they cannot let go - they can no longer "act".
The play begins with the two of them in a huge cavernous theatre - with remnants of another set there. It's not the set for THEIR play, but another set. The effect should be like Ozymandias ... a world gone away ... the two of them wandering through this destroyed world ... The play opens and Felice sits on this empty stage, working on 'the ending' of his great masterpiece. The play he can't finish. Because if he finishes it ... it means he actually has to accept that his father killed his mother and then killed himself ... He can't accept that alone. He needs Clare to accept it too. But Clare is a LOSER. She is a drug addict and an alcoholic, she staggers around wearing a tiara, acting like a grande dame of the theatre ... she is NO help to Felice, in terms of being in touch with reality.
Anyway. I could go on and on and maybe someday I should.
This is the most important play in the world to me. And nobody's ever even HEARD of it. It's one of my wee goals to DO this play and DO IT RIGHT.
Someday.
I WILL be Clare. I AM Clare!
Anyway. The play is psychedelic, and nuts, and stream-of-conscious ... and the two of them are completely delusional, so I'm just going to start at the beginning. I'll post a couple pages of their first scene.
And let me reiterate:
I MUST DO THIS PLAY. I MUST PLAY CLARE.
This is my declaration of intent.
EXCERPT FROM The Two-Character Play
[At curtain rise, Felice, the male star of an acting company on a tour which has been far more extensive than was expected, comes out of a shadowy area, hesitantly, as if fearful of the light. He has a quality of youth without being young. He is a playwright, as well as player, but you would be likely to take him for apoet with sensibilities perhaps a little deranged. His hair is almost shoulder length, he wears a great coat that hangs nearly to his ankles; it has a somewhat mangy fur collar. It is thrown over his shoulders. We see that he wears a bizarre shirt -- figured with astrological signs -- "period" trousers of soft-woven fabric in slightly varying shades of grey: the total effect is theatrical and a bit narcissan.
He draws a piano stool into the light, sits down to make notes for a monologue on a scratch pad]
FELICE. [slowly, reflectively, writing] To play with fear is to play with fire. [He looks up as if he were silently asking some question of enormous consequence] -- No, worse, much worse, than playing with fire. Fire has limits. It comes to a river or sea and there it stops, it comes to stone or bare earth that it can't leap across and there is stopped, having nothing more to consume. But fear --
[There is the sound of heavy door slamming off stage]
Fox? Is that you, Fox?
[The door slams again]
Impossible! [He runs his hands through his long hair] Fear! The fierce little man with the drum inside the rib cage. Yes, compared to fear grown to panic which has no -- what? -- limits, at least none short of consciousness blowing out and not reviving again, compared to that, no other emotion a living, feeling creature is capable of having, not even love or hate, is comparable in -- what? -- force? -- magnitude?
CLARE. [from off stage] Felice!
FELICE. -- There is the love and the -- substitutions, the surrogate attachments, doomed to brief duration, no matter how -- necessary ... -- You can't, you must never catch hold of and cry out to a person, loved or needed as deeply as if loved -- "Take care of me, I'm frightened, don't know the next step!" The one so loved and needed would hold you in contempt. In the heart of this person -- him-her -- is a little automatic sound apparatus, and it whispers, "Demand! Blackmail! Despicable! Reject it!"
CLARE. [in the wings] Felice!
FELICE. Clare! ... What I have to do now is keep her from getting too panicky to give a good performance ... but she's not easy to fool in spite of her -- condition.
[Clare appears in the Gothic door to the backstage area. There is a ghostly spill of light in the doorway and she has an apparitional look about her. She has, like her brother, a quality of youth without being young, and also like Felice an elegance, perhaps even arrogance, of bearing that seems related to a past theatre of actor-managers and imperious stars. But her condition when she appears is 'stoned' and her grand theatre manner will alternate with something startlingly coarse, the change occurring as abruptly as if fanother personality seized hold of her at these moments. Both of these aspects, the grand and the vulgar, disappear entirely from the part of Clare in "The Performance," when she will have a childlike simplicity, the pure and sad precociousness of a little girl.
A tiara, several stones missing, dangles from her fingers. She gives a slight startling laugh when she notices it, shrugs, and sets it crookedly on her somewhat dishelved and streaked blonde head. She stars to move forward, then gasps and loudly draws back]
Now what?
CLARE. [with an uncertain laugh] I thought I was --
FELICE. Apparitions this evening?
CLARE. No, it was just my -- shadow, it scared me but it was just my shadow, that's all. [She advances unsteadily from the doorway] -- A doctor once told me that you and I were the bravest people he knew. I said, "Why, that's absurd, my brother and I are terrified of our shadows." And he said, "Yes, I know that, and that's why I admire your courage so much ..."
[Felice starts a taped recording of a guitar, then faces downstage]
FELICE. Fear is a monster vast as night --
CLARE. And shadow casting as the sun.
FELICE. It is quicksilver, quick as light --
CLARE. It slides beneath the down-pressed thumb.
FELICE. Last night we locked it from the house.
CLARE. But caught a glimpse of it today.
FELICE. IN a corner, like a mouse.
CLARE. Gnawing all four walls away.
[Felice stops the tape]
CLARE. [straightening her tiara] Well, where are they, the ladies and gentlemen of the press, I'm ready for them if they are ready for me.
FELICE. Fortunately we --
CLARE. Hmmm?
FELICE. -- don't have to face the press before this evening's performance.
CLARE. No press reception? Artists' Managemtn guaranteed, Magnus personally promised, no opening without maximum press coverage on this fucking junket into the boondocks -- Jesus, you know I'm wonderful with the press ... [She laughs hoarsely]
FELICE. You really think so, do you, on all occasions?
CLARE. Know so.
FELICE. Even when you rage against fascism to a honking gaggle of -- crypto-fascists? ... With all sheets to the wind?
CLARE. Yes, sir, especially then. -- You're terrible with the press, you go on and on about "total theatre" and, oh, do they turn off you and onto me ... Cockroach! Huge! [She stamps her foot] Go! -- I read or heard somewhere that cockroaches are immune to radiation and so are destined to be the last organic survivors of the great "Amen" -- after some centuries there's going to be cockroach actors and actresses and cockroach playwrights and -- Artists' Management and -- audiences ... [She gestures toward the audience]
FELICE. Have you got an "upper"?
CLARE. One for emergency, but --
FELICE. I think you'd better drop it.
CLARE. I never drop and upper before the interval. What I need now is just coffee. [She is struggling against her confusion] -- Tell Franz to get me a carton of steaming hot black coffee. I'm very annoyed with Franz. He didn't call me ... [She laughs a little] -- Had you forbidden him to?
[There is no response]
So I'm left to while the long night away in an unheated dressing room in a state theatre of a state unknown -- I have to be told when a performance is canceled! -- or won't perform! [Her tiara slips off. She crouches unsteadily to retrieve it]
FELICE. The performance has not been canceled and I called you, Clare.
CLARE. After I'd called you.
FELICE. I have some new business to give you, so come here.
CLARE. I'll not move another step without some -- Oh, light, finally something almost related to daylight! But it's not coming through a window, it's coming through a --
FELICE. [overlapping] -- There's a small hole in the backstage wall. [He crosses to look out at the audience] They're coming in.
CLARE. Do they seem to be human?
FELICE. No -- Yes! It's nearly curtain time, Clare.
CLARE. Felice! Where is everybody? -- I said, "Where is everybody?"
FELICE. Everybody is somewhere, Clare.
CLARE. Get off your high horse, I've had it! -- Will you answer my question?
FELICE. No cancelation!
CLARE. No show!
FELICE. What then? -- In your contrary opinion?
CLARE. Restoration of -- order!
FELICE. What order?
CLARE. Rational, rational! [Her tiara falls off again]
FELICE. Stop wearing out your voice before the --
CLARE. Felice, I hear gunfire!
FELICE. I don't!
CLARE. [sadly] ... We never hear the same thing at the same time any more, caro ... [She notices a throne-chair, canopied wiht gilded wooden lions on its arms: on the canopy, heraldic devices in gold thread] Why, my God, old Aquitaine Eleanor's throne! I'm going to usurp it a moment -- [She mounts the two steps to the chair and sits down in a stately fashion, as if to hold court]
FELICE. [holding his head] I swear I wouldn't know my head was on me if it wasn't aching like hell.
CLARE. What are you mumbling?
FELICE. An attack of migraine?
CLARE. You'd better take your codeine.
FELICE. I've never found that narcotics improve a performance, if you'll forgive me for that heresy, Clare.
CLARE. -- Is this tour nearly over?
FELICE. It could end tonight if we don't give a brilliant performance, in spite of --
CLARE. Then it's over, caro, all over ... How long were we on the way here? All I remember is that it would be light and then it would be dark and then it would be light and then dark again, and mountains turned to prairies and back to mountains, and I tell you honestly I don't have any idea or suspicion of where we are now.
FELICE. After the performance, Clare, I'll answer any questions you can think of, but I'm not going to hold up thte curtain to answer a single one now!
CLARE. [rising] -- Exhaustion has -- symptoms ...
FELICE. So do alcohol and other depressants less discreetly mentioned.
CLARE. I've only had half a grain of --
FELICE. Washed down with liquor, the effect's synergistic. Dr. Forrester told you that you coul dhave heart arrest -- on stage!
CLARE. Not because of anything in a bottle or box but --
FELICE. [overlapping] What I know is I play with a freaked out, staggering --
CLARE. [overlapping] Well, play with yourself, you long-haired son of a mother!
FELICE. [overlapping] Your voice is thick, slurred, you've picked up -- vulgarisms of -- gutters!
CLARE. [overlapping] What you pick up is stopped at the desk of any decent hotel.
FELICE. [overlapping] Stop it! I can't take any more of your --
CLARE. [overlapping] Truth!
FELICE. [overlapping] Sick, sick -- aberrtations!
[There is a pause.]
CLARE. [like a child] When are we going home?
FELICE. -- Clare, our home is a theatre anywhere that there is one.
CLARE. If this theatre is home, I'd burn it down over my head to be warm a few minutes ... You know I'm so blind I can't go on without crawling unless you --
FELICE. Wait a minute, a moment, I'm still checking props -- bowl of soapwater but only one spool ...
[Clare encounters the Gothic wood figure of a Madonna]
CLARE. -- You know, after last season's disaster, and the one before last, we should have taken a long, meditative rest on some Riviera instead of touring these primitive God-knows-where places.
FELICE. You couldn't stop any more than I could, Clare.
CLARE. If you'd stopped with me, I could have.
FELICE. With no place to return to, we have to go on, you know.
CLARE. And on, till finally -- here. I was so exhausted that I blacked out in a broken-back chair.
FELICE. I'm glad you got some rest.
CLARE. [hoarsely] The mirrors were blind with dust -- my voice is going, my voice is practically gone!
FELICE. --Phone where? Piano top. No. Table. -- Yes, you never come on stage before an opening night performance without giving me the comforting bit of news that your voice is gone and ... [imitating her voice] "I'll have to perform in pantomime tonight."
CLARE. Strike a lucifer for me.
[He strikes a match and she comes unsteadily into the interior set: he gives her a despairing look]
FELICE. -- Why the tiara?
CLARE. [vaguely] It was just in my hand, so I put it on my head.
October 24, 2005
"All I was doing was trying to get home from work."
Rosa Parks has died at age 92. She was "surrounded by a small group of friends and family members."
Rest in peace, dear courageous lady.
Other bloggers' thoughts and reflections on the passing of Rosa Parks:
Embarrassing oblivion
A friend asked me recently, "So have you heard from Irish guy?"
I greeted this with a blank stare. Not only was my expression blank but my entire BRAIN was a blank. Irish guy?
I said, "Uhm ... and what Irish guy would that be?"
She gave me a blank look herself, like I had gone insane. "You know ... Irish guy!"
I sat there, the epitome of oblivion, racking my brains. Racking my brains. Then - in a flash it came to me. The Irish guy she was referring to. The Irish guy I had met my last time in Ireland. The Irish guy I wept over for FOUR DAYS when I returned to America. And when I say "I wept for four days", I MEAN that I wept for four straight days. I was Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give. I would cry myself to sleep. Then pass out. I would then wake up, stare out into my room for a millisecond, and it all would come flooding back, and I would BURST into tears again. I was that weeping girl that you see on the subway. It's funny now, but then? It was wrenching. I filled up half a composition notebook with stories about Irish guy. The Irish guy I met in Glendalough. The Irish guy I went NUTS for.
And now? My response to the question, "Have you heard from the Irish guy?" is to go completely blank and have no idea what she is talking about.
Startling. And kind of embarrassing too. We howled with laughter about it, because I had, of course, bombarded her with the stories about "Irish guy" when I returned from Ireland. She was there for me when I sobbed into the phone about it. (He hadn't emailed me for four days and I literally became a weeping dybbuk of truly shocking proportions. I thrashed about in bed, moaning up into the darkness. hahahaha I mean, it's ABSURD, looking back on it ... but while I was in it? I could. Not. Stop. Crying. COULD. NOT. Like I wrote in the post about this whole thing - Love is merely a madness... I went a little bit mad for a week. Irish Guy, by the way, handled the whole Sheila meltdown trans-Atlanticallly, with humor and grace. But before that? I went INSANE.) Maybe love is like a fever. And when the fever passes, and health returns - you can't remember ever being that sick. You look back on the time of the fever with wonderment. You block it out.
If you had told me, while I was tossing and turning through the wee smas, sobbing up into the night with great wrenching sobs that came up out of my feckin' SOLAR PLEXUS, if you had told me: "Uhm ... Sheila ... 10 months from now, when someone asks you if you've heard from the Irish guy ... you will not know who she is talking about ..." I flat out would not have believed you.
I bet, too, that by next year I won't remember his name.
This has nothing to do with his worth as a human being. He was GREAT and my time with him - at Glendalough - is something I will never ever forget. EVER.
It's just that ...
The fogs of time are already obliterating him ...
Weird.
It's kind of embarrassing. But dammit, I can't hold onto EVERY thing. I've already got the triumvirate to deal with ... I guess there isn't room for one more?
Sorry, Irish guy. You were really awesome.
The Books: "Small Craft Warnings" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is Small Craft Warnings
Another one of his plays from the early 70s. I think it's his best title as well. There's something about it that is just so evocative, so symbolically perfect once you read the play ... Small Craft Warnings. Those words are said in the play only once, and in a real throwaway moment ... it's not a big pointed-out thing ... but the more you think about it, the more levels you see to that title. This is a play about those who live on the utter fringe of society - those who have either checked out of life, because they are alcoholics - or those who couldn't adjust to normal life, whether clean and sober or not. All of them: small craft. It's just a perfect title.
It takes place in a bar on the southern California coast. The bar is right on the beach. It's a dive. Maybe it's right off a highway or something - because occasionally, drifters come in - and the owner has a real problem with people who have nowhere to go, and show up at the bar expecting handouts.
The play is not meant to be totally realistic. Each character (and there are only 7, I think) has a moment when all the action around him or her stops - a spotlight falls on them - and they have a monologue spoken directly to the audience. So we see who they are, socially - we see their interactions - we judge who they are, of course, on how they behave - as we judge all people - but then, in a moment of revelation, each one gets to describe what is REALLY going on - and not only that - but what it is LIKE to be them. There's no real plot, only a bare bones of one.
The people in the bar are: Monk, the owner, who lives upstairs. Doc, a raging alcoholic who was kicked out of the medical profession for doing surgeries while drunk. He still practices, though - only now he has to do it in secret. He's a pathetic character. There's Leona and Bill - a "couple" - but really only out of convenience. Leona is a beautician who lives in a trailer - and Bill, a hustler, who pretty much has sex with people for money, has been shacking up with her. Bill is on the verge of losing his looks - he's not able to really sell himself anymore - he's another pathetic character. He is all about his penis. He is obsessed with his penis - Leona describes his relationship to his genitals as "his religion" to someone else during the play - Bill basically expects that everyone else will be obsessed with his penis, too. He is a rapidly fading hustler. Pathetic. He's the male equivalent of the older female floozy. The woman who is a bit too old to be wearing bright red lipstick, and a bit too old to be out flirting with strangers at 3 in the morning. It's okay when you're 22, 23, but ... 50? It starts to get ikky. That's Bill. Leona, during the course of the play, breaks up with Bill - he's a free-loader. Then there's Violet - a slut, basically. But a slut, Tennessee Williams style. She pretty much can't stop crying throughout the entire play. Leona, at one point, refers to her as a 'water plant' - also 'an amorphous creature' - unable to ever put down a root. Violet lives out of her suitcase, and rents a room above an amusement arcade - She hangs out at the arcade and picks up sailors. She's a very very very weird woman. Men walk by her and she literally can't stop herself - she reaches out and grabs their crotch. It's a compulsion - she can't stop herself. It drives Leona insane, especially because Violet knows no boundaries and is always going after Bill's crotch as well. Violet is a MESS. All she does is drink, and cry. She never eats. Then there's Steve - the short-order cook. Another pathetic dude who thinks that he is Violet's boyfriend. It embarrasses him, though - that he is at a point in his life when VIOLET is the best he can do for himself. These people are always in the bar.
During the course of the play, two strangers come in: Quentin and Bobby. Quentin is an older gay man (but Tennessee says that he should not give off an "effeminate" vibe, but more of a "sexless" vibe) - who has picked up the young gorgeous Bobby, who was riding his bike along the highway. Bobby is from Iowa, I believe - and is the only "innocent" one in the play. Quentin is such a jaded old queen - that any real human feeling or real human warmth is not possible for him. He is the epitome of "over it". He has been there, done that, in a COSMIC sense. (I know people like that. They are colossal bores.) But there he is with Bobby, a fresh-faced free-spirited kid - Quentin has picked Bobby up for the express purpose of having sex with him. Bobby is kind of laid-back, and complies. But Quentin has this whole weird older-gay-man psychodrama going on ... and Bobby eventually realizes this and gets the hell away from him. He doesn't want to become a sad old queen. That's really his only option, and he doesn't want to be anything like Quentin. He doesn't even want to be "gay" because of the entire WORLD that inevitably comes along with that label - a world that he sees as sad, lonely, and pathetic.
Meanwhile: Leona once had a brother - a beloved brother - who died of TB. This younger brother was gay - and the second Bobby walks into the place, Leona is stunned at the resemblance. She becomes attached to Bobby. She follows him around. She asks him to live in her trailer with her. She wants to be "a gay man's moll". Bobby resists - he is young - he is not yet at the end of the road, like everybody else in the bar. You only live with Leona in her trailer when you are at the end of the road. Leona basically never recovered from losing her brother. In her mind, he was all that was good and pure and perfect -and when he died, he took the possibility of goodness with him.
I'll post a bit from an exchange between Quentin and Leona - which then leads into Quentin's inner-monologue moment. Just so you can see how the structure of the play works.
And man. What a title. Small Craft Warnings.
EXCERPT FROM Small Craft Warnings
LEONA. Name?
QUENTIN. Quentin ... Miss?
LEONA. Leona. Dawson. And he's?
QUENTIN. Bobby.
LEONA. Bobby, come back to the party. I want you back here, love. Resume your seat. [Resting a hand on the boy's stiff shoulder] You're a literary gent with the suede shit-kickers and a brass-button blazer and a ... [flicks his scarf]
BILL. [leering from bar] Ask him if he's got change for a three-dollar bill.
QUENTIN. Yes, if you have the bill.
LEONA. Ignore the peasants. I don't think that monkey-faced mother will serve us that bourbon ... I never left his bar without leaving a dollar tip on the table, and this is what thanks I get for it, just because it's the death-day of my brother and I showed a little human emotion about it. Now, what's the trouble between you and this kid from Iowa where the tall corn blows, I mean grows?
QUENTIN. I only go for straight trade. But this boy ... look at him! Would you guess he was gay? ... I didn't, I thought he was straight. But I had an unpleasant surprise when he responded to my hand on his knee by putting his hand on mine.
BOBBY. I don't dig the word "gay". To me they mean nothing, those words.
LEONA. Aw, you've got plenty of time to learn the meanings of words and cynical attitudes. Why he's got eyes like my brother's! Have you paid him?
QUENTIN. For disappointment?
LEONA. Don't be a mean-minded mother. Give him a five, a ten. If you picked up what you don't want, it's your mistake and pay for it.
BOBBY. I don't want money from him. I thought he was nice, I liked him.
LEONA. Your mistake, too. [She turns to Quentin] Gimme your wallet.
[Quentin hands her his wallet]
BOBBY. He's disappointed. I don't want anything from him.
LEONA. Don't be a fool. Fools aren't respected, you fool. [She removes a bill from the wallet and stuffs it in the pocket of Bobby's shirt. Bobby starts to return it] Okay, I'll hold it for you till he cuts out of here to make another pickup and remind me to give it back to you when he goes. He wants to pay you, it's part of his sad routine. It's like doing penance ... penitence.
BILL. [loudly] Monk, where's the head?
MONK. None of that here, Bill.
QUENTIN. [with a twist of smile toward Bill] Pity.
LEONA. [turning to Quentin] Do you like being alone except for vicious pickups? The kind you go for? If I understood you correctly? ... Christ, you have terrible eyes, the expression in them! What are you looking at?
QUENTIN. The fish over the bar ...
LEONA. You're changing the subject.
QUENTIN. No, I'm not, not a bit ... Now suppose some night I woke up and I found that fantastic fish ... what is it?
LEONA. Sailfish. What about it?
QUENTIN. Suppose I woke up some midnight and found that peculiar thing swimming around in my bedroom? Up the Canyon?
LEONA. In a fish bowl? Aquarium?
QUENTIN. No, not in a bowl or aquarium: free, unconfined.
LEONA. Impossible.
QUENTIN. Granted. It's impossible. But suppose it occurred just the same, as so many impossible things do occur just the same. Suppose I woke up and discovered it there, swimming round and round in the darkness over my bed, with a faint phosphorescent glow in its big goggle-eyes and its gorgeously iridescent fins and tail making a swishing sound as it circles aorund and about and around and bout right over my head in my bed.
LEONA. Hah!
QUENTIN. Now suppose this admittedly preposterous thing did occur. What do you think I would say?
LEONA. To the fish?
QUENTIN. To myself and the fish.
LEONA. ... I'll be raped by an ape if I can imagine what a person would say in a situation like that.
QUENTIN. I'll tell you what I would say, I would say, "Oh, well ..."
LEONA. ... Just "Oh, well"?
QUENTIN. "Oh, well!" is all I would say before I went back to sleep.
LEONA. What I would say is: "Get the hell out of here, you goggle-eyed monstrosity of a mother," that's what I'd say to it.
MONK. Leona, let's lighten it up.
QUENTIN. You don't see the point of my story?
LEONA. Nope.
QUENTIN. [to Bobby] Do you see the point of my story? [Bobby shakes his head] Well, maybe I don't either.
LEONA. Then why'd you tell it?
QUENTIN. What is the thing that you mustn't lose in this world before you're ready to leave it? The one thing you mustn't lose ever?
LEONA. ... Love?
[Quentin laughs]
BOBBY. Interest?
QUENTIN. That's closer, much closer. Yes, that's almost it. The word that I had in mind is surprise, though. The capacity for being surprised. I've lost the capacity for being surprised, so completely lost it, that if I woke up in my bedroom late some night and saw that fantastic fish swimming right over my head I wouldn't be really surprised.
LEONA. You mean you'd think you were dreaming?
QUENTIN. Oh, no. Wide awake. But not really surprised. [The special spotlight concentrates on him. The bar dims, but an eerie glow should remain on the sailfish over the bar] There's a coarseness, a deadening coarseness, in the experience of most homosexuals. The experiences are quick, and hard, and brutal, and the pattern of them is particularly unchanging. Their act of love is like the jabbing of a hypodermic needle to which they're addicted but which is more and more empty of real interest and surprise. This lack of variation and surprise in their ... "love life" ... [He smiles harshly] ... spreads into other areas of ... "sensibility" ... Yes, once, quite a long while ago, I was often startled by the sense of being alive, of being myself, living! Present on earth, in the flesh, yes, for some completely mysterious reason, a single, separate, intensely conscious being, myself: living! ... Whenever I would feel this ... feeling, this ... shock of ... what? ... self-realization? ... I would be stunned, I would be thunderstruck by it. And by the existence of everything that exists, I'd be lighning-struck with astonishment ... it would do more than astound me, it would give me a feeling of panic, this sudden sense of ... I suppose it was like an epileptic seizure, except that I didn't fall to the ground in convusions; no, I'd be more apt to try to lose myself in a crowd on a street until the seizure was finished ... They were dangerous seizures. One time I drove into the mountains and smashed the car into a tree, and I'm not sure if I meant to do that, or ... In a forest, you'll sometimes see a giant tree, several hundred years old, that's scarred, that's blazed by lightning, and the wound is almost obscured by the obstinately still living and growing bark. I wonder if such a tree has learned the same lesson that I have, not to feel astonishment any more but just go on, continue for two or three hundred years more? ... This boy I picked up tonight, the kid from the tall corn country, still has the capacity for being surprised by what he sees, hears and feels in this kingdom of earth. All the way up the canyon to my place, he kept saying, I can't believe it, I'm here, I've come to the Pacific, the world's greatest ocean! ... as if nobody, Magellan or Balboa or even the Indians had ever seen it before him, yes, like he'd discovered this ocean, the largest on earth, and so now, because he'd found it himself, it existed, now, for the first time, never before ... And this excitement of his reminded me of my having lost the ability to say: "My God!" instead of just: "Oh, well." I've asked all the questions, shouted them at deaf heaven, till I was hoarse in the voice box and blue in the face, and gotten no answer, not the whisper of one, nothing at all, you see, but the sun coming up each morning and going down that night, and the galaxies of the night sky trooping onstage like chorines, robot chorines: one, two, three, kick, one, two, three, kick ... Repeat any question too often and what do you get, what's given? ... A big carved rock by a desert, a ... monumental symbol of wornout passion and bewilderment in you, a stupid stone paralyzed sphinx that knows no answers that you don't but comes on like the oracle of all time, waiting on her belly to give out some outcries of universal wisom, and if she woke up some midnight at the edge of the desert and saw that fantastic fish swimming over her head ... y'know what she'd say, too? She'd say: "Oh, well" ... and go back to sleep for another five thousand years. [He turns back; and the bar is relighted. He returns to the table.]
October 23, 2005
The Books: "Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
This play was produced on Broadway in 1971, I think - early 1970s. Estelle Parsons was the star, she played Myrtle. There are seven scenes in the play - each one describing another level of "descent" for the main character of Myrtle. Again, any playwright who wants to learn about how to craft a play would do well to just study the works of Tennessee Williams. He just knows how to do it. He sets up the plot, he presents the characters, and then he just keeps turning up the fire. It's all about keeping the pressure on, keeping the stakes high - every scene is between two people, battling for their lives. Or battling for their perspective on life to be paramount, to win. And to lose? Is unthinkable. These are all elements of great playwriting, in my opinion.
The plot here is this:
Myrtle, a blowsy ex-show girl with a loud obnoxious voice, has just married Lot - a man she has known for only 24 hours. Lot takes her home to his family place - which is now being run by Chicken, his half-brother who is suspected of being half-black. In the world Williams is describing - rural Mississippi in 1960 - this makes a huge difference in Chicken's life. He is an outcast. Women spit on him when he tries to pick them up. Yadda yadda. But anyway. That's a side issue. Lot takes Myrtle home to his family house - only he hasn't warned her that Chicken lives there, that Chicken is determined to inherit the house when Lot dies - which will probably be soon. Lot only has one working lung, he is dying of TB, and should kick the bucket at any moment. Myrtle has been informed of NONE of this. She thinks her new husband just needs a rest. She doesn't know anything about a half-brother with a claim on the family house.
More character stuff:
Lot's mother recently died. And Lot is a frail boy with a big ol' mother complex. He takes Myrtle into his house, and all he does is talk about his mother - how she washed the chandelier, how she knew about style and what to wear, etc etc. Myrtle is turned off by this grown man's attachment to his dead mother. She assures him that she is NOT his mother, but his wife. And she will do the best she can to be the lady of the house, but she will NOT be his mother.
Lot is obviously gay. On their wedding night - just a couple hours earlier - he was impotent with Myrtle. Myrtle tries to reassure him that it's okay, no big deal, they will try again ... but Lot knows better. At the end of the play - Lot, in a ritualistic manner, slowly puts on all of his mother's clothes while Myrtle is out of the room. He puts on her dress, her pumps, her little hat ... he puts on lipstick ... he picks up her old-lady purse with the mother-of-pearl clasp ... and then basically falls down on the floor, and dies. A strange image ... a strange ritual ... Lot's only love of his life was his mother.
But through the rest of the play, all Lot does is sit in a rocking chair, smoking cigarettes (using a long ivory cigarette holder) and smiling off into the distanct with a "Mona Lisa smile". Myrtle is loud, brash, kind of common - immediately starts washing her underwear in the sink, and hanging up the undies to dry around the room - all stuff that kind of insults Lot's very fey and delicate view of the world, and aesthetics, and how women should be. All women should be just like his mother - a woman who wore little hats with veils, and had purses with mother-of-pearl clasps, etc. But he married Myrtle - an earthly ex-show girl with a loud harsh voice.
You kind of fall in love with Myrtle, even though she is loud and a bit oblivious. She says at the end of the play that she has a "warm nature" and that is true. She wants to take care of Lot. She informs him that the "deepest chord" in her is the "maternal streak" she has. You wouldn't think that would be the case, but it is obviously true. She just wants to feed him right, and keep him warm, and make sure he gets better. She has no idea that he is about to die.
Chicken is the polar opposite of Lot. It is the two sides of masculinity - that Williams was always exploring. Lot isn't just "gay". He is a fairy. I don't mean to be insulting - but that's what Williams wrote. He is an ineffectual, impotent, cross-dressing, mother-dominated fairy. You kind of despise him, actually. Not for those reasons, really - but because he is dishonest, and cold. You understand why he is ... the entire play is Lot sitting in a chair, contemplating the open door of death. He knows that's where he must go, and he just needs to finish up his affairs in the "kingdom of earth" before he takes that first step. But I admit: There are some parts with Lot where I want to slap his face, slap the smirk off his face, and tell him to be a man. This is what Williams wants us to feel. We have sympathy for him - but - no. It's more that we PITY him. We pity anyone who is at death's door. Our sympathy, and our compassion, ALL go with Myrtle. We see the world through her eyes - and we see that a woman like her, a hot-blooded woman, needs a "real man" - even though she is afraid of the prospect, because she is afraid of losing control. The course of the play, the "seven descents of Myrtle" is her eventually relinquishing control. And it is THIS which allows her to be a "real woman". This is another of Williams' themes - that he explored to the fullest in Summer and Smoke. The image of femininity that Lot reveres in the memory of his dead mother is one of prissy refinement. A love of nice things, of beautiful accessories, of propriety. Tennessee Williams always saw that this was DEATH to a woman expressing her true nature - he saw it in his own domineering prissy mother, and he saw it in the downfall of his sister Rose - a warm-blooded warm-natured woman who had passionate feelings, and ended up being institutionalized and lobotomized because she had no legitimate outlet. You either become a priss or you become a whore. Williams saw that as the unfair choices women had to make - and was constantly trying to explore ways that women could integrate, could have BOTH and still be respectable members of society. In the world he grew up in, that was not a possibility. He saw that as a tragedy. All of this could be seen as an extended metaphor for his homosexuality - and sure, that's part of it. But I prefer to not just see his plays as biographical explorations. I see them as works of art, with themes he found compelling and important. He loved women, and he loved men - big gruff rough men. He understood the helplessness and attraction women felt when confronted by a certain kind of man - the kind of man that cannot be dominated (the Stanley Kowalskis, the John Buchanans) - wild rough masculine men. In order to succumb to such a man - women, who were raised to be little prisses - had to abandon their senses of pride and propriety. That is what Stella had to do in order to accept her marriage to Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire
But in the end, we also realize that Lot had yet another secret up his sleeve - and that he's actually a kind of hero. We don't have to LIKE our heroes personally - but it certainly should be recognized that Lot IS a hero.
Lot's brother Chicken is an outcast. He lives and works at the family farm - which has been left to him (because it was understood that Lot was not long for this earth). The family farm is all he has. Chicken lives like an animal. He is a big rough gruff working man - who wipes his dirty hands on his clothes - who eats with his mouth open - who has put nudie pictures all over the kitchen - and who despises his fairy brother. When Lot walks in the door with his brand-new wife, Chicken is merciless about it. He knows Lot isn't a 'real man' - but what Chicken fears is that because Lot is now married - his claim on the house could be challenged if Lot dies. Maybe Myrtle will now become "the lady of the house" - and he would be kicked to the curb. So Chicken begins a course of intimidation and humiliation - to cut Myrtle down to size, to not let her get any funny ideas.
He is an uncivilized animal.
And yet ... naturally ... he is also a powerfully sexual magnetic guy ... and Myrtle, living with her impotent TB-infected transvestite husband ... is drawn to him. Yet she is also disgusted by him, and his filthy manners.
BUT - and here is Williams' genius - Myrtle and Chicken are actually, when you get right down to it, kindred spirits. They are from the same world. Lot is already moving into the land of the spiritual, he is not of this earth. But Myrtle and Chicken are undeniably of this earth. Myrtle tries to maintain her dignity, tries to resist Chicken - but Chicken, from the first time he laid eyes on her, knows that she is "like him". He goes after her. She is terrified of him.
Eventually, of course, she succumbs. While Lot sits upstairs, smoking, smiling off into the distance.
Now here is where Lot is a hero: He knew all along that he could never be a proper husband to Myrtle. He knew he was impotent, and he knew he did not have long for this earth.
But somewhere he also knew: that his hated half-brother Chicken needed a mate. So on some level - he has brought Myrtle back - as a present to his outcast brother.
Chicken (who you start out DESPISING and by the end of the play - you actually really like him) has a great monologue at the very end, where he explains himself:
I'll tell you how I look at life in my life, or in any man's life. There's nothing in the world, in the whole kingdom of earth, that can compare with one thing, and that one thing is what's able to happen between a man and a woman, just that thing, nothing more, is perfect. The rest is crap, all of the rest is almost nothing but crap. Just that one thing's good, and if you never had nothing else but that, no property, no success in the world, but still had that, why, then I say this life would still be worth something, and you beteter believe it. Yes, you could come home to a house like a shack, in blazing heat, and look for water and find not a drop to drink, and look for food and find not a single crumb of it. But if on the bed you seen you a woman waiting, maybe not very young or good-looking even, and she looked up at you and said to you, "Daddy, I want it," why, then I say you got a square deal out of life, and whoever don't think so has just not had the right woman. That's how I look at it, that's how I see it now, in this kingdom of earth.
So Lot does die, but not before he presents Chicken with a mate. A woman who eventually gets over her fear of Chicken and realizes her immense attraction to him.
It's a wonderful play. Oh, and just to add to the stakes: It is hurricane season, and the town is being flooded as the course of the play goes on. Everyone has evacuated - except for the 3 characters in the play. The play ends with Chicken and Myrtle running to climb up on the roof, because the levee has broken and the flood is now coming. Lot lies dead on the parlor floor, dressed in his mother's clothes.
In the world of Tennessee Williams, this is a happy ending.
I'll excerpt from the opening scene - when Lot and Myrtle arrive at the house. Chicken has locked himself in the kitchen. Myrtle doesn't even know of his existence yet.
EXCERPT FROM Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
MYRTLE. -- Well, this is an elegant parlor, an elegant little parlor.
LOT. My mother did all she could to give some quality to the place, but my father -- [deep breath] -- He was a man that liked to sit in a kitchen and wouldn't let Mother build a dining room onto the house. When he died, howling like a wild beast, Mother was free to transform this place or tear it down to the ground, but life was cruel to Mother. It gave her no time to carry out her plans. Outlived my father by shortly less than one year.
MYRTLE. -- Sad ...
LOT. -- Yes. -- Tragic.
MYRTLE. -- Hmmmm. A parlor with gold chairs is -- like a dream!
LOT. The chandelier is crystal but the pendants are dusty, they've got to be all taken down, one by one, dipped in hot soapy water. Then rinsed in a bowl of clear water, then dried off with soft tissue paper and hung back up. [Chicken grins savagely in the kitchen] Mother and I used to do it, she never allowed the colored girl to touch a thing in this parlor or even come in it. Beautiful things can only be safely cared for by people that know and love them. The day before she died, do you know what she did? [Myrtle shakes her head, staring curiously at her exotic young husband] -- She removed each crystal pendant from the little brass hook it hung on, passed it down to me, to be soaped and rinsed and dried, and then replaced on its little brass hook.
MYRTLE. Baby, you got a mother complex, as they call it, and I'm gonna make you forget it. You hear me?
LOT. You;ve got a voice that no one in a room with you could help but hear when you speak.
MYRTLE. That's awright. When I speak I want to be heard. Now, baby, this mother complex, I'm gonna get that out of you, Lot, cause I'm not just your wife, I'm also your mother, and I'm not daid, I'm livin'. A-course I don't mean I'm gonna replace her in your heart, but -- [She draws up one of the little gilded chairs close to the one on which he is seated]
LOT. Don't sit on Mother's gold chairs. They break too easy.
MYRTLE. You are sittin' on one.
LOT. I'm lighter than you.
MYRTLE. Well! I stand corrected! -- Mr. Skin and Bones! -- Do I have to stay on my feet in this parlor or can I sit on the sofa?
LOT. Yes, sit on the sofa. [Slight pause. His head droops forward and his violet-lidded eyes close] -- The little animal has to make a home of its own ...
MYRTLE. I didn't catch the remark.
LOT. -- What?
MYRTLE. You said something about an animal.
LOT. I'm too tired to know what I'm saying.
MYRTLE. Are you too tired to hear what I'm saying?
LOT. What are you saying?
MYRTLE. I'm saying that all my electric equipment is sitting out there under the leaky roof of your car.
LOT. -- Oh. -- Yes ....
MYRTLE. Didn' you tell me you had niggers here working fo' you?
LOT. There's a house girl named Clara and her unmarried husband.
MYRTLE. How do you call this unmarried couple of niggers when you want something done?
LOT. You -- [deep breath] -- have to step outside and ring a bell for 'em.
MYRTLE. Where is this bell you ring for 'em?
LOT. The bell is -- [deep breath] -- in the kitchen.
MYRTLE. Well, kitchen, here I come! [During the above, Chicken has opened the kitchen door to hear the talk in the parlor. Now he closes it and locks it silently] The unmarried nigra couple're gonna step pretty lively fo' Mrs. Lot Ravenstock. [She charges to the kitchen door behind which Chicken is lurking. Lot sways and falls off the chair, staggers to the sofa. Myrtle finds the door locked, rattles the knob and calls out --] Who is in there? Who is in this kitchen? -- Somebody's in there! [She presses her ear to the door. Chicken breathes loudly as if he'd been fighting. Myrtle rattles the knob again and a key falls to the floor inside the ktichen. Myrtle is startled and subdued. She returns to the parlor as if a little frightened] -- If that's a dawg in there, why don't it bark?
LOT. -- Dawg?
MYRTLE. That kitchen door was locked or it was stuck mighty tight. And I swear I heard something breathing right behind it, like a big dawg was in there. Will you wake up an' lissen t'what I tell you?
LOT. [in a hoarse whisper] I thought he was hiding in there.
MYRTLE. Who? What?
LOT. -- Chicken.
MYRTLE. Chicken? Hiding? A chicken, you say, is hiding in the kitchen? What are you tawkin about? -- No chicken breathes that loud that I ever met!
LOT. Myrtle, when I say Chicken I don't mean the kind of chicken with feathers. I mean my half brother Chicken who runs this place for me.
MYRTLE. I'll be switched! This is a piece of news!
LOT. Keep your voice down, please. I got some things to tell you about the situation on this place.
MYRTLE. -- Maybe you should've told me about it before?
LOT. Yes, maybe. But anyhow ... now ...
MYRTLE. You are making me nervous. You mean your brother is hiding in that kitchen while we are sitting in here half frozen?
LOT. Cain't you talk quiet?
MYRTLE. Not when I am upset. If he is in there, why don't you call him out?
LOT. He'll come out after awhile. The sight of a woman walking in this house must have give him a little something to think about in that kitchen, is what I figure.
MYRTLE. Well, all I can say is -- "Well!"
LOT. -- That's what I figure.
MYRTLE. And that's why you're shaking all over.
LOT. I'm shaking because I am cold with no fire anywhere in this house except in the kitchen. And it's locked up. With him in it.
MYRTLE. This makes about as much sense as a Chinese crossword puzzle to me. Can you explain why this half brother of yours would be hiding in the kitchen when we come home, pretending not to be here or -- God knows what?!
LOT. Everything can't be explained to you all at once here, Myrtle. Will you try to remember something? Will you just try to get something in your haid?
MYRTLE. What?
LOT. This place is mine. You are my wife. You are now the lady of the house. Is that understood?
MYRTLE. Then why --?
LOT. Sh! Will you? Please? Keep your voice down to something under a shout?
MYRTLE. But --
LOT. Will you? Will you PLEASE?
MYRTLE. Awright. [sniffs] Now I got the shivers, too. -- If he's in the kitchen, why don't he come out?
LOT. He won't come out till he's ready. Be patient. Do you like sherry wine?
MYRTLE. I don't think I ever had any.
LOT. Some of Miss Lottie's sherry's still left in this ole cutglass decanter.
MYRTLE. [absently] Aw. Good. Good ...
LOT. [in his thin, breathless voice] This is Bohemian glass, these here wineglasses, are.
MYRTLE. -- What d'ya know ...
LOT. Ev'ry afternoon about this time, Miss Lottie would take a glass of this Spanish sherry with a raw egg in it to keep her strength up. It would always revive her, even when she was down to eighty-two pounds, her afternoon sherry and eggs, she called it her sherry flip, would pick her right up and she'd be bright an' lively.
MYRTLE. -- Imagine me thinkin' that that was a dawg in there. Yeah, I thought that huffing I heard in there was a big old dawg in the kitchen, locked up in there, I didn't -- ha ha! -- suspect that it was -- ha ha! -- your -- brother ... [He begins to cough; it shakes him like a dead leaf, the cough, and he leans panting against the wall staring at Myrtle with pale stricken eyes. She gathers him close in her arms ...] Why, baby! Precious love! -- That's an awful cough! -- I wonder if you could be comin' down with th' flu?
[Lot coughs -- stops. Chicken's frozen attitude by the door was released by the sound of Lot's paroxysm of coughing. He crosses to a cupboard, takes out a jug and takes a long, long drink]
LOT. -- A place with no woman sure does all go to pieces.
MYRTLE. Well, now they's a woman here.
LOT. That's right: we'll make some changes.
MYRTLE. You bet we will. And bright and early tomorrow, the first thing we do after breakfast, we'll, we'll, we'll -- we'll get out that ole stepladder and wash those whatch-ma-call-ems and make them shine like the chandelier in Leow's State on Main Street in Memphis! And we will -- oh, we'll do a whole lot of things as soon as this weather clears up. And soon it's going to be summer. You know that, sugar? It's going to be summer real soon and --
LOT. Yeah, it'll be summer, the afternoons'll be long and hot and yellow, the damp'll dry out of the walls and --
MYRTLE. I'M GONNA MAKE YOU REST! And build you up. You hear me? I'm gonna make you recover your lost strength, baby -- you and me are gonna have us a baby, and if it's a boy we're going to call it Lot, and if it's a girl we're gonna name her Lottie.
LOT. [his eyes falling shut] If beds could talk what stories they could tell ...
MYRTLE. Baby, last night don't count. You was too nervous. I'll tell you something I know that might surprise you. A man is twice as nervous as a woman, and you are twice as nervous as a man.
LOT. Do you mean I'm not a man?
MYRTLE. I mean you're superior to a man. [She hugs him to her and sings --]
"Cuddle up a little closer, baby mine.
Cuddle up and say you'll be my clinging vine!"
Mmmm, Sugar! Last night you touched the deepest chord in my nature, which is the maternal chord in me. Do you know, do you realize what a beautiful thing you are?
LOT. I realize that I resemble my mother.
MYRTLE. To me you resemble just you. The first, the most, the only refined man in my life. Skin, eyes, hair any girl would be jealous of. A mouth like a flower. Kiss me! [He submits to a kiss] Mmmm, I could kiss you forever!
LOT. I wouldn't be able to breathe.
MYRTLE. You're refined and elegant as this parlor.
LOT. I want you to promise me something. If Chicken asks you, and when he gets drunk he will ask you --
MYRTLE. Chicken will ask me nothing that I won't answer in aces and spades.
LOT. There's something you mustn't answer if he asks you.
MYRTLE. What thing is that, baby?
LOT. If I'm a --
MYRTLE. If you're a what?
LOT. Strong lover. -- Tell him I satisfy you.
MYRTLE. Oh, now, baby, there'd be no lie about that. Y' know, they's a lot more to this sex business than two people jumpin' up an' down on each other's eggs. You know that, or you ought to.
LOT. I'm going to satisfy you when I get my strength back, and meanwhile -- make out like I do. Completely. Already. I mean when talking to Chicken.
MYRTLE. Aw, Chicken again, a man that huffs like a dawg an' hides in the kitchen, do you think I'd talk about us to him, about our love with each other? All I want from that man is that he opens the kitchen door so I can go in there and grab hold of that bell and ring the clapper off it for that girl that works here, that Clara. I'll make her step, all right, and step quick, too. The first thing she's gotta do is haul in all that electric equipment in the car, before it gits damp an' rusts on me.
LOT. Myrtle, I told you that when there's danger of flood, the colored help on a place cut out for high ground. Till the danger's over.
MYRTLE. Then what're we doin' on low ground instid of high ground?
LOT. To protect our property from possible flood damage. This is your house, your home. Aren't you concerned with protecting it for us?
MYRTLE. My house, my home! I never suspected, how much havin' property of my own could mean to me will all of a sudden I have some. Home, home, land, a little dream of a parlor, elegant as you, refined as you are.
[During this talk, Chicken has his ear pressed to the kitchen door, fiercely muttering phrases from the talk]
LOT. -- Chicken calls me a sissy.
MYRTLE. Well, he better not call you no sissy when Myrtle's around. I'll fix his wagon up good, I mean I WILL!
LOT. SHH! -- Myrtle, you've got an uncontrollable voice. He's listening to us. -- You think you could handle Chicken?
MYRTLE. Want to make a bet on it? I've yet to meet the man that I couldn't handle.
LOT. You ain't met Chicken.
MYRTLE. I'm gonna meet him! -- Whin he comes outa that kitchen ...
LOT. He will, soon, now. It's gettin' dark outside, and I heard him set the jug down on the kitchen table.
MYRTLE. Awright, I'm ready for him, anytime he comes out, I'm ready to meet him, and one thing I want to git straight. Who's going to be running this place, me or this Chicken?
LOT. This place is mine. You're my wife.
MYRTLE. That's what I wanted to know. Then I'm in charge here.
LOT. You're taking the place of Miss Lottie. She ran the house and you'll run it.
MYRTLE. Good. Then that's understood.
LOT. It better be understood. Cause Chicken is not my brother, we're just half brothers and the place went to me. It's mine.
MYRTLE. Did you have diff'rent daddies?
LOT. No, we had diff'rent mothers. Very diff'rent mothers! [Chicken snorts like a wild horse] He's coming out now! [Chicken emerges slowly from the kitchen and starts up the dark narrow hall]
MYRTLE. Let's go meet him.
LOT. No. Wait here. Sit right. And remember that you're the lady of the house.
[Chicken pauses, listening in the dim hall]
MYRTLE. It don't seem natural to me. [Lot removes an ivory cigarette holder from a coat pocket, puts a cigarette in it and lights it. His hands are shaky. Myrtle says nervously:] -- A parlor with gold chairs is like a dream!
LOT. -- A woman in the house is like a dream.
October 22, 2005
The Books: "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
Produced in 1963 - this haunting play shows the direction Tennessee Williams began to take as he got older. He moved further and further away from traditional drama, traditional plots - and began to experiment with other theatrical elements. I love his stuff in the 60s - even as it gets more and more phantasmagoric, and fantastic. The writing is still solid. But Tennessee Williams was not the kind of writer to just keep trying to repeat himself. He did not become a caricature of his earlier self. So refreshing. I admire his journey as an artist so much - because of many things, but mainly because of his insistence on growth. He INSISTED on it. It was not easy. He was not always applauded for it. His plays in the 60s and 70s were greeted with baffled silence broken up by occasional questions along the lines of: "Why don't you write another Streetcar?" To him the answer was simple. He was younger when he wrote Streetcar, he had different concerns, different energy ... and it was natural that that energy would change as the years went on.
Anyway. I've always admired him because he didn't sit back on his laurels. He said once: "I write. Sometimes I like what I write. That is enough." Incredible.
So this play. Tallulah Bankhead starred as Mrs. Goforth (uhm - you can see, just by her name, that he is moving into more obvious symbolic territory). And Tab Hunter starred as Christopher Flanders (another symbolic name - since this character, whenever and wherever he shows up, is usually a harbinger of impending death).
Mrs. Goforth is an old rich widow (married 4 times) - a former Ziegfeld girl - a woman with a legendary past (in her own mind, anyway) - kind of a famous party girl, once upon a time. She is now dying (only she will not admit it) - and she lives on top of a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean. She has her entire house wired with microphones, because she is dictating her memoirs - into the thin air - and wants to make sure that whatever room she is in, whatever time she wakes up, the microphones will be there to pick up her detailed exquisite memories. She has a fantasy that her book will be better than Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Basically: deep down she knows she's dying, and she is terrified. Her memoir MUST be complete before she goes. But none of this is admitted to herself. She just staggers around her mansion, in her old Ziegfeld costumes and jewelry, shouting out her memories into thin air - to be transcribed later - she pops codeine, she coughs until she bleeds, and she maintains a fantasy that she suffers from bursitis.
Great character. Paranoid, inappropriate, an aging floozy who stalks around her bedroom naked - demanding that whoever is in there with her (a servant, whoever) compliment her body. She's a nut. But of course, you have tremendous sympathy for her - because of how Williams writes her. She's running from her demons. Williams had a deep abiding love for anyone tormented by demons - because he was as well.
Then one random day - a drifter beatnik poet climbs up the mountainside to see her. He arrives unannounced, uninvited. This is Christopher Flanders. He's kind of a creepy fellow. He has a nose for death. Especially old dying rich women. He seems to show up right before they go ... sometimes becoming their last lover ... and then many of them (of course) re-adjust their wills, leaving everything to him ... causing enormous family brou-hahas, etc. Chris is not well-liked, obviously. He shows up and people start to get worried. He has a nose for death.
The journey of this play (only 6 scenes long) is Mrs. Goforth's gradual realization that she is dying - and her gradual acceptance of that fact. She could not accept it without the presence of Chris. He is a patient (kind of creepy) presence ... who refuses to leave until his "job" is done.
Williams was probably really depressed when he wrote this play. It's very creepy. A real end-of-the-road play.
I'll print an excerpt from one of the long scenes between Mrs. Goforth and Chris. He is starving, he's been walking through Italy on foot, and Mrs. Goforth is pretty much refusing to feed him - unless he plays along with her game. She is trying to figure out what he's about, and he's trying to figure out what she's about.
EXCERPT FROM The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
CHRIS. How does it feel, Mrs. Goforth, to be a legend in your own lifetime?
MRS. GOFORTH. [pleased] If that's a serious question, I'll give it a serious answer. A legend in my own lifetime, yes, I reckon I am. Well, I had certain advantages, endowments to start with: a face people naturally noticed and a figure that was not just sensational, but very durable, too. Some women my age, or younger, 've got breasts that look like a couple of mules hangin' their heads over the top rail of a fence. [touches her bosom] This is natural, not padded, not supported, and nothing's ever been lifted. Hell, I was born between a swamp and the wrong side of the tracks in One Street, Georgia, but not even that could stop me in my tracks, wrong side or right side, or no side. Hit show-bix at fifteen when a carnival show, I mean the manager of it, saw me and dug me on that one street in One Street, Georgia. I was billed at the Dixie Doxy, was just supposed to move my anatomy, but was smart enough to keep my tongue moving, too, and the verbal comments I made on my anatomical motions while in motion were a public delight. So I breezed through show-biz like a tornado, rising from one-week "gigs" in the sticks to star billing in the Follies while still in m'teens, ho ho ... and I was still in my teens when I married Harlan Goforth, a marriage into the Social Register and Dun and Bradstreet's, both. Was barely out of my teens when I became his widow. Scared to make out a will, he died intestate, so everything went to me.
CHRIS. Marvelous. Amazing.
MRS. GOFORTH. That's right. All my life was and still is, except here, lately I'm a little run down, like a race horse that's been entered in just one race too many, even for me ... How do you feel about being a legend in your own lifetime? Huh?
CHRIS. Oh, me! I don't feel like a -- mythological -- griffin with gold wings, but this strong fresh wind's reviving me like I'd had a -- terrific breakfast!
MRS. GOFORTH. Griffin, what's a grffin?
CHRIS. A force in life that's almost stronger than death. [He springs up and turns to the booming sea] The sea's full of white race horses today. May I -- would you mind if I -- suggested a program for us? A picnic on the beach, rest on the rocks in the sun till nearly sundown, then we'd come back up here revitalized for whatever the lovely evening has to offer?
MRS. GOFORTH. What do you think it would have to offer?
CHRIS. Dinner on the terrace with the sea still booming? How is that for a program? Say, with music, a couple of tarantella dancers brought up from the village, and --
[Rudy appears on the terrace]
RUDY. Mrs. Goforth, I've taken care of that for you. They're going -- on the way out.
MRS. GOFORTH. No trouble?
RUDY. Oh yeah, sure, they want to see the Signora.
MRS. GOFORTH. No, no, no. I won't see them! [But "they" are appearing upstage: the members of her kitchen staff, who have been discharged] Here they come, hold them back! [She staggers up, turns her back on them. They cry out to her in Italian. Rudy rushes upstage and herds them violently off. A wave crashes.]
CHRIS. [quietly] Boom. What was their --?
MRS. GOFORTH. What?
CHRIS. -- transgression?
MRS. GOFORTH. They'd been robbing me blind. He caught them at it. We had -- an inventory and discovered that -- they'd been robbing me blind like I was -- blind ...
CHRIS. [his back to her, speaking as if to himself] When a wave breaks down there, it looks as delicate as a white lace fan, but I bet if it hit you, it would knock you against the rocks and break your bones ...
MRS. GOFORTH. What?
CHRIS. I said it's so wonderful here, after yesterday in Naples ...
MRS. GOFORTH. What was wrong with yesterday in Naples? Were you picked up for vagrancy in Naples?
CHRIS. I wasn't picked up for anything in Naples.
MRS. GOFORTH. That's worse than being picked up for vagrancy, baby.
[She chuckles, he grins agreeably]
CHRIS. Mrs. Goforth, I'm going to tell you the truth.
MRS. GOFORTH. The truth is all you could tell me that I'd believe -- so tell me the truth, Mr. Flanders.
CHRIS. I'll go back a little further than Naples, Mrs. Goforth. I'd drawn out all my savings to come over here this summer on a Jugoslavian freighter than landed at Genoa.
MRS. GOFORTH. You're leading up to financial troubles, aren't you?
CHRIS. Not so much that as -- something harder, much harder, for me to deal with, a state of -- Well, let me put it this way. Everybody has a sense of reality of some kind or other, some kind of sense of things being real or not real in his, his -- particular -- world ...
MRS. GOFORTH. I know what you mean. Go on.
CHRIS. I've lost it lately, this sense of reality in my particular world. We don't all live in the same world, you know, Mrs. Goforth. Oh, we all see the same things -- sea, sun, sky, human faces and inhuman faces, but -- they're different in here! [touches his forehead] And one person's sense of reality can be another person's sense of -- well, of madness! -- chaos! -- and, and --
MRS. GOFORTH. Go on. I'm still with you.
CHRIS. And when one person's sense of reality, or loss of some of reality, disturbs another one's sense of reality -- I know how mixed up this --
MRS. GOFORTH. Not a bit, clear as a bell, so keep on, y'haven't lost my attention.
CHRIS. Being able to talk: wonderful! When one person's sense of reality seems too -- disturbingly different from another person's, uh --
MRS. GOFORTH. Sense of reality. Continue.
CHRIS. Well, he's -- avoided! Not welcome! It's -- that simple ... And -- yesterday in Naples, I suddenly realized that I was in that situation. [He turns to the booming sea and says "Boom".] I found out that I was now a -- leper!
MRS. GOFORTH. Leopard?
CHRIS. Leper! -- Boom! [She ignores the "Boom".] Yes, you see, they hang labels, tags of false identification on people that disturb their own sense of reality too much, like the bells that used to be hung on the necks of -- lepers! -- Boom! The lady I'd come over to visit, who lives in a castle on the top of Ravello, sent me a wire to Naples. I walked to Naples on foot to pick it up, and picked it up at American Express in naples, and what it said was: "Not yet, not ready for you, dear -- Angel of -- Death ..."
[She regards him a bit uncomfortably. He smiles very warmly at her. She relaxes]
MRS. GOFORTH. Ridiculous!
CHRIS. Yes, and inconvenient since I'd --
MRS. GOFORTH. Invested all your remaining capital in this standing invitation that had stopped standing, collapsed, ho, ho, ho!
CHRIS. -- Yes ...
MRS. GOFORTH. Who's this bitch at Ravello?
CHRIS. I'd rather forget her name, now.
MRS. GOFORTH. But you see you young people, well, you reasonably young people who used to be younger, you get in the habit of being sort of -- professional house guests, and as you get a bit older, and who doesn't get a bit older, some more than just a bit older, you're still professional house guests, and --
CHRIS. Yes?
MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, you have charm, all of you, you still have your good looks and charm and you all do something creative, such as writing but not writing, and painting but not painting, and that goes fine for a time but --
CHRIS. You've made your point, Mrs. Goforth.
MRS. GOFORTH. No, not yet, quite yet. Your case is special. You've gotten a special nickname, "dear Angel of Death". And it's lucky for you I couldn't be less superstitious, deliberately walk under ladders, think a black cat's as lucky as a white cat, am only against the human cats of this world, of which there's no small number. So! What're you looking around for, Angel of Death, as they call you?
CHRIS. I would love to have some buttered toast with my coffee.
MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, no toast with my coffee, buttered, unbuttered -- no toast. For breakfast I have only black coffee. Anything solid takes the edge off my energy, and it's the time after breakfast when I do my best work.
CHRIS. What are you working on?
MRS. GOFORTH. My memories, my memoirs, night and day, to meet the publisher's deadlines. The pressure has brought on a sort of nervous breakdown, and I'm enjoying every minute of it because it has taken the form of making me absolutely frank and honest wiht people, comparatively. But now much more so. No more pretenses at all ...
CHRIS. It's wonderful.
MRS. GOFORTH. What?
CHRIS. That you and I have happened to meet at just this time, because I have reached the same point in my life as you say you have come to in yours.
MRS. GOFORTH. [suspiciously] What? Which? Point?
CHRIS. The point you mentioned, the point of no more pretenses.
MRS. GOFORTH. You say you've reached that point, too? [Chris nods, smiling warmly] Hmmmm. [The sound is skeptical and so is the look she gives him]
CHRIS. It's true, I have, Mrs. Goforth.
MRS. GOFORTH. I don't mean to call you a liar or even a phantasist, but I don't see how you could afford to arrive at the point of no more pretense, Chris.
CHRIS. I probably couldn't afford to arrive at that point any more than I could afford to travel this summer.
MRS. GOFORTH. Hmmm. I see. But you traveled?
CHRIS. Yes, mostly on foot, Mrs. Goforth -- since -- Genoa.
MRS. GOFORTH. [rising and walking near the balustrade] One of the reasons I took this place here is because it's supposed to be inaccessible except from the sea. Between here and the highway there's just a goatpath, hardly possible to get down, and I thought impossible to get up. Hmmm. Yes. Well. But you got yourself up.
CHRIS. [pouring the last of the coffee] I had to. I had to get up it.
MRS. GOFORTH. [turning back to him] Let's play the truth game. Do you know the truth game?
CHRIS. Yes, but I don't like it. I've always made excuses to get out of it when it's played at partied because I think the truth is too delicate and, well, dangerous a thing to be played with at parties, Mrs. Goforth. It's nitroglycerin, it has to be handled with the -- the carefulest care, or somebody hurts somebody and gets hurt back and the party turns to a -- devastating explosion, people crying, people screaming, people even fighting and throwing things at each other. I've seen it happen, and there's no truth in it -- that's true.
MRS. GOFORTH. But you say you've reached the same point that I have this summer, the point of no more pretenses, so why can't we play the truth game together, huh, Chris?
CHRIS. Why don't we put it off till -- say, after -- supper?
MRS. GOFORTH. You play it better on a full stomach, do you?
CHRIS. Yes, you have to be physically fortified for it as well as -- morally fortified for it.
MRS. GOFORTH. And you'd like to stay for supper? You don't have any other engagement for supper?
CHRIS. I have no engagements of any kind now, Mrs. Goforth.
MRS. GOFORTH. Well, I don't know about supper. Sometimes I don't want any.
CHRIS. How about after --?
MRS. GOFORTH. -- What?
CHRIS. After lunch?
MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, sometimes I don't have lunch either.
CHRIS. You're not on a healthful regime. You know, the spirit has to live in the body, and so you have to keep the body in a state of repair because it's the home of the -- spirit ...
MRS. GOFORTH. Hmmmm. Are you talking about your spirit and body, or mine?
CHRIS. Yours.
MRS. GOFORTH. Our long-ago meeting between us, and you expect me to believe you care more about my spirit and body than your own, Mr. Flanders?
CHRIS. Mrs. Goforth, some people, some people, most of them, get panicky when they're not cared for by somebody, but I get panicky when I have no one to care for.
MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, you seem to be setting yourself up as a -- as a saint of some kind ...
CHRIS. All I said is I need somebody to care for.
October 21, 2005
Why I changed my entire personality when I met The Rock
Well, The Rock has just opened in the movie Doom and the reviews are universally dreadful. Not only they are dreadful - but the time wasted watching the movie seems to be making the reviewers ANGRY. Example.
As long-time readers know, I had "a moment" with The Rock which was forced upon me by my dear friend and partner in crime Mitchell. I did not WANT to "have a moment" with The Rock ... but I was FORCED to. Just want to make that clear.
Story below. It's a re-post. It bears repeating.
A couple years ago, The Rock hosted Saturday Night Live. If I recall correctly, AC/DC was the musical guest.
I know a couple of the people in the cast of SNL in a rather peripheral way from Chicago. We all share very good friends, from the old days of improv comedy (ahem. Mainly M..) I used to watch Tina Fey (now the head writer) perform improv, years ago, in a teeny raucous club in Wrigleyville, with all of my friends.
Mitchell is very close to one of the cast members - and she got us tickets to the show.
Mitchell and I did not sit in the regular audience. We were ushered into the plush VIP room at the back of the theatre. This room has a glass window looking out on the stage, tons of TV screens, and a table of drinks for all. It's like being in the important-people boxes in baseball stadiums. So Mitchell and I were crammed in back there, having some cocktails, hanging out with the other VIPs, having a great time.
The show was fun - and The Rock was actually quite good. Willing to laugh at himself, poke fun at his image, all that.
Afterwards, we met up with our friend in the cavernous backstage hallway, and she took us down the street to the cast party.
The SNL cast party is a rotating affair, held in a different venue every week. Fans somehow get wind of where the party will be, and line the block, waiting for the cast to arrive. It's invitation-only, obviously. I had my first kind of red-carpet experience, as Mitchell and I walked through the gauntlet with our friend, throngs on either side, as she signed autographs, people yelled out to her, and frantically scanned OUR faces to see if we were important.
As you can imagine, it was a riot. We had a blast.
There was a huge dinner served. I can't help it, but I have to name-drop. It's not my fault. It's just that they all were there.
I talked with Molly Shannon for a bit. I LOVED her. She was very sweet, very neurotic, concerned that I was having a good time and felt welcome. We also had a couple of friends in common. "Have you heard from so-and-so recently?" she asked me. Nice woman.
Colin Quinn's manners were repulsive. Can't stand that guy. I don't care if he reads this.
I fell so in love with Will Ferrell that even though we also have friends in common and it would have been natural to say, "Hi ... I am actually friends with Window Boy ... yadda yadda ..." I couldn't say one word to him. He seemed so nice, so relaxed - chatting with Mitchell, laughing, normal - but I feared I would blurt out, "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!", like Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona, and make some huge embarrassing scene at the Saturday Night Live cast party.
Lorne Michaels and all the big-wigs sat over at the important table, wining and dining their guest of the evening The Rock.
I could not have cared LESS about The Rock.
I was too busy quivering in my stilettos about Will Ferrell. And taking Colin Quinn's sleazy arm off my shoulders.
Mitchell and I were two peas in a pod. We star-watched, but we also just had a blast with each other. It was great.
Finally - Mitchell told me that he works with two 17-year-old kids, both of whom LOOOOOOOOOVE The Rock, and he had promised them that he would try to get The Rock's autograph. However - in the scenario in which we now found ourselves - it was quite a daunting proposal. The Rock was sitting next to Lorne Freakin' Michaels, eating shrimp, sipping a glass of wine ... and it was clearly a crowd where everybody there (except for Mitchell and I) was famous. Asking for autographs was kind of not cool. No, not KIND OF "not cool" - but BLATANTLY un-cool. When you're the only non-famous person at a party of celebrities - you really need to keep that autograph-seeker and celebrity-watcher energy in check. It's just not cool.
But there was the FACT of the two 17 year olds. So Mitchell somehow roped me into going over to the VIP table and asking for The Rock's autograph.
It took 20 minutes of convincing for me to agree to do this. I'm not a big autograph-hunter, anyway. I respect the privacy of the stars I see on the street, or that I encounter at the Actors Studio ... I saw Gena Rowlands once on the street - I wouldn't ask her for her autograph. It's not my style. I don't judge people who DO ask for autographs. Just saying it is not my style.
Mitchell was determined to get this man's autograph, though, and he justified to me why I had to be the one to ask: "It won't work if I do it! It'll be weird - cause I'm a guy - and he'll feel weird about it ... Just go over there and be all girlie, and flirty and he'll LOVE it - he won't mind giving you an autograph at all!"
My natural temperament is the opposite of girlie and flirty. I am also (all evidence to the contrary) very shy. I resisted this with all my might.
"No! I don't want to! I'm too embarrassed!"
(If it had been Ewan McGregor, I would have had no problem. I would have made for DAMN sure that I somehow "bumped into him" at the party. But - to debase myself for The Rock???)
Finally.... what the hell ... Mitchell's pleading got through. How could I disappoint those two 17 year old kids? How excited they would be!!!! I would be a hero!
So.
I basically decided to just not act like myself at ALL, in order to get through the experience unscathed. I put on a completely different personality, in order to deflect my embarrassment. I could not go over there, and just be Sheila, because then I would ONLY be aware of my embarrassment, and my shyness, and my not wanting to intrude on his privacy. The man was having a nice dinner after a hard night's work! And he was sitting next to Lorne Michaels! The only way I could survive would be to put on another personality, the kind of personality that doesn't care about intruding on someone's privacy, the kind of personality that is OBLIVIOUS to embarrassment.
It was a small acting exercise I gave myself: Do not, under any circumstances, be yourself in the next 5 minutes.
My personality-transformation occurred on my stroll over to The Rock's table.
All intellect and cerebral worrying disappeared during that walk. All shyness and ANY capability of embarrassment dissolved. My walk changed. It became a sultry un-worried stalk through the tables. I didn't care. I was carefree, nonchalant, unintimdated! I even adjusted my blouse so that the cleavage would be more apparent. This is a shameful admission. But it is true. The girl I became on the walk towards The Rock would not hide her assets. I secretly hoped that perhaps he might notice the cleavage and focus on that - as opposed to his annoyance that I was interrupting him at a VIP party.
I cannot defend myself. My behavior is indefensible. I know. But I'm just telling it to you like it happened: I whored myself for an autograph from The Rock. For two kids I had never met.
It's terrible.
Stridently ignoring my own personality, I sultrily leaned down next to him, interrupting his chat with Mr. Michaels. What? Me interrupt someone? I would NEVER do that. Ahhhh .... but I was not ME, remember? But man. I so should not have been there. I cannot even tell you how much this was NOT the kind of party where you do stuff like this. But I remained oblivious. I gave him a flirty oblivious smile. He glanced at me blankly, like: "What the hell do you want?"
I said, in a whispery giggly voice completely not my own: "Oh God, I'm so excited to meet you ... I'm friends with some one in the cast..." (I hoped that that would convince him that the cleavage leaning in on him actually BELONGED at this party.) I went on, needing to get it over with as quickly as possible: "You were SO GREAT tonight." (I blush to report that I actually GUSHED. I GUSHED about The Rock's performance.)
He nodded, calmly. Like a dignified Scorpion king. "Thank you very much."
"My two young cousins promised me I would ask for your autograph. Would you mind???" (Yes, I spoke those exclamation marks. My voice remained breathy. I probably sounded asthmatic, but I was going for sexy)
Truth be told: He kind of didn't want to give me the autograph - it made him uncomfortable in that setting. Lorne Michaels glanced up at me, with this blank look on his face, like: "Who are you? Are you supposed to be in here?"
But I remained oblivious (on the outside) to how much I was disturbing him - and it was that very oblivion which made him give in. My plan worked. If I had actually been acting like myself - well, first of all, I never would have gone over there at all. And second of all, if I had been acting like myself, and had seen the look of discomfort on his face, I would have immediately said, "Oh, I'm sorry to disturb you - Never mind!!" But because I put on this "I am oblivious" act, he had no choice but to sign an autograph for me, just to get rid of me.
Once he was done with me, I raced back to my table, completely abandoning my slow sultry walk. I basically SCURRIED back to Mitchell, and gave the autograph to him. Mitchell had been watching the entire thing from across the room, just HOWLING at my debasement. I sat back down and proceeded to writhe in embarrassment at the entire affair. I did an imitation of the blank expression on Lorne Michaels' face. Mitchell made me "do" my voice, and my laugh, 20 times. "Do it again. Do it again!" We talked about it obsessively.
I kept saying: "Oh God, Lorne Michaels had NO idea who I was ... And the guy SO did not want to give me the autograph!! ... I re-arranged my CLEAVAGE to get an autograph from THE ROCK - HOW AWFUL!!"
Hopefully the autograph made those two kids happy for about 2.5 seconds.
Sci-fi movies
Got this from Dan. I agree that the list seems quite incomplete. Go check out his additions. I was especially thrilled to see that he had added Muppets from Space ... awesome!
Okay. So I guess you have to bold the movies you've seen.
And then wait for ... something magical to happen, I suppose.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)
Re-cut
Okay. This is a minute observation - and I have no idea what it means - but I have a guess - and it's something I noticed, so here goes.
About 2 weeks ago, I noticed ads on television for a new film called Stay. It is obviously a thriller of some kind - the ads showed an increasingly desperate Ryan Gosling (he also probably should be on my list of future Oscar winners - I should do a post about him some day - that kid can ACT) - but there's Ryan Gosling trying to convince people that his father is dead, but he's alive, and yadda yadda. At one point, in the ad, there's a close-up on Ryan Gosling's eyes - and slowly - the screen image changes - to a close-up of another man's eyes. They looked vaguely familiar. I thought that maybe they were Peter Sarsgaard's eyes.
Whatever. No biggie.
A new thriller starring Ryan Gosling. Cool!
Then - about a week ago - the ads changed. Suddenly - we see that it is Ewan feckin' McGregor's eyes - and suddenly - in the new ads - Ryan Gosling does NOT appear to be the star - but Ewan McGregor appears to be the star. It wasn't Peter Sarsgaard's eyes (however you spell his name - sorry) - it was McGregor's. I should have known! You could see that little mole that McGregor has on his forehead ... Now it is obvious whose eyes it is in that close-up.
ANYHOO. Suddenly, my interest level in this film ratcheted up 100%. Nothing against Ryan Gosling - even though I have thought he was fantastic in pretty much anything he's in (anyone see Murder by Numbers? Honestly. His performance in that - as a cocky disaffected Columbine-esque high school student - is star-making. Truly. That was my first moment of awareness of Ruan Gosling, and I was blown away) - however: he is not enough of a draw yet to get me to go see a film. He's still building his career, he's still a newbie in many ways. Maybe not to the Tiger Beat crowd ... perhaps that's his main demographic at this point? Not sure.
But I just found it interesting how they completely re-cut the ads - after a week of saturating the landscape with the Ryan Gosling version - to make it now seem like a Ewan McGregor vehicle - which is FAR more compelling to me (and probably to many others like me).
I always wonder about that - they are obviously testing the waters - seeing who their audience is, who will be interested in this movie. Okay, so let's float out the Ryan Gosling version ...
I wonder if "support" or "buzz" or "excitement" for that version was tepid ... I know it was for me. It looked like a standard thriller to me, starring an up-and-coming Hollywood star - nothing to write home about. But Ewan McGregor? I'll go see him in anything. I would sit in an ugly flourescent-lit office and watch him read the telephone book outloud. He's a HUGE star.
But ... and here's my theory ... Hollywood doesn't quiiiiiiite know what it has in Ewan McGregor. This has always been the case - and the fact that "Hollywood" would float out a version of the ad NOT featuring Ewan McGregor is proof of that, to me. I'm trying to imagine the same thing happening to another star of his caliber and visibility - and having a hard time picturing it. Would they ever create a version of an ad for a Johnny Depp movie and NOT feature Johnny Depp? In my view, Ewan McGregor is one of the best actors working today ... but "Hollywood", or the money-making people in Hollywood - don't trust his level of stardom - don't quiiiiite trust his appeal. They don't "get it". They don't "get" that there are those of us out here (and I am so not alone) who will go to see Ewan McGregor do anything - in the same way that others will go see Johnny Depp do anything. McGregor has that kind of loyal fan base. But ... he's not easy to pin down, or control ... Gosling obviously has a team of people working for him - he's everywhere - he's got publicists, a marketing team, a powerful agent ... but sorry - you cannot force stardom. It must be developed. It will happen for Gosling, I am sure of it - he's on that path - but he's not there yet.
The ads just were not compelling when it looked like a "Gosling vehicle".
But now - and I've read a couple of reviews where it is obvious that the main thrust of the film is actually the journey of the McGregor character - they have switched ploys, and have finally caved in to the obvious fact that McGregor is a ginormous star, and there are those of us out there - NOT the Tiger Beat crowd - who love him, and will go see him do anything.
I still don't think that McGregor really gets the props he deserves (to quote Eminem there). Yes, he gets millions of dollars per film. Go Ewan! He's in the Star Wars movies. Blah blah blah
But really? Hollywood is a bit baffled by him. They cannot control him. He became a star without their help ... he became a star with Trainspotting ... and Hollywood always finds that kind of stardom a weeeeeeee bit baffling - not to mention unforgivable.
North Country
David Edelstein shows yet again why he is one of my favorite film critics with this hilarious review of North Country - which he actually likes in spots. But the WAY he writes ....
In interviews, Theron and her director, Niki Caro, have said that the original screenplay (by Michael Seitzman) was a little too black-and-white, and that they tried to introduce "shades of gray." I can only infer that said shades are moments when some of the men—after hissing the c-word and pushing over a Port-A-Potty with one of Josey's co-workers (Michelle Monaghan) in it, who emerges screaming and sobbing and covered in liquid shit—are shown, for a second or two, with a look of shame. But those looks are fleeting. There is, after all, harassment to be done.
And:
North Country is powerful and then some. I came out shaking, dabbing at my eyes, and vowing never again to write the c-word in shit on the walls of a women's room.
hahahahahahaha
I do like his observation on Charlize Theron's acting. I've always been kind of a fan of hers. He says:
Theron remains a fascinating actress, with those soft blue eyes and cheeks and that hard, unfussy delivery. She sobs a lot in this picture, but the tears never seem forced—they almost erupt from her eyes in spite of her resolve, with flashes of anger in their wake.
But I think I'll take a pass on this film.
Edelstein writes:
Josey's plight would make Oliver Twist say, "What a rough life."
hahahahahahaha
Diary Friday
More from my junior year of high school - the year I will always remember as 'the year of the unrequited crush on David'. Oh man. The crush. It sounds so benign - "I have a crush on someone!" ... but ... it's called a CRUSH for a reason. Ouch!!! In this one, I sound like I am having a full-blown manic episode. I was laughing out loud re-reading parts of it - especially how being kicked out of study hall for being too noisy is labeled, by me, as "tragedy stuck". Oh, for a time when my entire social life revolved around study hall! I had forgotten a lot of this, but it all came rushing back when I read it this morning.
(Here's the Diary Friday archive)
FEBRUARY
This has been one of those topsy-turvy days. As I went to French, I actually felt my heart pounding and throbbing away. Dave was walking aways behind him. I couldn't even seem to think -- or plan -- My mind was not functioning! I was the first one in French. Naturally David was next. He came in, walked past me and said, "Bon Jour!" My heart pounded. HE SPOKE TO ME FIRST! [Sheila, unless I'm not mistaken, you just said that you were the only other one in the room ... so ... you know .... the fact that "he spoke to you first" might not have quiiiiiiiite the meaning you think it has ... I'm just sayin'. Actually, I think I MIGHT be trying to say that I didn't have to initiate the conversation - HE was the one who 'spoke first' - meaning he had an interest in talking with me. I think that was where that came from. ] So I said, "Bon jour!" back - my mind was whirling as I thought desperately of something to say! I don't want him to think I hate him or I'm snobby because half the time he talks to me, I just sit there and smile. I'm such a dopey dope!! [Okay. That right there just made me want to cry, thinking back on it. The self-hatred. Okay, so onward]
Then Dave said something else to me but I couldn't hear it! It was something about "So there's a meeting today ..." But I didn't hear what of! AND STUPID ME -- I didn't ask!
At that moment the room started filling up. J. saw us talking -- if you can call it that, I mean. I swear, I said one thing to him. What is my problem? [You don't have a problem. You are shy and you are madly in love with him and so you get tongue-tied. Stop giving yourself such a hard time, please.] It is encouraging that he spoke first but come ON, Sheila! He's gonna give up if he doesn't get anything back!
Well, Mr. Hodge didn't come in today so Mr. Woj sent us to study -- YIPPEE! I was thinking: Yay! An entire period free with Davide!
I waited for J. and Kate outside French. Dave strolled by me. J. came out and practically screeched at me: "Go, Sheila! Run!" I've got such great friends. J. and I were laughing about that in study. J. giggled. "You make me sound like this tyrant!"
Well -- I did run, but then I stopped and just walked along behind him.
Then tragedy struck.
Mrs. Wood (the bitchy library overseer -- talk about tyrants!!) kicked J., Kate and I out, saying we had been too noisy during study. Ridiculous! Mr. Crothers' 4th period class was in there and NICK and ERIC both were in there. [These 2 guys were the crushes my friends J. and Kate had... so it seemed as though everything was convening perfectly .... until Mrs. Wood kicked us out, that is. We were always getting kicked out of study hall.] It was so weird -- I can't even talk about it. I was standing behind tall Dave -- oh DAVE!!!!!! [My entire junior year journal is filled with random outbursts like that, random SHRIEKS of his name.] -- in line to sign in. Eric and Nick are walking by the three of us, swooping along to find materials and here's stupid Mrs. Wood telling us to leave! We pleaded with her, but she was such a bitch. We walked down the stairs, all muttering stuff like "Fuck YOU, bitch" about it, so frustrated.
We went down to the caf where it was so noisy and crowded. Impossible to study. I was sitting down with my back to the door. And about 15 minutes later, J. hissed: "Don't look now--" "What? ... WHAT? ... HIM?" J. nodded and I sighed. "Okay! I'm happy!"
After a while, Kate and J. went back up to the library to "look for quotes" - hoping that that bitch would let them back in - [hahahahahahahaha We were so mad!!] - so I was sitting all alone trying to look as though I were doing my Math. I sat sideways, of course. I had a perfect view of him. I could look straight down the caf - right at him - his head bent over his books - leaning on his elbow with his hand on the back of his neck. Throughout the entire period he didn't look up. He's so diligent. (Sigh) Obviously I do not have the same effect on him as he does on me.
When the bell rang, I sprang up and practically tore down the caf so I could walk near him. Turned out, I was walking right diagonally behind him, and I admit - I just stared stared STARED at him. His hair and skin and eyes and the way he holds his books -- Oh God. I hope I haven't blown this. I'm such a dork!!!!
And tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Which means a flower day and bowling. [hahahahahahahahahahahaha]
Well. I'll make it a good day.
Kate said to me in Drama, "I think you're going to have an excellent day tomorrow." I said, "Why?" And she shrugged and smiled. "I just have a hunch." What? He would never send me a flower. Could I send him one? [Just the thought of those "flower days" makes me want to vomit. They were always heartbreaking. I never "got a flower" sent to me.] Well -- bowling usually means a good day. [Ah, the simplicity of life at 16! When I can say, with all sincerity, that "bowling usually means a good day." I should go bowling every day!] What if we talk more -- Of course we will -- I'm confident! But why was Kate so sly? Hmmmm. In Drama, she came over to me and reached out to fix my clasp on my pearls. (It was in front) Before she did, she said, "Did you make a wish?" [I love Kate.] And I nodded, saying, "Duh - I wondah what it could be ..." She was laughing really hard.
We had tryouts today for our show. She sang "Turn Back O Man" from Godspell [I remember her performance of that so vividly!] She really got into it. It's really jazzy - and Mae West-ish - she was flipping her hair around, doing kicks and jazzy movements - God she was so so good. [She was.] Betsy and I did our duet - and I tried out alone - singing "Getting Tall" from Nine - a cute little song. I sat in a chair on the apron and sang the sweet little thing. I'm just over my cold, so I feel pretty good about my voice - it came out clear and loud and true, not cackley and scratchy. I did okay, I think. Then I decided to try McCavity from Cats. [!!! Cashel just "got cast" as McCavity!] At first I started too high. So I started again. It was weak from the start, and I knew it the minute I opened my mouth. About 5 lines into it, I stopped, and said, "This is dying." and hopped off the stage. I was laughing so hard in my seat - I said to the class, "Please forget I ever did that, okay?" I admit - it was awful, and also pretty hysterical. I think I'll try again tomorrow.
Well, here I am at the end of another diary. And it's only about 2 months. I write so much and my writing is so small too. This book shall be dubbed the DD -- (David Diary) Sorry if it's droning or monotonous. I know it sounds as though there are no other facets in my life at the time -- but really -- in all truth -- there aren't many other aspects that outshine this one. And I'm glad!!! When I started this diary, I would flip through the blank pages and wonder what would fill them. I'd even tentatively wonder if by the end Dave and I would be "set". Well, that dream is shattered. I have a feeling the first few entries of my new diary shall be quite the eventful -- if I can help it.
I HOPE SO!!!!!
October 20, 2005
Pride and Prejudice
At the risk of being de-linked by a rageful Emily - here is an AWESOME post in defense of Jane Austen, and in defense of Pride and Prejudice in general. Makes me want to take a look at the book again - it's been a while since I read it.
I have always been extremely annoyed by the co-opting of Jane Austen's name in defense of "chick lit". Not that there's anything wrong with "chick lit", although it is not my cup of tea. Fine. Chick lit. Read it. It's a genre. Enjoy it! But I have always heard a really defensive shrill note in the "we're just doing what Jane Austen did" chorus. No. You're not. Go back and read what Austen actually wrote, and do not try to convince me that it is a 19th century Sex and the City. It is NOT. And if you make that argument, I will find it hard to take you seriously. You can't actually have read and understood Jane Austen and honestly think that it is a precursor to Sex and the City or Devil Wears Prada. Again: nothing wrong with chick lit. But just accept it for what it is and stop trying to pile legitimacy onto what is, essentially, urban romance novels. Stop!!
But anyway. Abigail is MUCH more eloquent when making her points:
The stereotypical chick-lit heroine is the representative of a lost generation--women who, although they have rejected the traditional subservient, domestic role of the female in their actions, have done so almost unconsciously, and are now searching for a new paradigm for their lives. Austen's heroines, in contrast, know their place in the world--as wives and mothers--and are eager to assume it. More importantly, chick-lit is almost universally concerned with the gratification of desires--I want a great job, I want a studly yet sensitive boyfriend, I want a child--whereas Austen's novels, Pride and Prejudice in particular, are morality plays. The reward for becoming a better person, Austen tells us, for shedding the petty selfishness of childhood and emerging into maturity, is a good, stable marriage, the right and privilege of becoming the bedrock of a new generation of Englishmen and -women. This is so far from chick-lit's themes of self-actualization and self-acceptance as to very nearly make the works polar opposites, which is hardly surprising--Austen wrote 200 years ago, when conformity and self-sacrifice were virtues, not vices as they are, for better and worse, today.
The "inverted Jenny"
See those stamps right there? With the upside down airplane? They just were auctioned off for almost 3 million dollars. Reeeeealllly cool story behind the stamps right here.
The 1918 stamp, known to collectors as the Jenny because of the Curtiss JN-4 biplane depicted in the design, was the first American issue for air postage. Its value was set at 24 cents.But of roughly two million printed, 100 bore the topsy-turvy center plane and became known as the Inverted Jenny. They quickly became the stuff of philatelic legend.
More of the story of its increasing value:
A single sheet of 100 with the centers eye-catchingly inverted was sold at a Washington post office in 1918 to a sharp-eyed collector, who quickly resold the entire sheet to a dealer for $15,000. Within a few weeks, the stamps were separated, with most sold off individually for a few hundred dollars each. A few blocks of four were preserved, including the unique block auctioned yesterday, which shows part of the blue printing plate number inverted in the bottom margin. The so-called plate block changed hands in 1954 for $18,250 and was sold again privately in 1971 for an undisclosed sum. In 1989, Christie's auctioned it for $1.1 million.
I know all of this is insane, they're "just stamps" - but to my mind, that is a completely boring argument. Make it if you like, but just know that you're kind of boring. I stand proudly with the obsessive FREAKS of the world who give a shite about weird things like inverted Jennys. I am not a stamp person, by any means - I know nothing about stamps ... I just love people who are NUTS about random things like this.
I also love the pioneer spirit behind the design of that original stamp - meant to invoke the amazing beginning of airmail service (captured to romantic perfection in what has to be one of my favorite movies ever made: Only Angels Have Wings. Now there's a movie where I just yearn to crawl through the television screen and join that world.)
I look at the "inverted Jenny" there on the stamp, and I think of that movie, and the dangerous (yet romantic) frontier world it depicted.
Wilma
Good Lord. Look at this photograph.
CW is, of course, blogging about Hurricane Wilma. Keep scrolling. Stay safe, CW!!
October 19, 2005
A day late
But not a dollar short, because this is not a money-making venture for me.
Just realized that yesterday was my 3rd year anniversary of beginning the blog. I started blogging on October 18, 2002. Here was my first post. I never transported over the stuff from Blog-spot - just didn't care to - but it's all still there.
I gave the blog the URL atswimtwobirds - for obvious and not so obvious reasons. I named it after the great psycedelic nutso Irish Catcher in the Rye novel of the same name, by Flann O'Brien - man of many aliases. It also has deep personal resonance for me, because of my father, and my childhood, and yadda yadda. But then I called the blog Sheila A-Stray's Redheaded Ramblings - an unwieldy title which, again, made sense only to me - or only to someone who is familiar with Irish legends, Irish history, and Seamus Heaney's wonderful epic poem Sweeney Astray. There was much confusion about it ... some people referred to my blog as "Sheila Ashtray", which was unfortunate, but inevitable. I set up the blog for myself - I didn't think about having readers, really - or making the thing comprehensible to anyone but my inner circle. Even they may have been confused by the confluence of at swim-two-birds and redheaded ramblings and A-stray ... So be it! That was my beginning.
Here is the post I wrote on my first anniversary of blogging - I have updated it a bit - but I thought it might be interesting to read, for those of who are new to me, and who ... oh, I don' t know ... might care. For those who feel that theirs IS to reason why ... this post explains it.
Blogging has provided me with an outlet. A space to SHOUT. A space to blab. Whatever. I used to keep intensely detailed journals, which is all well and good. I still journal - but that is an inward pursuit. Journaling is about communicating with my own unconscious, not trying to communicate with anybody else. Blogging has helped me so much, in terms of formulating how I think about things - things I need to learn - issues I need to delve in more. Also - challenging myself to articulate my thoughts, my vague convictions about things, into words. Cold clear words. Awesome practice.
It also has kept me writing. I write every day. In a public way.
Writing every day in a journal is also great - but to write for an audience (even if it's only 30 people) is a different muscle altogether.
I have had a pretty bad last couple of years. From about 1999 on. I won't go into why. But it's not been a good time for me, and I've had a very hard time going on with life, at times. There was a good stretch in 2002 when I was beyond language. That had never happened to me before, and anyone who's ever been seriously depressed will know the state of which I speak. I couldn't write in my journal, I couldn't write emails to friends ... I just had no words for how sad I was, how disappointed I was in things. I lay on my couch for 5 months. I watched movies. I couldn't speak of my sadness, my anger. I was immobilized. Petrified. Meaning: petrifaction. Stone.
And then, one morning in October, 2002 - I suddenly DID what I had been musing about for over a year, since September 11, when I discovered Andrew Sullivan, Little Green Footballs, James Lileks, Asparagirl, A Small Victory, and a host of others - I sat down, got an account with Blog-spot, and created a Blog in the space of one morning.
I don't know why suddenly, on October 18, I decided to get into action. It was not on any To Do List. It was just a vague wish, a vague "I'd like to have one of those" ... And it took me 3 hours (maybe less) to make it into a reality.
In June of 2003, Dean Esmay (bless him! For so many reasons!!) got me off of Blog-spot. And I started having comments - which completely changed my experience of blogging. And it has just accelerated, as the years have gone by. Having comments is really THE thing that has put Blogging (for me, anyway) into this new level. Every day is a conversation ... that I initiate, yes, from the topics I choose - but every day, people show up to basically shoot the shit, chat, give their views, whatever. It is unbelievable. It has made the world seem smaller and much much warmer.
I decided to stop blogging about politics (much to the continued chagrin of DBW and only DBW - hahahaha - love that guy!) - because I wanted this place to be fun, and relaxing, and not just bipartisan - but universal. If that sounds grandiose, then ... well, it is grandiose. I got sick of the bullshit and the arguing - and I wasn't even interested in the arguments anymore. I decided to stop - unless I am REALLY compelled. And right around that same time, this Humphrey Bogart obsession happened. Kicked into gear. That was the first time when I let who I REALLY am onto my blog. This is no lie - there was a huge shift in my energy when I allowed that obsession to blossom ON THE BLOG - and not in my offline journal. It was vulnerable - for me - to let you all in on that - on just HOW obsessed I was - but amazingly (or not so amazingly) - all I found was validation from you all. Everyone participated openly in that ongoing obsession. You fanned the flames of it. It was so joyous! For once, my celebrity "crush" wasn't this shameful secret (ahem - Ralph Macchio) - it was something I could share and celebrate. And not only that, but I found this entire world of Bogie fans out there - people who recommended films to me - who sent films to me (Bill McCabe provided me with a tape of Caine Mutiny, for example) - and to me, the Bogie thing, and the response to it, was a sign: that was where I needed to go now, in terms of this blog. It may seem silly to put so much thought into this - but look. I only have so many hours in the day. I spend time on my blog. I want it to be time I WANT to spend on my blog, writing about what I want to write about, and having a good time doing it.
Once I started to get more readers (after my Wall Street Journal moment in the sun which brought 5 gazillion people to my site - who kept coming back, expecting me to be in a state of outrage at every moment - hahahahaha - They probably WEREN'T expecting that - but I did feel that way sometimes!) - I started feeling a subtle pressure to ... provide what "they" wanted. It's silly - but it happens to all of us. And that's just not me. It's just not me. That "outrage" is real - but it's not all I am. And it's not necessarily where I want to spend the majority of my time. I know it's not an accident that one of the only times I really took off the reins and went OFF on something the Wall Street Journal took notice, and shock-jocks across the country took notice - of course. Being THAT pissed off gets people's attention. And it was FUN, man, I'll tell ya ... those were a FUN couple of days.
But not as fun as I had when I was ranting and raving about every Humphrey Bogart movie I had seen, and how much I loved him ... I found that writing, with that much depth, about acting - and actors - was how I really wanted to spend my time. I turned this blog into a space of acknowledgement - a place where I could pay tribute to all the actors (and artists and writers) who have made a difference in my life. Fun!!!
I've had my struggles. I had a stalker. I had some jagoff email me during one of my Bloomsday extravaganzas: "How can you post on something so trivial while this whole Abu Gharib thing is happening?" I've had people email me stupidly with pleas why I haven't weighed in on John Kerry. Uhm ... cause I don't feel like weighing in on John Kerry? If you would like to PAY me for an op-ed on John Kerry, then by all means send me a proposal ... but other than that? Shut the fuck up! I had one guy blow a gasket because I said I was going to see Kinsey. It was almost like he felt BETRAYED. Like: he assumed I was one way, and my enthusiasm for Kinsey (Lisa - I'm sure you remember this post since you were involved in all your Liam Neeson fan girliness!) made him think I was another. How insane to assume you know someone when you read 3 things that they choose to write on a daily basis, and make assumptions based on those 3 small posts. I was so rude to him in response that he has never returned. Yee-haw. There are wack-jobs on the planet. And many of them frequent my blog. I try to chase them away by being as RUDE as possible to them as SOON as they reveal themselves to be wack-jobs. I have had people get unrequited crushes on me and care too much about what I think about them. I have hesitated before posting really personal stuff, because ... I'm afraid of being made fun of by certain readers who seem to have had a problem with SEGUING from mood to mood. I'm moody. You have to be able to segue here on this blog. I find an inability to segue to be unforgivable. It's one of my quirks. You know. The usual. This is something that happens to anyone who blogs with an audience.
That was my circuitous journey here - to this spot - but it's ongoing. This is a work in progress. I just keep learning about myself - through this blogging thingamajiggie, and I am very grateful for it.
Not to get too melodramatic here - I will try to use as plain language as possible -
The word-less 5 month stretch of 2002, when I could no longer communicate, even with myself - feels like it could never happen again. Not while I have this outlet. The muscle, the communicative muscle, has been FLEXED. And it feels like it is in for me for good. In this way, blogging has done wonders for my mood, my quality of life. My mental health. I am not alone. I don't believe that I could ever feel as isolated as I felt in 2002 again. (Knock wood, man. Knock wood.)
But that's not the only reason it has changed my life. For me, it may be the most important reason - but it's not the sole reason.
I also have discovered this enormous NOISY community - a community that I LOVE - a community that I cherish being a part of. I have made true friends through blogging. Some I have met - some I have not yet met - but they're friends - all of them.
And finding this whole world of voices in the direct wake of Sept. 11 - chattering, babbling, arguing - was like opening up a genie's bottle. Woah. Who knew you all were out there?
It was good to join my voice to the Babel. Good to be there. To be a part of it.
The events of September 11 deeply impacted me, mobilized me, enraged me - as they did most of us. Being able to write it all out, and get into discussions with people - (as opposed to sitting weeping in a coffee shop writing in my journal - see the difference?) is awesome.
Keeping a blog is not all about my own self-improvement - but that is what I am present to at the moment.
Thanks to everybody - all my faithful readers. I love when you comment, I love when you get into discussions - I love that you come here, and thank you! All of you! I can't even list you all - because I would, inevitably, leave somebody off. But just know that I appreciate each and every one of you - whenever you show up.
And thank you as well to all of the people I read. A daily dose of your words enriches my life and expands my brain.
This is a long-winded way of saying Happy Birthday To Me.
Letters
Member that XTC song "Dear God" - that starts with the child singing? I love that song.
Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
’cause they don’t get enough to eat
From god,
I can’t believe in you....
Anyway - all of this is a prelude to a gorgeous and funny and touching post over at Alex's - featuring letters to God from children.
Beautiful post - have fun. They're great to read!
"In bible times did people really talk that fancy?" is just one example.
The one note from Elliott actually brought a strange lump to my throat.
Richard Jenkins - yee-haw!
James Berardinelli (my main movie-review guy - dude is awesome) has given North Country 3 stars. I kind of don't have any desire to see it even though ANYTHING with Sissy Spacek and Frances McDormand in it is allright by me!!
There's just something about the one clip in the commercials of Charlize Theron saying: "I want to sue the mine, all of them" that just ... doesn't "get me". Her voice doesn't sound right. It doesn't have that same clutch-you-at-your-throat urgency that other films with similar themes (I'm thinking of one of my favorites Silkwood) have. I don't know - Charlize's voice in that one clip sounds very ... actress-y. Can't explain it better than that!
I just have to say that reading his review actually brought a big lump to my throat because he calls out for praise the always fantastic Richard Jenkins - he gives him the best review in the film. I just ... I cannot tell you how thrilled this makes me. It's such a vindication, it just pleases me so so much ...
Richard Jenkins - one of the best character actors working in America - he has been doing solid awesome work for ... 25 years now? He was a member of Trinity Rep in Rhode Island, and I grew up seeing him in various stage productions there. I have met him before, at various theatrical moments in Rhode Island, through the years ... and I couldn't have been more happy for him when I saw him give such WONDERFUL performances in movies like Flirting with Disaster (just the thought of it makes me laugh out loud), the movie The Man Who Wasn't There (which - not sure - but I think I might have been the only person who saw that movie. HE is the reason to see it, and he's not even the lead.) - and, of course, his recurring role as the dead father in 6 Feet Under. This guy is a gem. This guy should be celebrated.
And listen to Berardinelli's words:
But the one I want to single out is character actor Richard Jenkins, who is superb. Jenkins' portrayal of Josey's conflicted father is believable and powerful. Jenkins is one of those actors whose face is more familiar than his name. He has appeared in more than 60 movies and TV productions, and is probably best known for a supporting role in Flirting with Disaster and as a member of the ensemble cast for Six Feet Under. He deserves official recognition for his work in North Country.
It just makes me want to cry. It's so so true.
Charlize Shmarlize. I mean, good for her - she's made quite a nice career for herself - but man, I love it when character actors who have been around forever are rightly praised. It's just AWESOME.
And back to Flirting with Disaster - watching Lily Tomlin talk his character through an acid trip (he's a pretty square US Marshall - and his food was spiked - so he has no idea what's happening to him) - is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.
Today in History: October 19, 1781
The surrender at Yorktown, which ended the American Revolutionary War. Cornwallis realized that aid would not come in time - and after two days of bombardment - he sent a drummer out into view, who apparently beat the rhythm of: "STOP! LET'S TALK!!!" I love that the two sides would communicate this way - quite amazing. A British officer high in rank came forward - was blindfolded - and taken to George Washington (who was pretty much on his last legs himself).
The surrender document was drawn up, with Washington dictating the terms.
Over 7,000 soldiers surrendered at Yorktown. The war was over. There was still a lot of cleaning up to do, and negotiating, and brou-hahas, etc. - but the war was over.
And here is a story (perhaps a rumor - but I love it nonetheless) of Benjamin Franklin's response to the news of the surrender. He was, of course, in Paris at the time.
Here is, apparently, what happened.
Franklin was in France, and word came to France of the decisive American victory, and the complete surrender to George Washington in Yorktown. Franklin attended a diplomatic dinner shortly thereafter – and, of course, everyone was discussing the defeat of the British, and the victory of America.
The French foreign minister stood, and toasted Louis XVI: "To his Majesty, Louis the Sixteenth, who, like the moon, fills the earth with a soft, benevolent glow."
The British ambassador rose and said, "To George the Third, who, like the sun at noonday, spreads his light and illumines the world."
Franklin rose and countered, "I cannot give you the sun or the moon, but I give you George Washington, General of the armies of the United States, who, like Joshua of old, commanded both the sun and the moon to stand still, and both obeyed."
Awkward
Last night we had what is known as our first "stumble-through". We've worked on each of the scenes in the play separately - and last night, come hell or high water, we put it all together. It was also the night we had to be off book. Ah, the stumble-through. Fascinating and frustrating. It's cool because you get to see the other scenes that you're not in - you also can get a sense of the whole thing - but man. There is so much dialogue in this play. We all have been working our asses off to get off book. As soon as I got cast, I started memorizing my lines, knowing I had a huge task in front of me. Not as huge as some of the other people in the play, who have four times as much to say as I do.
But there we all were, without our scripts in hand, stumbling through the thing in its entirety. Sometimes literally stumbling.
There were moments when we transcended - when you could see the wheels stop turning in the brain, the mind suddenly knew what it was doing, what it was supposed to say next - and we could actually start acting, playing, doing. But then there were other times when we were like 5 retarded robots in the middle of misfiring. Sudden absolutely BLANK expressions would come over our faces - as though all intelligent thought had been washed away - in the middle of a big moment, in the middle of an emotional sequence. Blankness. Then, you have to admit defeat, and you call out, "LINE!" The line comes from the ASM, and then you are back on track. For a while.
There were some funny moments. During an enormous fight between two of the characters (we got one of the best fight choreographers in New York to do the fights for us - pretty cool!!) - one of the witnesses is supposed to have a big emotional moment, say a speech, and then race off for help. She stood there, watching the fight - with absolutely no expression on her face. None. Blank. She watched this strange drifter attack her boyfriend with no expression whatsoever. Whatever. He's just beating the crap out of the guy I love. No worries. What I'm really worried about is ... what the hell am I supposed to say next?? hahahaha
Or in the middle of one of the fights - as the two actors are beating the crap out of each other - (also funny: they couldn't help themselves - they were making sounds like "pow!" and "boom" - totally unconsciously - like little boys having a fake gun battle) - but they're rolling around on the floor, pummeling each other, and shouting out, desperately, "LINE???" hahahahaha
Ohhh, tis an awkward stage, to be sure, to be sure.
I was standing downstage center. One of my big moments. Tears are rolling down my face. You know. I was ACTING. Or at least ... I was. For a brief second. And then in the next moment ... a vast expanse of nothingness as white and cold and empty as Antarctica. In the blink of an eye, I become a big BLANK because I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO SAY NEXT. I stood there like a retarded clunky awkward robot. My arms felt 5 feet long, and as though there were weights on the ends of my hands. I racked my brains, trying to picture the page in the script in my head ... trying to SEE what the next line was.
Turns out, I was supposed to be all the way over stage left as well - and not downstage center - but apparently: talking, acting, AND moving is FAR too much to ask of me at one time in this stage of my development.
Tonight? We try again. It's always good when you get the stumble-through out of the way because then you can get down to some real work.
the virtuoso
Got this from my E-verse Radio newsletter - thought it was a cool quote:
"Fired by Little Richard. Fired by Ike and Tina Turner. Terminated by numerous now forgotten blues and rock bands. You would think this was the résumé of a second-rate back-up guitar player, but it's the precelebrity track record of no less than the late, great Jimi Hendrix. Often hired and often fired. In the end the reason was always the same: Hendrix's guitar solos that became, as Ike Turner said 'so elaborate they overstepped the bounds.' Yet those flashy, raucous, but elegant electric guitar solos would revolutionize rock music. They became Hendrix's trademark: colorful sounds that painted the anarchistic spirit of the late sixties. Hendrix described the sound he was reaching for as 'electronic church music.' However, while he was relatively unknown, many fellow musicians described his performances -- the sexual gyrations, the gimmicks, such as demolishing his guitar -- as 'too much.' But Hendrix was a guitar virtuoso. His imagination was boundless, and, for better and for worse, by the late 1960s, nothing anybody could imagine was too much."- Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
October 18, 2005
The joys of eavesdropping
In the post below this one - I link to a really cool and evocative "overheard snippet" from Overheard in New York.
The quality of the dialogue - the intelligence of it - reminded me of this old post I wrote from last year. It was October 27 when I wrote the post (shivers - Oct. 27, 2004 ... just LOOKING at that date gives me a thrill!!) - The World Series was nearly over - I had been spending all my time in this one bar in Hoboken watching all the games (and, of course, all of the games were, like, EIGHT HOURS LONG) ... I didn't have television at this point. Anyway.
Here's that old post. I just re-read it now and I can still hear the voices of these two guys, I can still feel what was going on, get the sense of their concerns, their friendship ... I wonder what happened to everybody involved.
The Pros and Cons of Being Smothered
Okay, so ... in waiting for the game to start last night ... (I was at a bar. I am very much looking forward to next week when I don't spend literally HOURS every night in a bar). Two guys were sitting next to me. They were friends, obviously. They both had on backwards baseball caps, and they were chowing down on a plate of buffalo wings. From comments they dropped, I gathered they were Yankee fans, and just couldn't get enthusiastic about the Series.
I admit that I eavesdropped. Blatantly. I had to hold myself back from taking out a pen, then and there, to transcribe the whole thing.
I will just list the facts here, as in: here is what they said. I will do my best not to editorialize or interpret. Although I will probably have to add little notes indicating HOW they said certain things, my interpretation of their tone.
For whatever reason, this male-bonding conversation really got to me. It touched me. It seemed quite deep - although, being the type of guys who wear backwards baseball caps and eat a pile of buffalo wings - they aren't going to speak in psycho-babble, or over-analyze themselves, or be touchy-feely. But it was DEEP SHIT, nonetheless.
I had to restrain myself from leaning over and saying, "I have been listening to this whole thing, and I just love both of you. I wish you both well."
From what I could gather, here's the situation:
These guys are old close friends. And one of them has started to date a girl (whom I will refer to as Katie) - and it looks like it's getting pretty serious - and so ... there seemed to be some issues around this. But remember - they're old close friends.
I tuned into their conversation at the point where the friend was saying, "Listen, I really like Katie, but ..."
Try to follow it if you can.
"Listen, I really like Katie, but ... and ... I probably have no right to say this to you ... but ..."
"What?"
"I guess I feel like ... Listen, she's great, okay? I just ..." (long silence - My heart went out to the guy speaking - I thought: Come on, dude, just say what's on your mind. Ooops. I'm editorializing. I'll stop now.) "I just guess I feel like she smothers you sometimes. Like ... there's some smotheration going on."
"Yeah."
"You know what I mean?"
"Yeah, man, I know. I know ... I guess I kinda like it, though." (Silence.) "Like ... it's just so nice hanging out with her. It's so nice ... I can relax with her, you know?"
Then came a conversation about the problems Katie may be having with another friend of theirs - who is a girl. Possibly an ex-girlfriend? I don't know.
Guy dating Katie said, "I've tried to explain to her that ... Heather is just a friend ... and ... we never ... You know. Heather and me never ..."
"Of course not. No, it's like ... Yeah, I get what you're saying."
"Like - she doesn't need to be ... nervous about Heather."
"Right. Like - you're not gonna cheat on her or whatever."
"No. Totally."
"Like I said - that's kind of what I mean. And I like Katie too, I really do - she's a lot of fun - but it's the smotheration thing."
Silence.
Guy dating Katie said, "I know. I know."
"Cool. Just so long as you know."
"Still, though - it's just that - if I have to choose - and I hope it doesn't come to that - but if I have to choose - I choose Katie. Because ... yeah, I know, she kind of smothers, and stuff ... but I'm tellin' ya - it's just so nice being with her."
(I thought to myself: I bet he ends up marrying that girl.)
His friend thought about this for a long time. Then said, quietly, "I'd like to have a girl like that."
Later on ... they came back to the "smotheration" issue.
The friend (the one who was concerned about the smothering) started talking about HIS love-life. Which sounds very frustrating.
He had gone on a couple of dates with one girl. And that day she had emailed him, and all the email said was: "Do you think I'm totally empty inside?"
Jesus. I have a message for women who send emails like that: DON'T.
The guy said to his friend, "What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? 'Do you think I'm totally empty inside?' What? I was going to email her back with a bunch of question marks ... but then I thought - fuck it, I don't even know what the hell she's talking about. I mean ... I've called her a couple times ... but - I don't want to deal with that shit."
Long pause. They both sat there, thinking. Not speaking. Then the same guy said, seriously, "What do you think that means - 'Do you think I'm empty inside'?"
Friend (the one dating Katie said): "Oh who the fuck knows. One of her friends probably said something to her about whatever, and now she's all fucking dramatic about everything."
"Yeah, but what the hell do I have to say about her being empty inside? Jesus. She's nuts."
Then the same guy started talking about a semi-"relationiship" he was having with some other chick named Meg ... and I felt bad for him. (Especially in light of the revealing moment when he said to himself, "I'd like to have a girl like that.") The situation appears to be: he is really into Meg. They have a great time together, whenever they get together. But it's really difficult for them to hook up, there's a lot of phone tag, etc.
He said, "Like ... she's really really busy." (Ha. Like my friend Jackie has said to me before, "No one's ever that busy. If they're into you, they'll call you, they'll make it happen.")
He said, "I respect the fact that she doesn't have a lot of time ... I don't want to push or whatever ... but still ... I guess it's that she's really really independent." (I'm thinking to myself: Oh boy. She's giving him the "I'm really busy and I'm really independent" line?? Poor guy! He deserves better, he definitely does.)
Meanwhile, he's talking to his friend, who is being "smothered" by his girlfriend - but his friend obviously likes it - and doesn't feel "smothered" at all. What his friend feels is taken care of. This girl gives a crap enough to let him know she's interested, she's available, etc. She doesn't leave him out hanging.
Okay. Interpretation over.
Friend kept saying, "And whenever we hang out - it's great, you know? It's totally great. But for the past couple weeks - I haven't been able to see her - but she text-messages me all the time. I got one from her last night ... it's just kind of frustrating ... cause I don't want to be ... like ... I respect the fact she's busy and all that."
(I wanted to lean in and say, "No one is ever that busy. If she's into you, she'd find a way.")
But then came the coolest part:
Katie, the famous "smothering" Katie, arrived. Her boyfriend got up, gave her a big hug, a kiss ... and made her sit on his bar stool. She struck me as a cool woman. She didn't just talk to her boyfriend, she also engaged in conversation with his friend.
And then - the boyfriend left to go make a phone call or something - and Katie and the other guy started talking.
And within 2 or 3 exchanges, he started telling her about this "independent busy" woman. Like ... he may think Katie smothers his friend, but there's also something in her that he can trust. I LOVED that.
Sorry. I am interpreting this like a fiend, I realize. I can't help it!!
Anyway, I heard him saying the same things - only it was a tiny bit different because he was talking to a girl, and not a guy.
"I don't know ... she text messages me and stuff ... and keeps saying she wants to get together ... but ... Do you think that means she doesn't really want to see me?"
Why did I find all of this so touching? I was bored waiting for the game to start. I got very emotionally involved.
Katie took kind of a hard-line. "Pick up the phone and call her. Say to her, 'I want to see you.' Just do it! You say you really like her?"
"Totally. You met her that one night we went to blah blah blah, member?"
"Wait ... which one?" Katie thought and then said, "Oh! Right! Yeah, she was great! Okay, so be persistent. Call her. Do it."
(Go, Katie. You tell 'im.)
Katie and the boyfriend eventually went out to put their car into a parking garage, I believe ... leaving the friend by himself at the bar.
Then the guy left behind dialed someone on the phone. I wasn't paying attention anymore ... the game was almost started.
But then I heard him say, "Meg - hey."
I thought to myself: Meg! Oh! He's calling her right now!! The famously "busy" Meg! Katie's words helped him make the call!
And, BLESS HIM, he leapt right in. "Listen - I'd like to take you out to dinner this week. Would you like to do that?" He listened to her response. "You would? Great ... uh ... how about Thursday? I could pick you up after ..." Meg made some comment. "Great. 7:30 it is."
Good work, my good man. Good work. And I can see why Katie is beloved by her boyfriend, even though she might "smother" him. A common-sense girl, that one.
I don't know why this whole thing moved me so much, why I had to listen to it.
It was a brief glimpse into a friendship, a situation ... and I liked it. I liked them all. I wish them well.
Awesome
My favorite playwrights and writers are people who are able to create dialogue that sounds like this.
The internal logic - yet circuitous at the same time, the implied relationship between the two, the miscommunication - it's all THERE, effortlessly. We don't need to know ANY MORE. Those few words tell the whole story. Cheryl comes to life. Etc. etc.
It kind of reminds me of that old post I wrote about the dialogue I overheard in the bar last year - two guys talking about "smotheration". It was genius dialogue - and it was from real life.
Let me find the post. It was a good one.
Playwrights who have an ear for dialogue like that have my heart forever. They're very rare.
Incredible
It's really amazing how universal all of this is. I suppose it's why the movie Office Space is such a classic. Why are all offices the same??? Because they're run by human beings, I guess, and on some level - we are all the same.
Take this for example:
But at work, the hallway contains other people, and it's a pretty long hallway, so if I see someone coming towards me from the other end, it's a whole thing with waiting for him or her to get close enough and then doing the nod/smile "how ya doin'" combo, unless it's someone I actually know, in which case the two of us have to fit in a "Hey, how's it going?"/"Good, you?"/"Oh, you know" in the three seconds it takes us to pass each other, and then of course we've probably recognized each other way before that, but The Second Law Of Hallway Dynamics states that we have to wait to acknowledge each other until we're within twenty feet of one another, so outside of that radius, each of us has to act like we haven't seen the other one…it's absurd, and yet everyone does it, and I remembered exactly how to do it like I'd just left my last office job the day before. The brisk nod, coupled with the warm but not-showing-teeth smile? The not-quite-out-loud, not-quite-whispered-either "hey"? Like breathing. Kind of scary how easily it came back, really.
That is just so right ON. This is how it is EVERYWHERE.
And don't even get me started on the universality of "The Poo Stall" ....
At least it's universal in the female experience. Not sure if males designate (silently) a "poo stall" - and: what is incredible in her description: it's always THE SAME STALL in ALL OFFICES that is designated "the Poo Stall".
Someone should do an anthropological study on office bathroom behavior.
I know that Curly has begun the process. I've also conducted some market research in this area.
Eudora Welty
A wonderful review of a new biography of this writer.
I love her writing although I haven't gone near it in years. And now - reading this article - I kind of fall in love with her the person:
A culture is known by the stories it tells, and Southern stories are rooted in such connections, place and family and neighbors and friends, in shared memories passed down like recipes. Welty knew that in the South, there is a “we” to the stories. We are all members of the Delta wedding. “A family story is a family possession, not for a moment to be forgotten, not a bit to be dropped or left out—just added to. No good story ever became diminished.” You stay at funerals till the tent comes down. You show up at the family reunion, even if you have to escape from prison to do it. You repeat the stories you share. For Welty, memory was “a living thing,” through which the present can reclaim the losses of the past.I once drove the 700 miles from North Carolina to Jackson to tell Eudora Welty how much I admired her. Writers knew where her house was; she’d lived there a long time. In the end I lost my nerve. I sat in the car across the street for hours, and then I drove back home. Many years later, I met Miss Welty in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel and I told her that story. She laughed. “Honey, was that you? I almost called the police on you!”
Then, in a moment of kindness, she taught me the best lesson I ever learned as a writer. She said, “Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.” It was a lesson no one ever understood more profoundly than she did.
Speaking of Kelly Preston ...
have you checked out Proud Suppressives? heh heh heh heh heh
Finally.
Alex is back online. She's one of my dearest friends and frankly ... her long absence of - uhm - 5 days - was unacceptable to me. I know, I know, her computer crashed, whatEVER. Now she's back. And she's gone OFF on Kelly Preston. I mean, SOMEONE's got to.
October 17, 2005
Ah the joy ...
... of coming to Led Zeppelin late.
Awesome descriptive post.
100 years of illustration
Go to this blog and just scroll through the gorgeousness. Example here. Look at the last illustration in that post - the black and white one of the cowboy. Just marvelous.
It's one of my favorite blogs out there - I love checking in with him from time to time, to see what kind of artwork he has rescued from magazines of the last century and the century before. Beautiful. (I, of course, am fond of his post on Charles Dana Gibson).
A deadly combo ...
in terms of being COMPLETELY IRRESISTIBLE is:
The one two Vh1 punch of:
1. My Fair Brady
2. Breaking Bonaduce
People. Honestly. This is unbelievable. This is absolutely addictive. It MUST be watched.
I cannot turn away. I watched both again last night, agog. I tried to do other things during My Fair Brady ... but finally could NOT focus on anything else. I was SO INVOLVED in Adrienne's family ... I was emotionally invested ... I was angry at Peter Brady for being arrogant ... he deserved the bitch-slap he got ....
And I actually wept a tear during one of the therapy sessions on Breaking Bonaduce.
I know it's ... well, never mind. I won't judge any of this - because if you constantly say "I know it's pathetic, but --" or "I know this is embarrassing, but ..." about certain things - frankly that's not very good writing. Stop apologizing.
So I'll just come flat out and say it.
For what it is - and the genre it is - Breaking Bonaduce is GREAT television. It's not I Love Lucy or All in the Family or whatever - but it's not trying to be. It's reality television. Of the starkest kind. And ... it just ... you cannot look away. It is GREAT television.
Yup. I said 'great'. I'm tellin' ya. If the definition of entertainment (or one of the definitions) is that it should be "riveting", and should hold your attention - oh my God. Breaking Bonaduce is one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.
I am hooked.
And the two shows being back to back ... fuggedaboutit. Count me in.
Can't wait til next week.
D.U.M.B.O.
In terms of vibe and view - D.U.M.B.O. is my favorite neighborhood in the city. (D.U.M.B.O. is an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, by the by.) Curly shows why it is, to my taste, almost a poetic neighborhood - in a gritty urban way. The place is just RICH with atmosphere. I was in a reading over there before it became the hip new place - and it was pretty much solely industrial, cobblestone streets, the massive columns of the bridge, the far-off views of Lady Liberty ... but really NOTHING there. Not residential at all. I don't know what the changes have been in the last couple of years - but I LOVED my brief theatrical stint over in D.U.M.B.O. Click-clacking the heels over the cobblestones, hurrying to rehearsal in the big drafty artists' space on the river's edge ... I still think: if I could CHOOSE, and money were no object, I'd live in D.U.M.B.O.
The Inseam latte
Met with the costume designer in her half-hour free before she left for Vegas where she is costuming another show. We met at a Starbucks near Penn Station - which was packed. We had no time to spare. I've never met her. We were like: "Hi! How are you! Okay ... so ... costumes!" We sat down (found seats, amazing) - and DIDN'T order. Nobody had a heart attack about this. We then looked over costume sketches, and photographs, and discussed - hair, shoes, glasses, and jewelry. Accessories, basically. I love it because I've never met this woman, but it doesn't matter. We speak the same language. The language of theatre. I showed her some photographs that struck ME as the way I wanted to go (I had been nervous she would take the character another way - clothes are so important - and I had put my two cents in with the director at the beginning of rehearsal) - so I'm like: "And here ... see where the skirt falls on her calves? That's sort of what I'm thinking ... and definitely sensibile shoes - maybe like this?" Showing photographs - just pieces of people - a shoe here, a scarf there, a skirt there ... She showed me her sketches (we were amazingly in sync - yay!) - and then - right in the middle of the throng of Starbucks patrons - she took my measurements.
Why does this make me laugh ...
It just does. The absurdity of it, and how we just started to do what we needed to do, regardless of how ... uhm ... bizarre it must have seemed, to have one woman measure another woman's inseam in the middle of a midtown Starbucks.
But I'm telling you: it was half an hour and it was so productive I felt like the energy we generated could sustain the power on the island of Manhattan for a good 20 minutes.
Love work. And I love people who are IN my line of work, every aspect of it - people who are serious and committed to their part of the puzzle.
It's the best business in the world.
October 16, 2005
How Eight is Enough changed my life
I am a big fan of celebrity crushes, as I have said here before. I've had them since I've been aware of celebrities and I have not given them up in my old age. I have fine-tuned the "celebrity crush" into a work of ART. I should give seminars about how to do them properly.
My first crush is a toss-up between Ralph Macchio and the hot young actor who was in some TV movie starring Bette Davis - no memory of the title, but he haunted me! (UPDATE Feb. 2009: Yeah. I remember him now. That would be Ben Marley.)
The Macchio crush was more transformational, in terms of my development as a human being, so I'll go with that one.
Now I am talking about pre-Karate Kid Ralph Macchio. Very important distinction. I am talking about his Eight is Enough phase. When he hit it huge with Karate Kid, I felt oddly jealous about it. I felt proprietary towards him. I had been with him BACK THEN. Before it was COOL. I somehow liked it better when he was just my little secret.
Some people don't even remember his brilliant one-season stint on Eight is Enough. Ah, but that is probably because they gave up on the show long before he arrived. Macchio was obviously brought on as "young blood" - to draw in an audience like me - horny love-sick pre-teenagers. The ratings were probably down. Bringing in a troubled young cute teenager was an obvious ploy to jumpstart the show again.
To me, at 12 years old, the older siblings (David, Mary, Susan, Joannie, Nancy, Elizabeth and Tommy) were too sophisticated, too slick, and a little bit ikky, frankly. David, the oldest, was a particularly disturbing individual, I thought. With his pearly whites and his feathered hair, and his jobs, and his independence. He had too much of a fake-tan sleazoid veneer. His teeth didn't fool me. The guy was a creep.
The girls all wore shiny lip gloss, shoulder pads, or frightening workout outfits involving spandex and lilac leotard ensembles ... The push-up bra was not in existence in the Bradford house apparently, so the sisters all had droopy sloopy-shouldered silhouettes that just added to the skeezy vibe.
There were cars pulling in and out of the driveway. There were teenage problems of the 17 and 18 year old variety. I could not relate.
And Bowl-Cut Nicholas was not as cute as everyone thought he was, and I found him plain old nauseating.
I needed something else. Someone who hit my demographic. Someone ... a guy ... who was juuuuuust the age I needed him to be ...
And so along came Jeremy Andretti, played by Ralph Macchio. Jeremy was the orphaned nephew of Abby (played by Betty Buckley, of course. She couldn't ever be "alone in the moonlight" in the Bradford house, sadly. No damn privacy). The Bradford family opened their hearts and their home to the troubled teenager, who got into fights, who was sullen, uncommunicative.. . The first time I laid eyes on him, I was GONE. Put a fork in Sheila. She is DONE. He was everything I found attractive - although I didn't know it then, being only 12. It was this weird awakening, watching Jeremy in action. My heart just fluttered open to this character. He was sensitive, but he covered it up with a tough outer shell. It would take a very special person (me???) to crack that shell. His shyness and his toughness were a killer combo.
I wouldn't realize until later that that shy/tough thing he had going on was in a long long continuum of movie stars who have made careers out of mixing those two qualities together. Tough-yet-sensitive hard-boiled-outer-shell guys. Gary Cooper. James Cagney. Cary Grant in some of his movies. Humphrey Bogart. You name it. Jeremy Andretti needed to be tough - not because he was mean, or callous - but because he felt too much. He was too vulnerable.
I very quickly became addicted to Eight is Enough. I was crushed when Jeremy's storyline was not the feature. I suffered through the ikky slick-lipglossed storylines of the older siblings, and the sickeningly sweet Bowl-Cut storylines, waiting, waiting, week after week ... for Jeremy to take the spotlight.
This crush was a secret. It was so powerful that it actually embarrassed me. It was a runaway train - and this is now a familiar sensation to me, years later. I now know the signs, and I no longer judge myself for who I am, and that I do this, on occasion. I still get embarrassed sometimes, when I get swept away like this, but I figure there are worse things in life than this habit of mine.
I have come to believe that these crushes blossom just when I need them most. I ride the wave until it subsides. The crush arrives usually at a low moment when I need fortitude, when I need a light at the end of the tunnel. The crush helps me to hold on, to hold out hope that someday, someday, the closeness I yearn for will manifest in real life, and not just in re-runs of Eight is Fucking Enough, for God's sake. This is why I revere actors so much. This is what they can give us - potentially. This is what certain actors (and certain performances) have given me. Something to hang on to ... when the going gets rough ...
I discovered Ralph Macchio as Jeremy Andretti when I was at the lowest of the lowest of points. I was in junior high. I didn't really take to adolescence, shall we say. I was a fish out of water in the machinations of 8th grade. I was bruised and battered very quickly from rejection from boys - and not just rejection - but outright laughter in my face, when I would ask them to dance, what have you. (I'm not exaggerating. I was "that girl", the pariah of the school, for one awful year). I was pudgy. My clothes were all wrong. My Xena jeans didn't look the same on me as they did on Cris D., the goddess of junior high. Kids crank called my house and shouted insults about my clothes into my ear. I was probably in a very deep depression and didn't even know it. I found it hard to get out of bed in the morning. I would cry on the way to school. Not a good sign.
In the middle of that howling wilderness, there was one particular episode of Eight is Enough that I can say, without too much exaggeration, changed my life. Not outwardly - but inwardly. I could feel the shift take place. I got my eyes above the muck, basically. I saw further. I was in the gutter - but I got a glimpse of the stars. That kind of thing.
I remember that episode almost shot for shot, and I have not seen it since it was on that first time - in 1980 or whatever it was. So that gives you some idea of its lasting impact.
Here's how the episode opened:
In a movie theatre. We can see that the movie being shown is an old Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers classic. There are the two of them, dancing across the marble floor - - floating, actually - her dress graceful, light - he elegant, lithe ... Then we cut to the audience in the movie theatre, and there is Ralph (Jeremy) - with his beautiful face - watching, totally engrossed. He's eating popcorn, and he is totally into the movie.
And two seats away from him sits a teenage girl, also by herself, also engrossed, also chomping on popcorn.
A sort of rated-G True Romance.
After the film, the two of them somehow strike up a conversation in the lobby and they both rave, unselfconsciously, about their love for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and how much they love those old movies and how cool it is that the local movie theatre would run them as matinees.
Our first clue of the HOOK of this episode: the two bond over old movies.
The girl reveals that she has just moved to the town, and is a little nervous about starting at the high school on Monday. He is obviously very excited that she is going to be going to his school, he feels a bond with this girl. There's a sweet connection there. They part, with him telling her that he will keep his eye out for her on Monday. Teenage romance shivers in the air!
But what was so deadly for me watching it, what hooked me in so deeply, was that their connection was not based on lust, which I couldn't relate to yet. I wasn't there, developmentally. No: it was a shared interest in something, a common passion. This was devastating.
The episode moves on. They see each other at school. They have sweet encounters in the hall. They meet up "by coincidence" at the next Saturday matinee of a Fred Astaire movie. Only this time, they sit together, side by side, sharing popcorn, occasionally grinning at each other. Having a passion is so much fun when you can share it with someone who "gets" it.
I died a million little deaths watching all of this. I ached! I yearned! I burned up inside like a pubescent Tennessee Williams character. I had so much to give, so much of myself to share but nowhere to put it yet. Holding all of that stuff back actually hurt. It still does. So I put all of it into Ralph Macchio. He could take it.
Then, inevitably, conflict arises. Turns out that Jeremy's interest in Fred Astaire was something he hid from his friends. With his friends, he played video games, watched sports, played football. He could never admit to liking old movies with DANCE NUMBERS in them to his friends. He needed to save face. As long as his little Saturday-matinee romance was kept secret from his friends - he was cool with it.
But alas, Jeremy, life doesn't work out that way, does it?
Of course, one day she came up to him in the cafeteria, where he was sitting with his group of friends. Oh, the hostility of the high school cafeteria! The caste system! The Darwinian brutality! She says to him, in front of his friends, with a big friendly smile - "Hi! What are you doing Saturday? They're playing 'Swingtime'!"
She has now broken a rule. She didn't even know it was a rule. She was like me. I found myself in the world of junior high, with all these rules, all these boundaries of what was acceptable behavior and I most certainly did not get the memo. She didn't know that he was ashamed of that part of himself, that he needed to keep it secret from his buddies.
Of course, he blows her off. Publicly. He makes believe he doesn't even know what she is talking about. It is a complete and utter rejection. His friends snicker. Ruthlessly. She stands up there, by them, alone, shamed. She walks away, mortified, with the taunting voices of his group of friends imitating her girl voice echoing after her, "Swingtime is playing! Swingtime is playing!"
I knew her pain! I had had my feelings snickered at! I had had my intensity scorned!
And yet, watching. I wanted to crawl through the television and yell at her: NO! He does like you! He's just embarrassed! He can't admit to liking those movies in front of his friends! He does like you - and that's why he rejected you!
And so, I ached for him as well. He was choosing cool indifferent nonchalance (and therefore loneliness) over unafraid involvement. Not just with her. But with who he really was. This was a TRAGEDY.
I saw people making those choices all around me every day in junior high. Clipping off the unacceptable parts of themselves to fit in with the pack. It seemed "the thing" to do but I found it enormously painful. I couldn't manage it.
Because Jeremy was really a senstive person beneath the asshole exterior, he felt horrible about how he had treated her. He tries to talk to her in the hallways. She rejects him. He tries again. She ignores him. She is a stony wall, an ice princess. She was a real hard-ass, that one. I didn't think that I could withstand his heartfelt apologies. I would cave. But I learned from watching her: No one should shame you the way he shamed her. Especially if he had opened up in private. His behavior was unacceptable. A girl has to set her own standards for how she wants to be treated and she shouldn't accept anything less. A man needs to be able to stand up to his friends and say, "This is who I am. Deal." It is not okay any other way. My response to this came from my loneliness. From feeling left out. I was so eager for attention from any boy that I would take the SCRAPS from his table ... rather than wait for someone willing to sit down and have a whole meal with me. I watched the girl on Eight is Enough say "no" to his scraps.
This was a mind-blower. Truly. I am still learning that lesson. She would not allow him to compartmentalize her, and only acknowledge her existence on Saturday afternoons.
Finally comes the climax of the episode. After watching it, I lived it over and over and over in my head, I obsessed on it, I fixated on it, I held onto it with fists, knowing that this is something I need to remember.
She was walking along on the sidewalk in front of the school. The campus was crowded with students. His declaration (when it came) needed to be that public. This is a well-known formula, of course, used in countless movies to great success: the public revelation of true emotion, the declaration of love made in front of a crowd. The final expression of commitment is not just made between two people privately, but involves the whole world. It has to. It's like a wedding ceremony: the bond between two human beings is enough of a big deal that it must be made publicly to have any real weight.
Jeremy runs up to her and tries to talk to her. She staunchly keeps walking on, clutching her books to her chest. He walks along beside her, apologizing, ignoring the rejection. He has lost the indifference. Now it matters more to him to tell her the truth and he doesn't care who sees.
She remains impervious, he hurt her too much, and she finally shouts at him, "Leave me alone!!" She marches off without him, leaving him standing there with a crestfallen look on his face. People are staring. The two of them are making a scene. He doesn't care anymore. And now he is the one who has been publicly rejected and shamed.
And in that moment, the transformation occurs. He leaps into the unknown, he tosses himself off the cliff into the fearless abyss. I'm not sure, I have no empirical evidence of this, no quote to back up my theory, but I would warrant a guess that this next moment alone is responsible for Ralph Macchio's enormous success a couple of years later in major motion pictures. If I had been a casting director, and I had seen that scene, I would have thought: "That kid could carry a romantic film." There was a seismic shift during the scene and by the end of it, he became a viable leading man. You think I'm kidding? I'm not kidding. I'm dead serious. Why else would I remember the scene so clearly 25 years later?
She walks away, with an air of finality. He stands, stunned, silent and then, on impulse, he jumps up on a nearby bench, and blurts out, in tune, at the top of his lungs: "I won't dance! Don't ask me!"
She stops dead in her tracks and slowly looks back at him, shocked. All the watching students start snickering, giggling. He doesn't care. He stays up on the bench, and sings out at top volume: "I won't dance, don't ask me! I won't dance Madame with you! My heart won't let my feet do things that they should do!" He starts to dance around up on the bench, even as the small mocking crowd gathers. She stares up at him, dumbfounded.
He leaps off the bench and dances toward her, still singing: "You know what, you're lovely you know what, you're so lovely! And you know what you do to me!" She's embarrassed, blushing, she doesn't know what to do. She tries to remain impervious, unmoved, and then she gets her nerve back, and turns her back on him, starting to stalk off. (I gasped, watching. The fortitude! The strength of self! To resist!!)
Eventually, of course, his singing and dancing breaks her down. But it's more than that. It's more about his fearlessness in publicly admitting his feelings for her - and even deeper than that: his fearlessness in admitting who he is. Falling in love is not just about declaring yourself to the other person. You also must say, "Here. This is who I am. This is me."
He is now dancing around her, still singing, serenading her, really, in front of the whole school. "When you dance, you're charming and you're gentle -Specially when you do the Continental - But this feeling isn't purely mental -For heaven rest us, I'm not asbestos ... And that's why I won't dance, why should I?" Finally, he takes her in his arms. It is a startling moment. You could feel the gasp in the crowd. He has never touched her before then. And he waltzes her around, awkwardly, goofily, she's laughing now, out loud. and he finishes the song with a flourish, dipping her body over backwards, like an old pro.
The crowd (naturally) bursts into applause.
Oh, the surge of triumph I felt! The beautiful surge of affirmation!
I thought about the episode for days. I actually wrote it out into short story form, so I could elaborate on the feelings of both parties. I wanted to live it.
The message was, obviously, that being yourself, and admitting who you are, not changing yourself for your friends, is far superior to lying in order to save face. This sliced through me like a laser.
Especially, it must be admitted, because it was the boy doing this in that particular story. It was the boy who had to give all that up, and be fearless. In my limited and very painful experience in junior high, boys traveled in packs, were aloof and game-y with me, and acted embarrassed when I asked them to dance. I was always in such a state of uncertainty and pain when it came to the boys I liked. (I know now that boys had their own brand of hard time during those years but that only came with perspective, and getting older. While I was in it, I had none of that. Boys were on another planet. A planet I sooooo wanted to visit. But they didn't want me there.)
The thought that a BOY my age could be interested in me the way Jeremy was interested in her, and that a boy could throw caution to the wind in front of his peers, was so attractive to me, so powerful, that I basically melted into a hot quivering puddle of longing and hope that lasted for MONTHS. It blew my mind.
What it said to me was (outside of the celebrity crush aspect of the whole thing): Don't just look at the surface of things. Don't passively accept the aloofness of the boys you like. They might be afraid, or shy, or don't want to seem goofy to their firends. Differentiate between who they were with their friends and who they were when you got them alone.
But also: it said to me: Do not accept being treated cruelly. Even if he's cute and you like him so much. Do not chip away at yourself. It is forbidden.
It said to me, too, (and here is where it gets global, here is why I still remember it shot for shot):
Hang on.
Just hang on.
There may not be a boy in your life right now who would leap on a park bench for you, but hang on. There will be.
The loneliness you feel right now shall pass. This, too, shall pass.
A tough tough lesson to learn when you are 12 years old.
The girl Jeremy fell for in the episode was not a babe. She had long straight hair and wore long skirts. You didn't have to change who you are to get a boy interested in you (the lesson I learned from Grease). You just had to be yourself, and be true to yourself and continue shining your own particular light with its own particular wattage and someone would see that light eventually and be drawn to it. If you try to change yourself, and fit into what you think is the ideal, if you try to adjust yourself to what you think guys want, then you will not be truthful, and the right kind of guy for you will not be able to find his way to you.
That one episode of Eight is Enough got me through many dark hours in junior high. It burned me up inside, a fire that eventually went out, but a fire I have never forgotten. That one episode helped me not be ashamed of my own individual passions (Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger movies being one of them), to not put pressure on myself to fit into the round hole of the junior high social agenda. Maybe if I stuck to my own path, and kept cultivating my own personality, and expressing my own individual interests, fearlessly, without apology, then a Jeremy type might be in my future.
Keep going, Sheila. You're okay. You're doing okay.
There will be someone out there for you. There will.
I still believe that.
Thanks, Ralph Macchio, for what you gave me in your wonderful performance in that one episode.
And thanks, too, to the creators of Eight is Enough for realizing that eight kids were actually not enough.
Thank you for realizing that you needed one more.
The Books: "Suddenly Last Summer" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
I'm in Tennessee Williams land now, and will be there for quite some time! I am having such a great time re-acquainting myself with all of his plays.
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is Suddenly Last Summer
This play is really really gross. Hahaha Topics touched on: lobotomies, cannibalism, insect-eating plants, sickness, decay, the filth of poverty ... that's just a short list. It's a hard play to take - it's a vision of horror. As I'm sure many of you know, Tennessee Williams' sister Rose was institutionalized (her story is such a tragic one - and it's like you can see Tennessee working it all out in his work over the years - Rose is always there in his work - think about The Glass Menagerie
And in Suddenly Last Summer - Tennessee took on the topic of lobotomies head-on, for the first and only time. In the play, Catherine - the young woman threatened with a lobotomy if she doesn't change her story - has to fight for her life - literally - has to fight with the powers that be to first of all believe her incredible story - and also, to let her have horrible memories. To not insist that her brain be cleaned up, cauterized. That's one of the themes of the play: there is horror in this world. Cruelty. Betrayal. Poverty. Let's look at it head on. Let's not escape it. The lobotomy is a potential escape. How wonderful it would be to have those awful memories cut out of the brain!! Yes, but would it? What price do you pay when you choose oblivion and peace?
These questions had particular poignancy for Tennessee Williams.
So. The plot: Mrs. Venable (played by Katharine Hepburn in the film) has this whole elaborate fantasy wrapped about her son Sebastian (who is dead - died recently). The two of them were a pair - they traveled the world together - etc. etc. Until "last summer" - when Mrs. Venable became ill and couldn't go abroad with him - so he took his cousin Catherine instead. And while touring Europe with Catherine, something terrible happened. He was killed in a small town in ... Spain, I think. Catherine told the tale to the police, returned home, told the tale to Mrs. Venable - who promptly put her in an institution, and set the lobotomy wheels in motion. Mrs. Venable, a true fantasist, refuses to believe the tale that Catherine tells. She must have the tale "cut out of her brain". She cannot live without her fantasy of who her son was. Catherine's tale is that Sebastian had been pursued down the street by a roving band of desperate poverty-struck children - and they eventually caught up with him, and tore him to pieces, and devoured him. Literally. They ate Sebastien alive.
So - the basic plot structure of the book is Catherine defending her story to Dr. Sugar (played by Montgomery Clift in the film) - he is the one she needs to convince, because he is a lobotomy expert. He is one of its pioneers. He has been hired by Mrs. Venable to examine Catherine, and see if she is lying. More than anything, Mrs. Venable wants Catherine to stop telling the awful tale, to stop "blabbing".
The other thing that becomes apparent as Catherine tells her tale - is that Sebastien was not the golden-boy that Mrs. Venable remembers - we all remember things the way we want them to. It slowly becomes clear that Sebastien was actually a high-class gay gigolo (Mrs. Venable is completely unaware of this). He would always travel with good-looking women - so that he could attract male attention. Mrs. Venable doesn't realize that Sebastien was just a user - using his own mother - and that once she fell ill, she was no longer any use to him. - but Catherine picks up on it right away. Mrs. Venable insists that Catherine is just a crazy lying slut - that Sebastien wasn't like that at all. He was actually pure - above earthly cares - didn't need the love of anyone other than his own mother. But Catherine knew Sebastien didn't care about her - that she was there like honey for the bees. Let the men come close ... so that Sebastien could then pounce on them.
The whole story is completely grotesque - a bit hard to take ... but there is some startlingly good writing in it. Catherine has one of my favorite monologues in all of Williams' work - the one that starts: "Suddenly last winter I started writing in my journal in the third person".
I'll excerpt a bit from the opening scene - which is between Mrs. Venable and the doctor. In it, Mrs. Venable tells her version of Sebastien - the version that she insists is the true version, the only version that should be allowed to exist.
EXCERPT FROM Suddenly Last Summer
DOCTOR. Don't you want to sit down now?
MRS. VENABLE. Yes, indeed I do, before I fall down. (He assists her into wheelchair) --Are your hind-legs still on you?
DOCTOR. (still concerned over her agitation) --- My what? Oh -- hind-legs! -- Yes ...
MRS. VENABLE. Well, then you're not a donkey, you're certainly not a donkey because I've been talking the hind-legs off a donkey -- several donkeys ... But I had to make it clear to you that the world lost a great deal too when I lost my son last summer ... You would have liked my son, he would have been charmed by you. My son, Sebastian, was not a family snob or a money snob but he was a snob, all right. He was a snob about personal charm in people, he insisted on good looks in people around him, and, oh, he had a perect little court of young and beautiful people around him, always, wherever he was, here in New Orleans or New York or on the Riviera or in Paris and Venice, he always had a little entourage of the beautiful and the talented and the young!
DOCTOR. Your son was young, Mrs. Venable?
MRS. VENABLE. Both of us were young, and stayed young, Doctor.
DOCTOR. Could I see a photograph of your son, Mrs. Venable?
MRS. VENABLE. Yes, indeed you could, Doctor. I'm glad that you asked to see one. I'm going to show you not one photograph but two. Here. Here is my son, Sebastian, in a Renaissance pageboy's costume at a masked ball in Cannes. Here is my son, Sebastian, in the same costume at a masked ball in Venice. These two pictures were taken twenty years apart. Now which is the older one, Doctor?
DOCTOR. This photograph looks older.
MRS. VENABLE. The photograph looks older but not the subject. It takes character to refuse to grow old, Doctor -- successfully to refuse to. It calls for discipline, abstention. One cocktail before dinner, not two, four, six -- a single lean chop and lime juice on a salad in restaurants famed or rich dishes.
(Foxhill comes from the house)
FOXHILL. Mrs. Venable, Miss Holly's mother and brother are ---
(Simultaneously Mrs. Holly and George appear in the window)
GEORGE. Hi, Aunt Vi!
MRS. HOLLY. Violet dear, we're here.
FOXHILL. They're here.
MRS. VENABLE. Wait upstairs in my upstairs living room for me. (to Foxhill) Get them upstairs. I don't want them at that window during this talk. (to the Doctor) Let's get away from the window. (He wheels her away)
DOCTOR. Mrs. Venable? Did your son have a -- well -- what kind of a personal, well, private life did --
MRS. VENABLE. That's a question I wanted you to ask me.
DOCTOR. Why?
MRS. VENABLE. I haven't heard the girl's story except indirectly in a watered-down version, being too ill to go to hear it directly, but I've gathered enough to know that it's a hideous attack on my son's moral character which, being dead, he can't deend himself from. I have to be the defender. Now. Sit down. Listen to me ... (the Doctor sits) ... beore you hear whatever you're going to hear from the girl when she gets here. My son, Sebastian, was chaste. Not c-h-a-s-e-d! Oh, he was chased in that way of spelling it, too, we had to very fleet-footed I can tell you, with his looks and his charm, to keep ahead of pursuers, every kind of pursuer! -- I mean he was c-h-a-s-t-e! -- Chaste ....
DOCTOR. I understood what you meant, Mrs. Venable.
MRS. VENABLE. And you believe me, don't you?
DOCTOR. Yes, but ---
MRS. VENABLE. But what?
DOCTOR. Chastity at -- what age was your son last summer?
MRS. VENABLE. Forty, maybe. We really didn't count birthdays ...
DOCTOR. He lived a celibate life?
MRS. VENABLE. As strictly as if he'd vowed to! This sounds like vanity, Doctor, but really I was actually the only one in his life that satisfied the demands he made of people. Time after time my son would let people go, dismiss them! -- because their, their, their! -- attitude toward him was --
DOCTOR. Not pure as --
MRS. VENABLE. My son, Sebastian, demanded! We were a famous couple. People didn't speak of Sebastian and his mother or Mrs. Venable and her son, they said, "Sebastian and Violet, Violet and Sebastian are staying at the Lido, they're at the Ritz in Madrid, Sebastian and Violet, Violet and Sebastian have taken a house at Biarritz for the season," and every appearance, every time we appeared, attention was centered on us! -- everyone else! Eclipsed! Vanity? Ohhhh, no, Doctor, you can't call it that --
DOCTOR. I didn't call it that.
MRS. VENABLE. -- It wasn't folie de grandeur, it was grandeur.
DOCTOR. I see.
MRS. VENABLE. An attitude toward life that's hardly been known in the world since the great Renaissance princes were crowded out of their palaces and gardens by successful shopkeepers!
DOCTOR. I see.
MRS. VENABLE. Most people's lives -- what are they but trails of debris, each day more debris, more debris, long long trails of debris with nothing to clean it all up but, finally, death ... (We hear lyric music) My son Sebastian and I constructed our days, each day, we would -- carve out each day of our lives like a piece of sculpture. -- Yes, we left behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture! But, last summer -- (Pause. The music continues) I can't forgive him for it, not even now that he's paid for it with his life! -- he let in this -- vandal! This --
DOCTOR. The girl that --?
MRS. VENABLE. That you're going to meet here this afternoon! Yes. He admitted this vandal and with her tongue for a hatchet she's gone about smashing our legend, the memory of --
DOCTOR. Mrs. Venable, what do you think is her reason?
MRS. VENABLE. Lunatics don't have reason!
DOCTOR. I mean what do you think is her -- motive?
MRS. VENABLE. What a question! -- We put the bread in her mouth and the clothes on her back. People that like you for that or even forgive you for it are, are -- hen's teeth, Doctor. The role of the benefactor is worse than thankless, it's the role of a victim, Doctor, a sacrificial victim, yes, they want your blood, Doctor, they want your blood on the altar steps of their outraged, outrageous egos!
DOCTOR. Oh. You mean she resented the --
MRS. VENABLE. Loathed! -- They can't shut her up at St. Mary's.
DOCTOR. I thought she'd been there for months.
MRS. VENABLE. I mean keep her still there. She babbles! They couldn't shut her up in Cabeza de Lobo or at the clinic in Paris -- she babbled, babbled! -- smashing my son's reputation. -- On the Berengaria bringing her back to the States she broke out of the stateroom and babbled, babbled; even at the airport when she was flown down here, she babbled a bit of her story before they could whisk her into an ambulance to St. Mary's. This is a reticule, Doctor. (She raises a cloth bag) A catch-all carry-all bag for an elderly lady which I turned into last summer ... Will you open it or me, my hands are stiff, and fish out some cigarettes and a cigarette holder. (He does)
DOCTOR. I don't have matches.
MRS. VENABLE. I think there's a table-lighter on the table.
DOCTOR. Yes, there is. (He lights it, it flames up high) My Lord, what a torch!
MRS. VENABLE. (with a sudden sweet smile) "So shines a good deed in a naughty world," Doctor -- Sugar ...
(Pause. A bird sings sweetly)
DOCTOR. Mrs. Venable?
MRS. VENABLE. Yes?
DOCTOR. In your letter last week you made some reference to a, to a -- fund of some kind, an endowment fund of --
MRS. VENABLE. I wrote you that my lawyers and bankers and certified public accountants were setting up the Sebastian Venable Memorial Foundation to subsidize the work of young people like you that are pushing out the frontiers of art and science but have a financial problem. You have a financial problem, don't you, Doctor?
DOCTOR. Yes, we do have that problem. My work is such a new and radical thing that people in charge of state funds are naturally a little scared of it and keep us on a small budget, so small that -- We need a separate ward for my patients, I need trained assistants, I'd like to marry a girl I can't afford to marry! -- But there's also the problem of getting right patients, not just -- criminal psychopaths that the State turns over to us for my operation! -- because it's -- well -- risky ... I don't want to turn you against my work at Lion's View but I have to be honest with you. There is a good deal of risk in my operation. Whenever you enter the brain with a foreign object ...
MRS. VENABLE. Yes.
DOCTOR. -- Even a needle-thin knife ...
MRS. VENABLE. Yes.
DOCTOR. -- In a skilled surgeon's fingers ...
MRS. VENABLE. Yes.
DOCTOR. -- There is a good deal of risk involved in -- the operation ...
MRS. VENABLE. You said that it pacifies them, it quiets them down, it suddenly makes them peaceful.
DOCTOR. Yes. It does that, that much we already know, but ---
MRS. VENABLE. What?
DOCTOR. Well, it will be ten years before we can tell if the immediate benefits of the operation will be lasting or -- passing or even if there'd still be -- and this is what haunts me about it! -- any possibility, afterwards, of reconstructing a -- totally sound person, it may be that the person will always be limited afterwards, relieved of acute disturbances, but -- limited, Mrs. Venable.
MRS. VENABLE. Oh, but what a blessing to them, Doctor, to be just peaceful, to be just suddenly -- peaceful ... (A bird sings sweetly in the garden) After all that horror, after those nightmares: just to be able to lift up their eyes and see -- (She looks up and raises a hand to indicate the sky) -- a sky not as black with savage, devouring birds as the sky that we saw in the Encantadas, Doctor.
DOCTOR. -- Mrs. Venable? I can't guarantee that a lobotomy would stop her -- babbling!
MRS. VENABLE. That may be, maybe not, but after the operation, who would believe her, Doctor?
(Pause. Faint jungle music)
DOCTOR. (quietly) My God. (Pause) -- Mrs. Venable, suppose after meeting the girl and observing the girl and hearing the story she babbles -- I still shouldn't feel that her condition's -- intractable enough! to justify the risks of -- suppose I shouldn't feel that non-surgical treatment such as insulin shock and electric shock and --
MRS. VENABLE. SHE'S HAD ALL THAT AT SAINT MARY'S! Nothing else is left for her.
DOCTOR. But if I disagreed with you?
(Pause)
MRS. VENABLE. That's just part of a question: finish the question, Doctor.
DOCTOR. Would you still be interested in my work at Lion's View? I mean would the Sebastian Venable Memorial Foundation still be interested in it?
MRS. VENABLE. Aren't we always more interested in a thing that concerns us personally, Doctor?
DOCTOR. Mrs. Venable!! (Catharine Holly appears between the lace window curtains) You're such an innocent person that it doesn't occur to you, it obviously hasn't even occurred to you that anybody less innocent than you are could possibly interpret that offer of a subsidy as -- well, as sort of a bribe?
MRS. VENABLE. (laughs, throwing her head back) Name it that -- I don't care --. There's just two things to remember. She's a destroyer. My son was a creator! -- Now if my honesty's shocked you -- pick up your little black bag without the subsidy in it, and run away from this garden! -- Nobody's heard our conversation but you and I, Doctor Sugar ...
(Miss Foxhill comes out of the house)
FOXHILL. Mrs. Venable?
MRS. VENABLE. What is it, what do you want, Miss Foxhill?
FOXHILL. Mrs. Venable? Miss Holly is here with --
(Mrs. Venable sees Catherine at the window)
MRS. VENABLE. Oh my God. There she is, in the window! -- I told you I didn't want her to enter my house again, I told you to meet them at the door and lead them around the side of the house to the garden and you didn't listen. I'm not ready to face her. I have to have my five o'clock cocktail first, to fortify me. Take my chair inside. Doctor? Are you still here? I thought you'd run out of the garden. I'm going back through the garden to the other entrance. Doctor? Sugar? You may stay in the garden if you wish to or run out of the garden if you wish to or go in this way if you wish to or do anything that you wish to but I'm going to have my five o'clock daiquiri, frozen! -- before I face her ...
(All during this she has been sailing very slowly off through the garden like a stately vessel at sea with a fair wind in her sails, a pirate's frigate or a treasure-laden galleon. The young Doctor stares at Catherine framed by the lace window curtains. Sister Felicity appears beside her and draws her away from the window. Music: an ominous fanfare. Sister Felicity holds the door open for Catharine as the Doctor starts quickly forward. He starts to pick up his bag but doesn't. Catharine rushes out, they almost collide with each other)
CATHARINE. Excuse me.
DOCTOR. I'm sorry ...
(She looks after him as he goes into the house)
SISTER FELICITY. Sit down and be still till your family come outside.
(DIM OUT)
October 15, 2005
In praise of Kashmir
You know how sometimes you hear a song you've heard a million times, and suddenly - it's like you hear it for the first time, and you can't believe how great it is???
I have just discovered "Kashmir", by Led Zeppelin.
I cannot get past it.
I cannot get past it.
I have it on a constant loop. I keep thinking: "Okay, now I can move on to other music ... or how 'bout the next song on the album ... I can probably move on to the next song ..." only to find that my desire to hear "Kashmir" again is too strong. So I hit Repeat.
My neighbors must be so OVER the Kashmir thing.
I actually have a bunch of Led Zeppelin in my collection ... and you know, whatever, "Kashmir" is part of it, I like it.
But yesterday - suddenly I HEARD it.
That underlying chord thing that they do throughout - I'm not a musician so I don't know how to describe it - you all know what I'm talking about - that theme that they keep coming back to throughout the song - and yet each time they come back to it, it's like it gets deeper, harder, rougher -
This is the part that reaaaaaalllly gets me:
All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find out where I've been ......
What he does with his voice on "been" - how he draws it out, going down a sharp, back up to the main note, but always with complete control - argh. Don't know how to describe it. But what he does with his voice there, and what the music is doing beneath his voice - just slices me open like a grapefruit, man. I think it's because that part is one of the "verses" - where they move away from that insistent chord thing going on beneath the whole song - and through the course of his long-held note on "been" - they move back into that theme - it reappears beneath his voice. Day-um, it's just exciting, whatever it is.
This song makes me want to trash a hotel room. Have anonymous liaisons in smoky corners. Do something insane. Get all nuts. It's a primal song. I don't even know what the hell they're talking about, I don't know why it's called Kashmir ... I don't need to know. Frankly I don't care.
I. Can't. Stop. Listening. To. It.
The Books: "Orpheus Descending" (Tennessee Williams)
Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next play on the script shelf is:
I'm in Tennessee Williams land now, and will be there for quite some time! I am having such a great time re-acquainting myself with all of his plays.
Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is Orpheus Descending
Williams' first play (Battle of Angels) was basically a first draft for this later (much later) version. Battle of Angels was produced in 1940, Orpheus Descending had its first production in 1957. It's interesting to read the two plays in tandem, to watch his development as a writer, craftsman. I mean, of course, he developed his craft - but it's really interesting to see how it manifests itself in these two versions of the same play.
The main female character is no longer named Myra. She is now referred to as Lady Torrance - and everyone calls her "Lady". She is still trapped in a loveless marriage, to an awful man who is dying - an awful man who was responsible for her father being burned alive some 10 years before. She despises her husband. Maureen Stapleton played Lady.
And again - into this small Southern town comes an outsider. A virile young man named Val, a drifter. In Orpheus Descending his character is way more developed than in Battle of Angels. In Orpheus, he's kind of a hustler. Or - he was. He's trying to go clean. He wants to join the legitimate world. Lady gives him a chance, and hires him as a clerk in her candy shop.
Lady and Val end up having an affair. Right under her dying husband's nose, basically. The situation is fraught with danger. Nobody trusts or likes Val in the town - and Williams is very clever - he keeps the audience on edge as well. WE aren't sure if we should trust Val. Sure, he's charming, and sexy, and he has a way with words ... but can we trust him?
There's a minor character in the play, though, named Carol Cutrere who kind of haunts me. She has 2, maybe 3 scenes - she's not a lead - although she is referred to all the time. I think she's the best part in the play. I would LOVE to play that part.
She's a member of one of the best families in town. And yet ... well. Something's "off" about her. She is as wild as they come. She is brazen. Corrupt. She has no scruples, no morals. Her family has demanded that she leave town, and has given orders to every shop, every bar, to not serve her. Carol Cutrere can't seem to leave town - so she keeps haunting around the edges of things - trying to enter the drugstore, the candy shop ... just to use the phone, or have a Coke ... As with all of Williams' wanton women - there's something broken inside of her. She's looking for something. She yearns for something. Softness, maybe. Tenderness. The only way she thinks she can get it is by molesting men in the back seats of their cars. She's a tragic character. A GREAT character.
So I'll excerpt a bit of one of her scenes. It's just a perfectly crafted small scene. It tells you everything - without telling it to you straight out. I just LOVE it.
Val makes his first entrance into the play. He enters Lady Torrance's shop. Lady is there, and a bunch of other gossipy women. Carol Cutrere has snuck in to use the phone. Everyone eavesdrops on her conversation. She is talking to her sister, who lives outside the county lines, and I think she's going to go stay with her for a while ... but it's obvious, from how Tennessee writes it ... that her sister doesn't want her to come. Nobody wants Carol Cutrere. She is completely on the outside of society.
So. Anyway. Val enters. The women flutter about him. Eventually, they leave - on errands - and Carol is left there alone with Val. And Carol ... like a moth to the flame ... eventually makes her move. She's one of those women who can't help herself. Not because she's just a gross slut. But because her loneliness is so deep and so wide.
It is important that Carol Cutrere not be like an adult. But like a little girl, wide-eyed, wondrous, trapped in an adult body. She's a child. Very important. Notice how, in the start of the scene, she says, "Boys like you are always fixing something." Boys. There's your clue right there. If she's played as a knowing woman, a calculated floozy - it's completely missing the point.
Oh, and just a tip: The long story Carol tells Val about meeting him at a party and the lady osteopath, etc. etc. ... is true.
EXCERPT FROM Orpheus Descending
[She crosses into the main store, watching Val with the candid curiosity of one child observing another. He pays no attention but concentrates on his belt buckle, which he is repairing with a pocketknife]
CAROL. What're you fixing?
VAL. Belt buckle.
CAROL. Boys like you are always fixing something. Could you fix my slipper?
VAL. What's wrong with your slipper?
CAROL. Why are you pretending not to remember me?
VAL. It's hard to remember someone you never met.
CAROL. Then why'd you look so startled when you saw me?
VAL. Did I?
CAROL. I thought for a moment you'd run back out the door.
VAL. The sight of a woman can make me walk in a hurry but I don't think it's ever made me run. --- You're standing in my light.
CAROL. [moving aside slightly] Oh, excuse me. Better?
VAL. Thanks...
CAROL. Are you afraid I'll snitch?
VAL. Do what?
CAROL. Snitch? I wouldn't; I'm not a snitch. But I can prove that I know you if I have to. It was New Year's Eve in New Orleans.
VAL. I need a small pair of pliers ...
CAROL. You had on that jacket and a snake ring with a ruby eye.
VAL. I never had a snake ring with a ruby eye.
CAROL. A snake ring with an emerald eye?
VAL. I never had a snake ring with any kind of an eye ... [Begins to whistle softly, his face averted]
CAROL. [smiling gently] Then maybe it was a dragon ring with an emerald eye or a diamond or a ruby eye. You told us that it was a gift from a lady osteopath that you'd met somewhere in your travels and that any time you were broke you'd wire this lady osteopath collect, and no matter how far you were or how long it was since you'd seen her, she'd send you a money order for twenty-five dollars with the same sweet message each time. "I love you. When will you come back?" And to prove the story, not that it was difficult to believe it, you took the latest of these sweet messages from your wallet for us to see ... [She throws back her head with soft laughter. He looks away still further and busies himself with the belt buckle] --- We followed you through five places before we made contact with you and I was the one that made contact. I went up to the bar where you were standing and touched your jacket and said, "What stuff is this made of?" and when you said it was snakeskin, I said, "I wish you'd told me before I touched it." And you said something not nice. You said, "Maybe that will learn you to hold back your hands." I was drunk by that time, which was after midnight. Do you remember what I said to you? I said, "What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?" I'd never said that before, or even consciously thought it, but afterwards it seemed like the truest thing that my lips had ever spoken, what on earth can you do but catch at whatever comes near you with both your hands until your fingers are broken ... You gave me a quick, sober look. I think you nodded slightly, and then you picked up your guitar and began to sing. After singing you passed the kitty. Whenever paper money was dropped in the kitty you blew a whistle. My cousin Bertie and I dropped in five dollars, you blew the whistle five times and then sat down at our table for a drink, Schenley's with Seven Up. You showed us all those signatures on your guitar ... Any correction so far?
VAL. Why are you so anxious to prove I know you?
CAROL. Because I want to know you better and better! I'd like to go out jooking with you tonight.
VAL. What's jooking?
CAROL. Oh, don't you know what that is? That's where you get in a car and drink a little and drive a little and stop and dance a little to a juke box and then you drink a little more and drive a little more and stop and dance a little more to a juke box and then you stop dancing and you just drink and drive and then you stop driving and just drink, and then, finally, you stop drinking ...
VAL. --- What do you do then?
CAROL. That depends on the weather and who you're jooking with. If it's a clear night you spread a blanket among the memorial stones on Cypress Hill, which is the local bone orchard, but if it's not a fair night, and this one certainly isn't, why, usually then you go to the Idlewild cabins between here and Sunset on the Dixie Highway ...
VAL. --- That's about what I figured. But I don't go that route. Heavy drinking and smoking the weed and shacking with strangers is okay for kids in their twenties but this is my thirtieth birthday and I'm all through with that route. [Looks up with dark eyes] I'm not young any more.
CAROL. You're young at thirty -- I hope so! I'm twenty-nine!
VAL. Naw, you're not young at thirty if you've been on a goddam party since you were fifteen!
[Picks up his guitar and sings and plays "Heavenly Grass". Carol has taken a pint of bourbon from her trench coat pocket and she passes it to him]
CAROL. Thanks. That's lovely. Many happy returns on your birthday, Snakeskin.
hahahahahaha
Now the outfit is, indeed, funny (I, personally, think the facial expression is even more amusing). But it's the commentary that brings it to a whole new comedic level.
So unless Michael Stipe woke up one morning and said, "today, I am going out dressed as Jessica's grandfather, if he were an academic obsessed with crossing the Delaware," then this is a MISSTEP.
That will only make sense if you read the whole thing.
I can't stop laughing.
October 14, 2005
Booker Prize Brou-haha
It seems like people are literally having nervous breakdowns and going into apoplexy because John Banville won the Booker. I mean - the op-eds I've read are so doom-laden that they sound kind of insane.
Here's John Sutherland's response to the raging controversy.
This guy sounds like he needs to go on medication.
My dad loves John Banville - and therefore, I think it's awesome he won the prize. And I think it's great that literary types are FREAKING OUT about it. One of my favorite things in the world is a good old-fashioned literary dustup!!
Diary Friday
This is a repeat - it's also not from high school. Just felt like re-visiting it again. My encounter with the cab driver earlier this week made me think of this night in the journal entry. It's why I always smile when I hear the opening piano of "The Night the Lights Went out on Broadway". Weird: how an entire memory can come to life in the blink of an eye - like a flower opening in water on speeded-up film. There it is - the memory: the whole thing: smells, sights, feelings ... I remember how awful my food tasted that night. I remember the feel of the stage floor beneath my back. I remember what I was wearing. The whole thing: THERE. In technicolor, every time I hear that song.
I love that. It can be awful, too - if the memory is not a good one. You can get ambushed then ... but this one happens to be a good memory.
This entry is from the summer before I left Chicago. Intense. Burningly intense. It was intense because I was leaving, there was an end in sight, lots of good-byes ... My co-star in this entry is Window-Boy. I didn't call him that in real life - but I don't say his name here on the blog. So I refer to him as Window Boy!
I guess I just like some of the writing in this journal entry. It's a bit scattered and back and forth, but I think it captures the essence of that experience that night.
I realize that I wrote about this guy with a level of minutiae that might be alarming. Or who knows - maybe it's endearing. I have rarely been that fascinated with someone - even though he was pretty much a normal regular guy. I loved writing about him. I loved being with him, but my journals of our times together are ... it's just unbelievable. When did I have the time to write about him like that???
Oh, humorous coda to all of this - I saw him 2 years ago. He was passing through New York and we got together for a drink. Lots of reminiscing, catching up ... And I mentioned the short novel I had written. And that I had based a lot of it on him and me. He gave me this look, grinned and said, "You could probably write a full-length novel about the past 5 minutes."
hahahahaha so true!!!!
July 27
Last night:
Went out with three people from work. Bill, Kerry, Bill – sat outside and drank margaritas. I always knew I'd get on socially with these people. We had a wonderful time, toasting my future, but also talking about their lives, their goals, what's up. My life is bringing up issues for all of them, making them take a look at what they want, so we had a GREAT time, getting drunk, talking about life. Then I went tattoo shopping on Belmont, and they all tagged along. After that, Bill and I walked together – we both live in the same area. We parted at Clark and Addison, and then, on a tequila impulse, I crossed the street to the improv club. The door was locked. I peeked through the window, and saw it was empty but there were some lights on. I knocked on the window. But to no avail. Oh well. I tried. I walked home.
Jim and George are there, getting ready to go out for a drink. I bombarded them with tequila-silliness, and made a laughing stock out of myself. George was laughing right in my face. 5 or 10 minutes after I got home, I was getting ready to leave with Jim and George, and the phone rang. Jim was on the other line with Steven, and a call came in. "Hello? …." He looked over at me. Jim just gave me this look, then said, "Hold on one second." Then went back to the call with Steven, said, "I've gotta go – Okay – bye!" and then handed the phone to me without saying anything. But I knew who it was.
"Hello?"
"Sheila?"
"Yes?"
"Sheila?"
"This is Sheila. Is this Window-Boy?"
"Yes."
"Hi. Where are you?"
"The theatre."
(Now that is totally weird.) "That's so weird cause I was just up there about 15 minutes ago, knocking on the window."
"Really? That is weird."
"I stopped by the theatre, looking for you, like – let me in! Let me in!"
"I didn't hear you. I've been up here playing the piano."
I felt a pinch in my heart. I said, "Can I come up?"
"Yeah, come on up."
"I want you to play for me."
"I will."
So I hung up and began Phase II of my evening.
George and Jim's faces as they said goodbye to me were priceless. I had whirled through their relatively calm space with a burst of manic insane energy, and then boom, I was gone. Out the door.
Walked back up to the club. The door was now open – other people were milling about. I breezed by them and charged in to find my Window-Boy. He was sitting in the downstairs space in one of the low chairs, smoking, reading over some sides. We said hello. I sat on the stage, looked over the sides with him. He told me what the audition was. He had made some changes in the script, his handwriting squiggling in the margins. I think he was glad to see me. We have such funny Dada-esque conversations. They are satisfying to me in a way that other conversations are not. He knows I'm moving to New York, but he doesn't ask details. I don't feel the need to offer them up. There's an honesty in our dynamic. There's no lying. He has never lied to me. And once you start talking honestly, it's easier and easier to keep going. Harder and harder to stop. Lies and denials have no place. It feels unnatural and stilted with him to have it any other way.
Window-Boy came to see Lesbian Bathhouse [Uhm...Yes. I was in a late-night show, which was a huge hit, called Lesbian Bathhouse. Needless to say, it is not on my resume.] – he squeezed in my show between two of his own shows. E for Effort. He said, "I liked your work" with this serious suddenly sincere look on his face. We hugged big and hard. He called me and told me when he could come. I didn't chase him down at all. Very pro-active for one of the least pro-active men I know.
He sat in the audience, over to the side, watching my work like a hawk, empirically, leaning forward, elbows on knees, intent, not laughing much, but paying strict and rigid attention. Cute. It meant a lot to me that he came.
If I had been told, when I met this man, that three years later any of this would still be going on, I would not have believed it. But it has happened, and it doesn't feel out of the ordinary at all.
We've already laughed about him visiting me in NYC. I can just see the 2 of us, wandering around Times Square, having some random Dada-esque time. He told me he's not done much traveling – he traveled through Europe, Italy, etc., in high school with his choir, but not much else. He's only been to Manhattan a few times. He's a real Chicago local.
C. came down with her dog. [Ed: She was the owner and manager of the club.] Window-Boy introduced us. She and I have never really met, strange as that is. She was very cordial. Window-Boy gave her his sides. She would be working with him on them the next day, he wanted her help. She clearly adores him. Respects him. It was interesting to watch them together. I'm always learning new things about him - just by observing. You don't get much out of Window Boy with a direct question. But man. I see a lot. Then C. left, locking the doors behind her. We were alone.
We talked a little bit more about his audition, about the closing night of Hamlet. He lit 3 or 4 candles, turned off all the rest of the lights – it was such a Chicago scene – it was so US – and then he sat down at the piano. He's never played for me before - and last night - he played for me for about an hour. He played like a maniac, vigorously, passionately. A lot of Elton John, Billy Joel – also his own stuff. He played me the first song he ever wrote: "I warn you. It is really corny" – and it was this heart-broken love-sick song. I laughed in his face, as I listened to the words.
But I sang along to the other stuff. I lay down on my back on the black stage, legs splayed out, and sang. Throwing my voice up to the ceiling. In the middle of songs, he kept apologizing for how out of shape his voice was.
I can't even tell you how happy and fulfilled the whole thing made me. It defies description. I felt like my heart expanded. As he played, I moved around. Sometimes I danced, sometimes I stood behind him to watch his fingers, sometimes I sat on a stool and drank a beer, listening.
I'd look across the candlelit space – at him – at the piano – at his head of crazy black hair – and I didn't think anything. I was BEING. My soul was flying out of my body into the universe. I am! I am! I am! I was so in the moment. I was the moment. And I loved him.
Fleeting. Life is so short. I am so conscious of that. Especially now, since my time left in Chicago is so short.
I'll stop what I'm doing – and just breathe it in. Give myself the order: Stop. Listen. Smell. Look. All of this is so fleeting. My life here will be gone in 4 weeks. Appreciate. It's not that hard to do, actually. Nothing is normal now. My future is unknown, and my present has a tangible limit to it. So I am filled with the sense of ending, of good-byes, of last times.
It's so poignant.
I cry pretty much every day. But then again, I laugh pretty much every day too.
I said at one point during the piano-playing frenzy, "My favorite album of Billy Joel's is the Songs in the Attic album."
He said, hands poised and ready, "What songs do you like from that album?"
I said, "The Night the Lights Went Out on Broadway.'"
And he started the intro immediately. It was awesome. That he would know it - that he was so ready to give it to me ... God. It was a great moment. I love that piano at the beginning. We both sang the hell out of that song – and we forgot the lyrics at exactly the same point – and both burst into laughter.
The piano at the club is a battered old grand, with stained keys – and Window-Boy is this crazy guy in my life - with crazy black hair – it was fantastic. One of my favorite nights I have ever had in Chicago.
Window-Boy will be an always person in my life. He won't just drop out of sight and heart and mind, like some of the others. I have known this for a while, but it still amazes me.
A dim candlelit bar, inhabited by me, Window-Boy, and a piano. Happiness: singing with him, him playing the piano – the two of us talking in between songs. I loved lying on my back, and listening to the music.
Window-Boy can be such an innocent. He said to me, so cute, all enthusiastic and wistful, "Last year – did you know that Elton John and Billy Joel toured together? Can you imagine that?? The two of them together? And I missed it! Did you hear about that??"
That was such a highly publicized tour, and it was endearing, him saying, "Did you hear??" like that.
I said, "Uhm … EVERYBODY knew about that tour, Window-Boy."
He shrugged, kind of sheepish, still improvising carelessly on the piano. "Well … not up on the concert scene. You know."
"Yeah. I know."
He got up to go back to the bathroom, after about an hour of singing, playing, talking. And I was alone. Leave me alone nowadays, and I am instantly 100% contemplative, nostalgic, aware.
It got so quiet, like a blanket over the place. I was sitting absolutely still. Only my eyes moved. I looked around, and I saw EVERYTHING. Everything. I saw life. I saw the details of the bar in a microscopic way, but I saw myself – in the context of my LIFE – and how this life is ending and a new one beginning.
I looked from candle to candle to candle – some in red glass holders, others in yellow glass holders – I saw the Hamlet sign – purple – with the T a man, head thrown back, arms spread out – exclamation point – darkened Miller Genuine Draft sign – the black pipes overhead – the silent living piano next to me – Window-Boy down the hall in the bathroom – this person in my life who has afforded me some of the funniest memories, who has really made Chicago this very specific place for me – a panorama. Every beat of my heart I felt, as I looked around – goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye
And it's not like I spend a lot of time in a locked-up improv club with Window-Boy. Last night was the first time. But it is the context I am familiar with. And I will miss the context.
Because it is done. I know it's done.
And every second that went by, I was saying goodbye. And Thank You at the same time.
It was so vivid, so potent. Pain and joy all mixed up together. Feeling impending loss, anticipatory nostalgia, and overwhelming gratitude.
Window-Boy came out of the bathroom to find me sitting there in a daze of tears. He sat bac