The Sheila Variations

Diary Friday

Next installment in the Picnic adventure!

Part 1. The audition
Part 2: The callbacks, getting into the play
Part 3: First meeting with the director
Part 4. The calm before the storm ... the time before rehearsals started ... memorizing lines, etc.

And suddenly - it was time. Rehearsals began. The whole TS-dating drama noticeably recedes - the second I start rehearsals. And I can hear a new tone come into my voice. It might be just me that notices it - because I know myself well - but I can see that things were almost immediately different for me, and I jumpstarted myself up to another level.

OCTOBER 14

Here I am in the Theatre (second rehearsal). We're taking a break now. Diary, I am so excited. I love everybody in this play. I have learned more in the past few days than I have in my whole 4 years in Drama class. God, I'm loving it. I have to go into detail, but later. I love it! I have rehearsals Mon, Tues, Wed 6 - 11. And I have a COSTUME FITTING tomorrow at 3:00!!

Later: Okay, I don't think I'm gonna have time for a diary. Yesterday, I had a rehearsal 10 to 5 and today we had a rehearsal 10 to 5 - but I don't care. I am having the time of my life. These rehearsals are so intense. I am so tired. But I LOVE IT.

And the people - they're the best part. Oh, I want to get into details, but I can't. I don't have time. [And then I proceed to go into detail anyway]

Okay, I have to tell you all their names. Lenny is playing Bomber. Joe C. is playing Howard. Jennifer C. is playing Irma. Joanne F. is playing Rosemary. Joanna F. is playing Madge. Eric is playing Hal. Linda Murphy - Mrs. Potts. Tina T. - Christine. Brett is playing Alan (he is my absolute favorite). Liz is playing Flo. [Liz!!! She's one of my best friends to this day. Amazing!!]

They are all so great. I don't feel like a leper at all. I am a member of this cast. I have quite a lot to learn, but they don't judge me. It's so relaxed!

Brett is hysterical. Some of his facial expressions!

I'm just looking forward to getting to know them, be friends with them. Brett is only a junior too - so he'll be there next year. From the first time I saw him at auditions, I liked him. He was nice to me from the start.

God, I am so grateful that I am getting a chance to act in this play.

And I love Liz and Eric and Jennifer and Joanna (who plays my sister).

I am learning so much. And my part is WONDERFUL. I don't know how many times I have read the script!

Yesterday and today were heaven. I was scared to death yesterday for the first rehearsal. Lately, it's been surprising me how shy I really am. I am really desperately shy and horrendously awkward socially. The more awkward I get, the shyer I get, and vice versa. So anyways, yesterday's rehearsal was in G Studio. I got there - everyone else had come (not Kimber yet) and Michelle (Kimber's assistant) introduced me to everyone. Everyone else knew each other so she sort of said, "Everyone - this is Sheila O'Malley -" and she introduced everybody to me. Everybody just smiling really nicely at me and saying, "hi, Sheila" - who cares if I'm in high school! I can't help that.

Yesterday was just - it was all so new but so much fun. We all sat in a semi-circle in front of Kimber. I learned so much: get into DETAILS. Kimber said today, "A mediocre actor enters the stage from the wings. A good actor comes from somewhere." So every time a character would go off stage, he'd say, "Where are you going?" All these questions, things to think about, discussions about the period when the play took place (1952), discussions about Kansas - the small-town where the play takes place.

Diary - I have a large part. Millie is a big part. I can't believe it! I didn't realize it until I yellowed in my lines.

Most of why I love it so much is cause of the PEOPLE. It was like- blow me away. I felt so welcome, just totally at ease at once. I have this feeling that Brett and Eric will be very prominent people in my future entries. I swear, after high school, guys like them are culture shock! [Eric went on to become a little bit famous. He was a regular on "Caroline in the City" - he was on "Frasier" - and every time I'd see him on television, I would remember how kind he was to me, back then ... how friendly, sweet, and nice. He's good good people.]

One bad thing: it's gonna be hard to be in this play with them. I get crushes so easily.

Brett is such a riot. He plays Alan - Alan is my only real friend in the play so Brett, when we'd come back from breaks or whatever - he'd grab me around the shoulders, or pat my knee if I was sitting, and say, "Hey, buddy!" He is so funny - I just watch him having a conversation with someone and his facial expressions are enough for me to just lose it. I mean, it's not like I'm gonna ask Brett to the Sadie Hawkins or anything, but I just - with the whole cast, actually - it's so neat - we're already friends. I really like them all.

Yesterday after rehearsal I started to walk home. I was just a little ways down the road and I heard this car beeping behind me - I turned around and it was Brett, in his brown car - he called out the window, "Do you need a ride somewhere?" I called to Brett, "Where are you going?" So he told me and it went past my house, so I said okay. I got in. He turned down the radio so we could talk.

He's a wicked wicked nice person.

I asked him abouit his high school and everything. He was asking me about my school - He has this wide mischievous smile. I said something like, "Well, my school is really small, so everybody knows I'm in this play." He smiled at me. "Yeah?" "I mean, I went to auditions just like - scared to death ..." And he grinned at me and said, "I was watching you audition thinking: Man, she's got balls." I said it would be all right to drop me off at the end of South Road, but he went, "Oh no - I'll take you home." So he did.

He's so nice. Everyone is. Like on Saturday, everyone was making plans to go out to lunch together - I was sitting alone - I suddenly felt rather out of it, and Joanna turned to me, "Come on with us, Sheila!" So I went out to Del Mor's with them all - It makes me feel warm inside. Hoepful. Happy. Just really good. Rehearsals make me feel really good. Knowing these people and knowing Kimber make me feel good.

And - just working on Millie, asking questions, dissecting lines, learning techniques that never occurred to me before.

Today was just as good, if not better. Today was when I sort of got to know them a little - Kimber is so great. So kind and intelligent. I am learning massively much.

OCTOBER 16

Yesterday was a joke. I started crying about everything. I think it hit me how much I'm doing right now. It's unbelievable. It just totally enveloped me. I was frazzled. I had to be in 2 places at once. I couldn't get a ride from one place to the other. Picnic, Hans Christian Andersen, Antigone (our drama class play whose dates coincide with some of my Picnic performances - great) - the retreat, homework, work, my birthday - I had a costume measurement at 3 after school - and had no way to get there. Finally Kate - my friend, my wonderful friend, offered to drive me up since she had driven to school anyway. Okay, that calmed me down but then - Mrs. M wouldn't let me go! She said that she would do my scene first to let me go. But then she did the Ugly Duckling skit first. Diary, it was horrendous - I was backstage, going, "Why won't she let me go?" And it was creeping to 2:35, 2:40 - It was infuriating. Mrs. M started getting into interpretation with the other skit - why couldn't she have let go then - I know my lines - I was practically crying backstage. Nothing was going right. My life was crazy hectic and shitty. All I wanted to do was run from the room and LEAVE.

Finally, we did our skit - I admit, I was rushing the lines - but it was 10 of 3. I don't need work on interpretation, and if I do - she hasn't told me.

On our way up to the theatre, we hit every red light in our path, and we were behind this man who drove (literally) the damn speed limit. It was just one of those times I couldn't take it all - the only thing to do at a time like that is drop everything and take a breath. But I couldn't. I had to RUN into the theatre. As I ran up to the front door, Eric came out and grinned at me. "Why here so early, kid?" (He calls me kid. Oddly enough, it doesn't bug me. I like it. It's a fond way of saying it.) I cried, "I'm very late!" and ran inside. Then I could NOT find the costume shop. I tore all over the damn building. I wanted to scream.

Finally, I got it over with, went home, and lay down. I had rehearsal that night at 6:45.

Diary, I'm doing a talk at the retreat. [The relgious retreat I was going to be "on staff" for - I was SO excited about it.] When Betsy told me, I just stood there, and my talk is MASKS - I can't wait. I was praying really hard about it - especially with everything going on. I don't want everything to become unfun. I can't let the retreat become a burden. I want to be able to forget about my craziness while I'm there - I want it to be great. It's a Godsent coming right in the middle of November.

Last night's rehearsal totally calmed me. I walked out of it feeling peaceful through and through. And happy. I found an inner calm that I have to maintain. I mean, no matter how much crazier my life gets - if I keep an inner peace, a balance ... At the 8:00 this Sunday [That would be the 8 pm mass at our church] Kate and I were sitting in the balcony, and suddenly - my God - it hit me - eternity. Heaven. God. I'm too much of a bland human being to even try to comprehend what forever is. I felt just a little bit of the massiveness of forever - eternity. I just sat there thinking, "Oh ... dear Lord ... oh ... dear Lord ..."

My life will never go haywire if I remember that. Oh, life is confusing, and eternity is even more so - but I know it's so!

After rehearsal last night, I went outside to wait for my dad. It was about 10:00. There were billions of stars, and it was chilly, and beautiful, and perfectly quiet. I sat outside alone, and I was so happy. I felt so calm. My day was royally an awful terrible day. But rehearsal made me calm.

I have a crush on Brett. But it's not like it matters to me. I have crushes on people constantly that I don't even think about. Like Keith, or Andy. But they don't matter. Or - not that they don't matter - but the crushes I have on them don't take over my life. That's what it is with Brett. He is hysterical and nice and relaxed and makes me feel at home, and is just a really nice guy. (I don't think that sentence was parallel.) I have met so many neat people - who accept me. When I arrive at rehearsal, everyone hails me, "Hey, Sheila!" I am included, you know? I mean, half the time I don't know what they're talking about [hahahahahahaha] - but I don't mind listening. I'm not shy with them either. I am completely happy with all of them!

I just came home from rehearsal - and our next rehearsal we're gonna block it. We'll get to move around!

I came into the theatre yesterday and Liz skipped over to me and hugged me. "Hello, Millie!" Brett always just calls me "buddy", "pal". I sat next to Brett during Monday's rehearsal. We all have notebooks up there to take notes. Rehearsals are so interesting. We read through the scenes in monotone. That is so hard. It's so hard not to inflect and interpret. [This is part of the Meisner method. Start off with the script in monotone. Read the lines in complete monotone - until you finally HAVE to break free and express the feeling in the voice. Kimber trained us in the Meisner method.] I'm finding that when we drop the monotone - the acting and interpretation and the feeling of the lines come easier. The trick is that during the monotone, you keep your voice dead - but inside - keep the inside alive. Kimber says that that way you feel so much more - You don't start interpreting the lines only one way. And while I'm doing monotone - I can feel that - I feel every nerve I have straining against the monotone. I feel things without worrying about how I say the words. It's a neat feeling but it's still hard.

At rehearsal, I am happy. During the first rehearsal, we were all sitting and running through the script, and suddenly - out of nowhere - I almost started crying. I just started thinking:

GOD I AM SO HAPPY.

My day is very long. It starts at 6 am and ends at 11:30 or midnight. But oh! I am smiling as I write!! School is making me hyper this year. I hate it. School now holds nothing for me. I mean, my reasons for going to school are: Kate, J, Beth, Mere, Betsy, Anne, Steph -- But what I look forward to is outside of school. TS [hmmm. Member him?? He has been noticeably absent all of a sudden!!] and REHEARSALS. I haven't talked to TS since last Saturday - I talked to him on the phone. Just dumb stuff. It was nice to hear his voice though. Sadie Hawkins is Friday. I decided against asking him. I actually thought about it. My first reason: I do not like the Sadies anyway. I think it's queer. And juvenile. Why should I ask him to something I wouldn't have fun at anyway? I mean - that's crazy. I'll ask him to something we both can have fun at. Also - after TS and I left DW (hee hee) we went and visited Matt in his frat. My first time in a frat. I was tres nervous). Wow, did those people scare me. I still don't know why. I think, looking at the people strolling by - I suddenly was thinking: "These boys are no boys. They are men." I mean, Matt is sweet - he's so - all of TS' friends just - I don't know. TS and I went into Matt's room but Matt wasn't there, so we sat down to wait. TS wanted to give his script to Matt - then when Matt came in, he hailed us both. "Hey! Sheila! How are you?" Acceptance that I was there. My self-image really sucks. I immediately think that everyone'll be like, "Sheila? A boyfriend?" Matt was nice to me. He and TS are so cute together - they're so close. And Matt is excited about the movie too. I don't think I said a word the whole time we were there, but just listening to the two of them - God. I felt infantile. Meek and inexperienced and totally naive. TS drinks. If I let it bother me - I'd go around being bothered at everyone. In fact, I'm not against it for myself - I want to know what it's like. But - at the frat - I just felt so young. Not youthful and chipper [Don't ever say the word "chipper" again, Sheila, okay?] but young and stupid. Matt told TS where he can get a fake ID. They were talking about a friend of theirs who grows marijuana and sells it - Then this guy strolled by with nothing on but a towel. TS leaned over to me and grabbed my head to put his hands over my eyes.

That frat really freaked me out. It just hit me that those guys are men and what the hell am I doing? None of them will want me. I was talking toBetsy about it - about how inexperienced I felt - and she said, "There's always one thing you can say: No. And don't worry about TS. He's not a user." I've been feeling so scared about going with someone - I said, "Betsy, I know I'm not ready for any of that" and Betsy said, "TS knows that." When she said that, it made me feel so much better!!

And then I think about Brett, and I feel confused - like "How can I have a crush on someone else NOW?" I feel guilty. I mean, nothing has really happened between TS and I except conversation - but I can't help it. Diary, I'm only 16. I just don't think I'm ready for a COMMITMENT. No. I know I'm not ready. I've never even gone out with anyone - how do I know what or who I want? Commitment - at this point, even if TS and I were set - I would have a crush on Eric, and a crush on Brett - and how can I help it? Why should I help it? Kate said to me, after I told her some story about reherasal, "I'd be wondering about you if you didn't have a crush on those guys!"

The Books: "The Great Railway Bazaar" (Paul Theroux)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is The Great Railway Bazaar : By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux. First published in 1975 - this is the story of Paul Theroux going by train from London to Vietnam - and then home again by the Trans-Siberian Express. It's the kind of trip I would love to take, as odd and extended as it would be. Ryzsard Kapuscinski did a similar thing ... and Colin Thubron (who I love, and whose books I will get to shortly!!) did as well ... submitting to the hardships of travel by train ... submitting to the monotony - It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. Especially when you're traveling through the USSR by train.

I'll post a bit from the last leg of his journey, as he travels "home" through Russia. Now remember - this is the early 1970s.

From The Great Railway Bazaar : By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux.

Afterward, whenever I thought of the Trans-Siberian Express, I saw stainless-steel bowls of borscht spilling in the dining car of the Rossiya as it rounded a bend on its way to Moscow, and at the curve a clear sight from the window of our green and black steam locomotive -- from Skovorodino onward its eruptions of steamy smoke diffused the sunlight and drifted into the forest so that the birches smoldered and the magpies made for the sky. I saw the gold-tipped pines at sunset and the snow lying softly around clumps of brown grass like cream poured over the ground; the yacht-like snowplows at Zima; the ocherous flare of the floodlit factory chimneys at Irkutsk; the sight of Marinsk in early morning, black cranes and black buildings and escaping figures casting long shadows on the tracks as they ran toward the lighted station -- something terrible in that combination of cold, dark, and little people tripping over Siberian tracks; the ice chest of frost between the cars; the protrusion of Lenin's white forehead at every stop; and the passengers imprisoned in Hard Class: fur hats, fur leggings, blue gym suits, crying children, and such a powerful smell of sardines, body odor, cabbage, and stale tobacco that even at the five-minute stops the Russians jumped onto the snowy platform to risk pneumonia for a breath of fresh air; the bad food; the stupid economies; and the men and women ("No distinction is made with regard to sex in assigning compartments" -- Intourist brochure), strangers to each other, who shared the same compartment and sat jon opposite bunks, mustached male mirroring mustached female from their grubby nightcaps and the blankets they wore as shawls, down to their hefty ankles stuck in crushed slippers. Most of all, I thought of it as an experience in which time had the trick distortions of a dream: the Rossiya ran on Moscow time, and after a lunch of cold yellow potatoes, a soup of fat lumps called solyanka, and a carafe of port that tasted like cough syrup, I would ask the time and be told it was four o'clock in the morning.

The Rossiya was not like the Vostok; it was new. The sleeping cars of East German make were steel syringes, insulated in grey plastic and heated by coal-fired boilers attached to furnace and samovar that gave the front end of each carriage the look of a cartoon atom smasher. The provodnik often forgot to stoke the furnace, and then the carriage took on a chill that somehow induced nightmares in me while at the same time denying me sleep. The other passengers in Soft were either suspicious, drunk, or unpleasant: a Goldi and his White Russian wife and small leathery child who rode in a nest of boots and blankets, two aggrieved Canadians who ranted to the two Australian librarians about the insolence of the provodnik, an elderly Russian lady who did the whole trip wearing the same frilly nightgown, a Georgian who looked as if he had problems at the other end, and several alcoholics who played noisy games of dominoes in their pajamas. Conversation was hopeless, sleep was alarming, and the perversity of the clocks confounded my appetite. That first day I wrote in my diary Despair makes me hungry.

RIP, John McGahern

I gasped when I heard the news: great Irish novelist John McGahern has passed away. Thanks, peteb, for letting me know - I hadn't heard, and I'm kind of emotional about it right now. Here's a post over at Slugger, with a bunch of great links. And the first comment in the thread brought tears to my eyes. Because I feel the same way. I wrote about it here a bit. (The rest of the comments in the post over at Slugger are great too - people remembering McGahern, sharing their thoughts and memories about him.)

I have my father to thank for introducing me to John McGahern. My dad always had such great things to say about McGahern - and for some reason, it took me a while to get around to reading him. I read Amongst Women and ... it basically flattened me. Almost as much as Ian McEwan's Atonement. It hurt me to read it. The story, that FATHER ... just that character ... It was a painful to book to read. Masterful. It's not that it's a brilliant plot, or a gripping tale, it's not even that the characters are so memorable - except for the father. That father will live on in my memory forever. It's the way McGahern brings us, inevitably, step by step through that story - it's how he desribes the silence in that house, it's his observations ... of how this family works ... the tiny moments that make up conversations ... You just can SEE it all in how he writes. It's a little window into a completely three-dimensional world. McGahern does not paint his characters with broad strokes. They're very subtle, complex, human beings. But - That father in Amongst Women is introduced to us with two or three sentences ... and entire WORLDS open up before us. We know this man. We know this man. And - we just ACHE for him. We would be so fearful if he were our father, he's - cold - he withholds love - he is walled up in his own agony ... everyone tiptoes around him, etc. ... but ... looking in on him from the outside ... all you can see is his pain. His loss. God, it's fantastic. I'm crying as I write this - sorry, I'm a bit undone right now.

McGahern almost seems invisible in this process - his writing is so good, so seamless, it seems almost to be flowing directly from an experience ... The book does not appear to be invented at all. It just IS. It IS the experience that it describes. So few writers are able to do that, so few writers are able to make us forget THEM ... and guide us straight into a story.

We are fully immersed in that house. With those sisters. The wife. And that father. Even thinking about that character makes me weep. Which I am doing right now. It's all tied up with my own father ... and the father-daughter dynamic ... and also the IRISH father-daughter dynamic - which is very specific, and ... archetypal ... and I can't describe it. ... But McGahern can and does.

A truly great novelist. A master of the form.

John Banville, another favorite of my father, had this to say about McGahern: "Amongst Women,' which was his masterpiece -- if there was any justice at all, it should have won the Booker Prize. It would have given him the international recognition that he didn't have. The literary world we live in now is so glittery. His novels were so quiet, perhaps they didn't travel well. But they will."

That came from the NY Times obituary here.

His fame is localized. He is famous to Irish people, and to people who love fiction. Amongst Women routinely makes it into lists like: Top 50 Best Irish Novels (or Top 100) or what have you ... but I would put it on my list of Top 50 Best Novels, period.

From a commenter on Sinéad Gleeson's blog-post about it:

Amongst Women. I read it when I was fourteen. It is sublime. It is the foundation stone for everything I have read and written and thought about since then.

I can’t believe this, Sinead. It is so desperately sad. He had been ill but he had recovered, had really fought it. We saw him at Christmas and he was in great form.

There won’t be his like again.

Rest in peace, Mr. McGahern.

The Books: "Happy Isles of Oceania : Paddling the Pacific" (Paul Theroux)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Happy Isles of Oceania : Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux. So crazy Paul Thoreux starts in Australia, and then is flown to the Solomon Islands. He then takes out his trusty canoe, and begins to paddle from island to island ... just like the ancients did. Sometimes, because he is a modern man, the distance is too far - and he takes a boat or a tiny plane to the next island. But he goes through them all - Solomon, Trobriands, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tahiti ... He even finds a deserted island and camps there for a couple of days. Just to see what it is like. As with all of Thoreux's books ... he's voraciously curious about things ... but he also doesn't seem to meet than many people he likes. He's brutal at times. He couldn't stand the Samoans, for example. A lot of his writing in this vein reminds me of Mark Twain's travelogues. The freedom with which Mark Twain made fun of people, or passed judgment. He doesn't care.

A lot of this stuff is endlessly fascinating to me - it's history I am not familiar with, except for the fact that I know it happened. People got in huge boats, a gazillion years ago, and paddled THOUSANDS of miles to inhabit other islands. How, why, what the feck ... it boggles the mind. But the intricacies of that history - and all the different peoples ... is not something I've ever studied. So I was very interested in it.

Theroux ends his journey with a jaunt to Easter Island. Far-out, isolated. He takes a plane to get there - he cannot paddle his canoe the distance, obviously - but the fact that he cannot makes him understand the truly astonishing level of accomplishment of those who did.

I'll post an excerpt from the Easter Island section.

From Happy Isles of Oceania : Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux.

It takes an hour to fly from Rarotonga to Tahiti, and five and a half from Tahiti to Easter Island. But connections in Oceania are seldom neat. I had two days to kill in Rarotonga, and three days in Papeete before I could head to this little island, the easternmost outpost of Polynesia.

My traveling time must be compared with that of the original migrants to Easter Island. They might have sailed from Rapa -- now called Rapa Iti -- in the Austral Islands, 2,500 mils away. Or it might have been from Mangareva in the Gambier Group. In any case, the journey in double-hulled canoes took them 120 days. This was sometime in the seventh century (though some archaeologists have dated it earlier). On the other side of the world the Prophet Mohammed was fleeing to Medina (in the year 622), the start of the Moslem Era. The Dark Ages had taken hold of Europe. The glorious Tang Dynasty had begun in China. In the Pacific, people were on the move, for this was the most active period of Polynesian expansion, which one Pacific historian has called 'the greatest feat of maritime colonization in human history."

Before I left Tahiti I had called on the airline representative. He was Chilean. We conversed in Spanish. He spoke no other tongue.

"The plane is half full, maybe more," he said.

"All those people are going to Easter Island!"

"No. Only four passengers are getting off there. The rest are going to Santiago."

"Will the weather be cold on Easter Island?"

"Sometimes. Especially at night." He flapped his hand, equivocating. "You have a sweater? That's good."

"What about rain?"

"It can rain at any time. And wind. You will have some wind. But not too much." He smiled at the ceiling and he blinked for effect as he chanted, "Sun. Cloud. Sun. Cloud."

He was trying to encourage me.

"Now the hotels are interesting," he said. "I know you don't have one. You never have one before you go. But at the airport, the island people will look at you and offer their houses to you. You will see them and talk to them. That way you can find the most economical one."

He then searched for my reservation.

"Your name is not on the passenger list," he said. "But come tomorrow. If you don't have a ticket we will sell you one. There is space. There are always seats to Easter Island."

That was my preparation for the journey - that and a vast tome entitled The Ethnology of Easter Island, by Alfred Metraux, and the writings of other archaeologists, and much colorful and misleading information by the enthusiastic Thor Heyerdahl, who is regarded by many Pacific historians and archaeologists as of minimal consequence to serious archaeology. Scientifically, his books have as little value as those of Erich von Daniken, who theorized that the Easter Island moai were carved by people from outer space.

I found a place to stay, a guest house, and agreed on a price -- $65 a day, which included three meals a day. I planned to camp, too -- no one seemed bothered, as they had on other islands, by the threat of my pitching a tent.

Stretching my legs after arriving, I walked to the Easter Island Museum. It was one mute room on a hillside at the edge of town. There are some carvings, and some dusty skulls with drawings scratched on the craniums, and artifacts, but no dates have been assigned to anything in the room. There are old photographs of melancholy islanders and hearty missionaries. There are ill-assorted implements -- axes, clubs, knives. One exhibit shows how the moai had carefully fitted eyes, most of them goggling -- the sclera of the eye made of white coral, the iris of red scoria, and the pupil a disc of obsidian, which gave the statues a great staring gaze.

Many of the moai had been ritually blinded by the islanders themselves. The archaeologist JoAnne Van Tilburg mentions how "specific, probably ritual damage was done to only certain parts of the figures, in particular the heads, eyes, and occasionally the right arms."

That first day, I ran into an island woman who was secretary of the Rapa Nui Corporation for the Preservation of Culture, known locally as Mata Nui o Hotu Matua o Kahu Kahu o Hera ("The Ancestral Group of Hotu Matua of the Obscure Land"). She confirmed various stories that I had read about the island.

Hotu Matua was the leader of the first migration to Easter Island. Descended from ancestral gods, this first king had mana, great spritual power, and is credited with the founding of this civilization. Much of the early history is conjecture -- there are so-called wooden rongo-rongo tablets, with strange figurative script incised on them, but no one has ever been able to decipher them. In spite of this, most of the stories regarding Hotu Matua agree on the salient points. That he sailed from an island (Marae-renga, perhaps Rapa) in the west commanding two ninety-foot canoes. That he brought with him "hundreds and hundreds" of people. That some of these people were nobles (ariki) and others skilled men and women (maori) -- warriors, planters, carvers -- and still others commoners. That the captain of the second canoe was a noble named Tuu-ko-ihu. That on board these canoes they had "the fowl, the cat, the turtle, the dog, the banana plant, the paper mulberry, the hibiscus, the ti, the sandalwood, the gourd, the yam," and five more varieties of banana plant. (Later generations gave Hotu Matua credit for introducing animals which early explorers introduced, such as pigs and chickens.)

After sailing for two months in the open sea, the voyagers came upon the island and they sailed completely around it, looking for a place to land. After their tropical home, this windy treeless island must have seemed a forbidding place: then, as now, black cliffs being beaten by surf. They found the island's only bay, its only sandy beach. They went ashore there and named the bay Anakena, their word for the month of August. It was an island of seabirds and grass. There were no mammals. The craters of the volcanoes were filled with totora reeds.

Another happy incident, which occurs in all versions of this first-arrival story, is that shortly after Hotu Matua's canoe reached the shore of the island, one of Hotu Matua's wives, named Vakai, gave birth to a baby boy, Tuu-ma-heke, who became the island's second king. The cutting of the infant's navel cord caused the place to be called Pito-o-te-henua, "Navel of the Land".

The woman who was telling me these stories said that she was a teacher of the Rapa Nui language. But was there such a language? She claimed there was, but linguists said that the original tongue had been lost, and that the language spoken on Easter Island now was the Tahitian the Christian missionaries had brought -- because that was the language of their Bible and hymn book. Because this Tahitian had many similarities to the old Rapa Nui it had displaced it. Easter Islanders were identified as Polynesians when they boarded Cook's ship in 1774. As soon as they spoke, Cook recognized that their language was similar to Tahitian.

Looking for a place to launch my boat, I walked down the main road of the town, a dirt track called in the local language Navel of the World Street, past grubby little bungalows -- they had the shape and dimensions of sheds: flat roofs, single walls -- to Hanga Roa harbor.

It was not like any harbor I had ever seen, and it explained why if you totalled the time all the early explorers spent ashore on Easter Island, it would amount to very little. Few of the nineteenth-century explorers, Metraux says, "stayed on the island for more than a few minutes." Some of the explorers, having made the 2,500-mile run from Tahiti (and it was nearly as far from South America) were unable to go ashore -- too windy, too dangerous, too surfy. In 1808, for example, Captain Amasa Delano of Duxbury, Massachusetts (and of Melville's story "Benito Cereno"), arrived at the island and sailed around it, but could not set foot on the island, because of the heavy surf off Hanga Roa.

Some ships did land, to the sorrow of the islanders. In 1804, the men on an American ship, the Nancy, kidnapped twelve men and ten women from the island after a fight -- the intention was to use these captives as slave laborers at a seal colony on Mas Afuera, a rock halfway to Chile. When the islanders were allowed on deck after three days at sea, they jumped off the ship and began swimming in the direction of their island, and all drowned. Whaling ships plying the southern oceans often abducted Easter Island girls, for their sexual pleasure.

"In 1822 the skipper of an American whaling ship paused at Easter Island long enough to kidnap a group of girls who were thrown overboard the following day and obliged to swim back to the island," Metraux writes. "One of the officers, simply for amusement, shot a native with his gun."

After more raids of this sort the islanders became hostile to any foreigners. But the foreigners persisted, either fighting them or employing more devious means to subvert the islanders, using gifts as bait, as in this raid in 1868: "The raiders threw to the ground gifts which they thought most likely to attract the inhabitants and ... when the islanders were on their knees scrambling for the gifts, they tied their hands behind their backs and carried them off to the whaling ship." The king, Kaimakoi, was kidnapped with his son and most of the island's maori (experts). These and later captives were sent to work, digging on guano islands, where they all died.

The history of Easter Island in the nineteenth century is a long sad story of foreign raiding parties (mainly American and Spanish), of slavery and plunder, leading to famine, venereal disease, smallpox outbreaks, and ultimately the ruin of the culture -- the place was at last demoralized and depopulated. In 1900 there were only 214 people living on Easter Island, eighty-four of them children. A hundred years of foreign ships had turned Easter Island into a barren rock.

The island had flourished by being cut off, and then it became a victim of its remoteness. Since the earliest times, it had never been easy to land on it, but it was so far from any other port, and in such a rough patch of ocean, that every ship approaching it took advantage of it in some way -- looking for water or food, for women, for slaves.

How was it possible for even a small ship to land here? In fact it had never been managed. No more than a scooped-out area, with boulders lining the shore and surf pounding beside the breakwater, the harbor was a horror, and it was difficult even to imagine a ship easily lying at anchor offshore, with a whaleboat plying back and forth with supplies. Problem one was mooring a ship in the wild ocean off Hanga Roa; problem two was getting the whaleboat through the surf to shore and, since there was nowhere to land, steadying it long enough to unload it.

I saw that I could paddle through the surf zone. But it was usually easier to get out than to paddle in. The danger here was that the surf was breaking on large rocks at the harbor entrance. Even if I surfed in I might be broken to smithereens on the rocks.

The most ominous sight for a potential kayaker was that of Rapa Nui boys surfing into the harbor on big breaking waves. This surfing, locally known as ngaru, had been a sport here since the earliest times, and was the only game that had survived all these years. They had abandoned the ancient games of spinning tops, flying kites, and going to the top of volcanoes and sliding down "tracks on which they had urinated to make the path more slipper." But surfing had been sueful in the early innocent days of foreign ships anchoring off Hanga Roa in a heavy sea. Surprising th eseamen, the islanders swam out to the ship, using "swimming supports" -- a plank or a rush mat. Some of the islanders were observeds surfing back to shore afterwards, riding the waves using the planks as surfboards.

In the Rapa Nui language there was a complete set of surfing terminology, which described the board, the surfer's waiting for the wave, allowing the wave to crest, and settling on the wave; what in current surfing jargon woudl be the banana or the pig board (or sausage board), the pickup and takeoff, the cutback on the hump, hotdogging, hanging ten, and walking the plank. In the old days there had been surfing contests and some men, real Rapa Nui beachies, had gone far from shore to surf a long distance on the large ocean swells.

But the sight of surfers convinced me that this was not a good area to paddle from -- and it was the harbor!

Hitler and Stalin: The roots of evil

Watching it now on the History Channel. Thoughts to come. I'm sure you're THRILLED!!

-- Stalin had a 'warfare psychology' ... an 'enemy complex'

-- a lot of the experts are people who try to retrospectively psychoanalyze these people. I have some doubts about this ... for many reasons ... but there's no doubt that it is an interesting speculation. Not to use it as an 'abuse excuse' - let us NEVER go down that road ... but I think to NOT ask these questions is a huge mistake. It means that we localize evil people like Hitler and Stalin as anomalies ... just crazy anomalies ... and I think we ignore their psychology at our peril

-- Cliche, yes, but Hitler and Stalin were both short, and were BUMMED about it.

-- Stalin was only five foot four. He wore platform shoes. I forget this about him.

-- Hitler was a bad student.

-- Both were on the road to be priests.

-- Both had artistic dreams ... painting and poetry (Hitler and Stalin, respectively). It was a self-pitying impulse in them, however ... and also a way to rebel against their parents. Stalin's poetry: starting out as floridly romantic and lush ... and descending towards nihilistic narcissistic claptrap. Hitler, the same with his art. No validation anywhere. No validation for their art. How did they internalize these rejections?

-- No love from parents.

-- Again: I'm just liveblogging. But also: i want to make clear that just by typing this I am not saying "Oh, Stalin's father beat him ... poor Stalin!" Anyone who knows me should know that I would never say that, but it's hard to tell ... people have poor reading comprehension and also a kneejerk know-it-all response to stuff like this.

-- What is it that creates a serial killer? Not that they should be EXCUSED for thier actions ... but what are the factors that go towards creating a Charlie Manson? Or a Ted Bundy? Are there any similarities? What can we glean from their beginnings?

-- I happen to believe that the more we understand, the better off we are.

-- Through observation it has been shown that many serial killers start off by killing animals, when they are children. This is USEFUL information, in terms of perhaps helping a child who is screaming for help. There are patterns ... maybe a serial killer could be stopped in his infancy, if it is noticed by his parents, or a teacher, or a neighbor, that he is compulsively torturing cats ...

-- I have abhorrence towards applying this philosophy towards genocidal dictators ... but I do see the point of it. I really do.

-- Stalin was "a loner, a very bitter and unpleasant person" - says Prof. Ted Friegurt. "He never took part in social activities. He was always apart, and bitter, and nasty."

-- Stalin caught Lenin's eye ... He wanted to rise to the top of this new communist party.

-- Hitler still searching for himself, trying to be a painter. (Reminds me of Eddie Izzard's re-enactment of this: "I ... can't get the flowers right in this painting ... I must now kill EVERYONE IN THE WORLD ...")

-- Hitler only painted landscapes. Never people. Hmmmm. Rejected to go to some academy of art in Vienna ... because of this whole can't-paint-people thing. So bitter by rejection that he blamed it on the Jews on the board of the acadmy.

-- He was destroyed by his mother's death. Lost the ability to function.

-- World War I ... "In his army service, Hitler was the happiest of any time he was in his life ... Sanctioned killing gave him an outlet to his murderous rage ..." said by some expert.

-- Hitler began to feel that he was 'chosen' for some great role in history.

-- Stalin loved humiliating his sons. Contempt. (I've seen some of the letters he wrote about his sons ... no love there. Total coldness.)

-- The mysterious death of Stalin's second wife Nadya. Nobody agrees how she kicked the bucket. Either she killed herself, or Stalin himself killed her. Or one of his minions did.

-- Omigod, little home movie of Eva Braun in a dirndl skirt and little apron, swinging around a pole. Never seen her in action before. She was a plump milk-fed girl. Hitler thought she was "the ideal German woman: cuddly, cute, and naive."

-- "I am the mistress of the greatest man in Germany" ... excerpt from Eva Braun's diary.

-- "Anyone who read Mein Kampf should have known where this all would read ..." So says the son of Hitler's personal aide ... sorry, didn't catch his name.

-- Live footage of Stalin. Jeez, amazing.

-- Oh man. Footage of Kirov giving a speech. Kirov. Stalin's beloved friend. But he was too popular. The murder of Kirov ascribed to Stalin's enemies in the party ... BUT it was engineered by Stalin. It was used as an excuse to begin the Great Terror. Think of the coldness. The calculation. There's some footage of Stalin at Kirov's coffin. Holy shit. The murder of Kirov used as an excuse to kill literally millions. There's Stalin, being all sad at Kirov's coffin. I am gobsmacked.

-- Members of Stalin's Politburo were so afraid of him that everyone was afraid to stop clapping for him ... the ovations went on and on and on (famous anecdotes about this) ... Finally, they figured out that they would ring a BELL to signal to people "stop clapping" so that no one would EVER be the first one to stop applauding.

-- The re-touching of photos ... Photo historian David King has assembled the largest collection of photos from the Soviet era - he studies the photos - and studies the re-touching - what he calls "a second death" - a total elimination of a human being - as though he never existed. Let's get HIM out of the photo. He was never there!!

-- King noticed that some of the re-touchings were more violent than others. Some people were just splashed wtih India ink in photos - others had their faces hacked at with razor blades. King speculates, "I think that the more violent of the re-touchings were a way to prove that you were a good Stalinist." Chilling.

-- Hitler's destruction of the village of Dollershem ... used the village as a shooting range ... Ruined churches, hollow walls ... Apparently, the hospital there had the birth certificate of his father in the archives. Evidence of his possible Jewish blood. An entire town destroyed, people killed ... to avoid the reality of his past. Surrounded by enemies ... he chose to be a predator.

-- Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Invasion of Russia. Footage of surrendering Russian troops. Hands in the air.

-- Stalin kind of flails about for a couple of weeks ... as though he can't believe this has happened. Finally, he "pulls himself together".

-- Now the showdown in Stalingrad.

-- If a soldier retreated from Stalingrad ... he would be shot ... and his family (of course) would be subject to retribution. Catastrophe, all around.

-- Defeat at Stalingrad. Hitler became dependent on amphetamines. Showed signs of drug toxicity - leading to more paranoia. Symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Interview with Hitler's damn BUTLER about his tremors. whoo boy!

-- In the famed bunker: the charred bodies of Eva and Hitler ... and on a desk a folder of Hitler's paintings of pastoral Austria. The Russians, when they burst in, found it.

-- Stalin paraded German prisoners of war through Red Square, to whip up the public rage.

-- The whole "accused doctor" trials in Russia. Which was mainly anti-Semitism, cloaked in some bullshit. Jewish people moved, en masse, out into Siberia.

-- Stalin's dying moment as described by his daughter. Right before he went ... he raised his stumpy left arm, with a pointed finger ... as though he was accusing and damning all those he left behind.

-- evil, cruelty, the murder of millions ... Hitler and Stalin: demonic twins of history!!

And so there you have it. My liveblog of the History Channel special on Hitler and Stalin!

Ann Marie and I met before we met, actually ...

In honor of my dear friend Ann Marie's birthday - here is an enormous post. There's a lot here that has nothing to do with Ann Marie ... but it's the extenuating circumstances ... and the fact that she was THERE as all of this stuff began. We didn't even know each other yet ... but the fact that she was THERE always seemed very very significant to me.

It was a big night, the night when we met before we actually met. Later, when we became friends, we would describe such a night as "cosmic tumblers clicking down" - but that is just me getting ahead of myself. The future unfurled from that one night ... only I, being in the present moment, could have had no idea about that. I met people that night who would end up changing my life. But it took months - and sometimes years - for the whole thing to play itself out. An extraordinary night. My first night "out" in Chicago.

I moved to Chicago in late January, having fled from LA as though I had committed a crime there. Yes, the Westfalia gave me some problems. And yes, when I left at the airport, I saw a black-paper-cut-out silhouette, a harbinger of doom to come. Things were not good, to say the least. But was that any reason for me to literally sell all of my possessions, except for my books, and RUN to Chicago?? Well, frankly, yes.

I arrived in Chicago during a snowstorm. I was going to stay with my friend Jackie until I could get on my feet again. I had one bag of clothes, and a sleeping bag. I am a cliche. I arrived in Chicago with ONE BAG and a hundred bucks to my name. My books were all in storage in LA, until I could send for them. All I had was jeans, a couple sweaters, a toothbrush, and some underwear. That was all I needed. It was a momentous moment. The first time in my adult life that I actually CHOSE something. At least that's how I see it. Up until then, everything had happened by default. But Chicago I CHOSE. I was in a state of heartbreak, my first relationship having crashed and burned. Jackie's apartment was a place of healing, and a place of RIOTOUS laughter. I could relax there. When I was ready, when I had saved up enough, I could get my own place. This was all a very good plan.

Except that we both got bronchitis almost immediately upon my arrival.

Jackie and I lay in her apartment, as the snow swirled down outside, and just SUFFERED. Jackie kept murmuring, putting her hand on her throat, "I have flaming tiki torches in there ..."

We suffered the tiki-torch torment for a MONTH. Neither of us had health insurance, of course, so we just battered it back with cold meds from Walgreens, and orange juice, and vitamins. (Uhm - Xenu?) There were times when it felt like we would never be well. We had a Sunday night ritual: we would watch Life Goes On, our favorite show. We LIVED that show. It was the season of Chad Lowe (marvelous work from him!!) and when Becca really came into her own. We LOVED it. We lay on her couch, enduring the tiki torches in our throats, and watched the show, croaking out our comments.

That was my introduction to Chicago. I was single for the first time in 3 and a half years. I was dealing with an awful breakup - my now ex-boyfriend calling Jackie's house to talk about how sad he was, how much he missed me - dealing with the fact that a new life was now beginning for me. So of course I got TOTALLY sick, which put off the inevitable moment of: "Whoo-hoo, I'm single, I'm young, let's go out and meet some MEN!"

Finally ... finally ... after being sick for the entire month of February ... Jackie and I started getting better. Slowly but surely. We were chastened by our shared illness, we were terrified of having the tiki torches return ... so we took it really slowly. I signed up with a temp agency, and immediately started getting work. I would put on my one skirt, and my one nice sweater, and go off to some office in the Loop and answer phones. I had only been to Chicago once before for less than 24 hours. I had moved there pretty much on a HUNCH. I had good friends there ... but I just had a HUNCH about Chicago. That I would love it.

Manuevering the Loop, strolling into these plush offices, answering phones ... completely new surroundings ... a completely new LIFE ... it was such a vivid and surreal time. I was still sick - the effects of bronchitis holding onto me with a death-grip ... but getting better every day. I saved every penny I made. Then came the coup. My ex-boyfriend sold the Westfalia and sent me half of the money. Which - well. It was so nice, and to this day I feel like I owe him one. That chunk of cash (and it was only, like, 300 bucks - the Westfalia was BEAT UP from our cross-country journey) made it possible for me to move into my own place. Finding an apartment in Chicago was easy, easy, easy. I found a studio (in the building where Jackie used to live ... I had stayed with her when we drove through Chicago on our way out west) - and moved in. I had no furniture, people. None. I slept on the floor IN MY SLEEPING BAG. I had no pots, no pans, no tables, no towels, no drapes, no NOTHING. It took me a couple months to furnish the place. I was in no rush. What did I care? I had my own place! My very first own apartment!! I had my priorities straight. I signed my lease, and immediately (at least that's how I remember it - as immediately) downtown to the Animal Rescue League to get a cat. It was my dream to have my own cat. The cat I ended up getting deserves a post all his own - which I should do someday. I named him Sammy - he was already an adult. I can barely write about him without feeling all emotional. Anyway, I had to come pick him up the following day so he could have all his shots and stuff like that. But then I took him home - in a little crate - sitting on the L train, with poor Sammy mewling piteously from within the box.

And then there we were ... in my dark little studio a block away from Lake Michigan ... with no furniture ... just a sleeping bag and my suitcase ... and Sammy tiptoeing around the joint, staring around him with wide green eyes radiating alarm. Could it be??? thought Sammy. Could it be that I have come home to stay?????? I would wake up in the middle of the night, lying on the floor in my sleeping bag, to see Sammy perched on my pillow, right beside my head, staring into my face with huge glimmering eyes. hahahahaha He was at point-blank range. Just STARING at me. He had obviously had a hard life. Someone had messed with him before I got there. I would be like, "It's okay, Sammy ... you don't have to get into that crate again ... You get to stay here." (Sammy thinks: Uhm ... in an empty apartment? Uhm ... thanks???)

Anyway, sorry - this is supposed to be a post about my friend Ann Marie ... and how we met before we met ... but all of this stuff comes to my mind when I think about that first night. It was a momentous time for me. I was going on instinct ... for the first time in my adult life. Not since I was 8 years old did I just sit down, think: "Hmmm. What do I want to do right now?" and then go ahead and DO it.

I started auditioning. I got cast in something right away. This was another thing that would end up being momentous - and, if you trace it back, if you look at all the connecting links ... that experience in that show is what eventually, years later, would get me to move to New York.

I don't know ... something was definitely going ON with me in those first months in Chicago, albeit at an unconscious level. I was tapping into something. The cosmic? Perhaps. I didn't FEEL like it ... but looking at the end results, I know now that I definitely was.

Jackie had moved to Chicago a year before, and had been taking improv classes at Improv Olympic, which, at that point, was just a start-up - not the monolith that it is now. It didn't have its own theatre, like it does now - it had a space above the Wrigleyside Bar. Jackie kept telling me how fun the shows were, and how - when we got better - when the damn savages carrying the TIKI TORCHES in our throats strolled back into the jungle from whence they came - we should go to a show. "So many cute guys, Sheila! It's so much fun!!"

So finally, in mid-March, we were ready. We were healed enough to feel that a night out, and a couple of drinks, would not plummet us back into illness.

Not to be weird, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we didn't go to the improv show THAT night, but went another night. I sometimes actually SHIVER at the prospect. If I hadn't met Phil, then I wouldn't have gone out on that one date with Phil, where he took me to see Pat McCurdy ... If I hadn't gone to that one show, then I would not have heard of Pat McCurdy which meant that I would not have gone BACK to his show months later ... which then meant that I would not have met Ann Marie again ... and eventually become best friends with her ... and eventually perform at Milwaukee Summer Fest with Pat AND Ann Marie AND Phil ... and ... and ... and ... There are SO many things that were made possible from that first night out in Chicago (a couple things I haven't even mentioned yet), and I literally SHIVER to think of how close I came to having these beautiful things not happen. It's more cosmic than I am even saying, because some things are sacred to me, and not something I choose to share. But this random meeting, with this beautiful nice smiling man named Phil, made SO many other things possible - that I literally feel like I will be in his debt forever!! If Jackie and I had decided to go to the improv show the NEXT night - then maybe Phil would not have been there, which meant that Ann Marie would not have been there ... which ... God forbid. Literally my whole LIFE would be different now ... in more ways than I can even describe. Creepy. To be able to locate a moment when, almost casually, and without your knowing, your entire future is in the balance. I mean, who knows ... maybe I would have discovered Pat McCurdy all on my own ... and maybe I would have befriended Ann Marie ANYway, even without the Phil connection ... but ... the chances are slim.

I'm getting ahead of myself again, but it's hard not to ... when thinking about that amazing night ... when I met not one, not two, but THREE people who would end up changing my life SIGNIFICANTLY. And not immediately, either ... it would take some time for all of those cosmic tumblers to even START clicking ... but the future was set into motion that night.

Jackie and I, giddy at our newfound HEALTH, primped ourselves into oblivion. It was like we had just discovered the joy of lipstick. It was like we had just discovered the FREEDOM of blow drying our hair. We were going OUT! We were leaving the sick den! We were going to ... revel in our own health!!! We were going to ... omigod ... have a beer. Everything had a novelty to it. We had been sick for so long. I had not experienced the nightlife of Chicago. I had not been single in so long. The night was RIPE with possibility!

So off we went to the Wrigleyside - a place I will always have such affection for. So much happened there. But this night was the first. And the way the whole night played out ... was pretty much the way it ALWAYS was there. It was a place of adventure.

Jackie and I sat in the audience, and just had so much fun that we were nearly hysterical. We had been released from a prison of illness. We were out of our minds. My cold beer was literally the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. I sipped it nervously at first, teeny tiny sips ... fearful that at the first HINT of alcohol, the savages would come tearing out of the jungle, brandishing a conflagration of raging tiki torches ... but everything seemed okay. My body was able to handle the intake of a bit of alcohol. Life was good!!

Now, a couple of things I remember - they seemed random at the time, but in reality? They were all part of the cosmic tumblers clicking down. Maybe tapping into the cosmic requires a bit of unselfconsciousness, trust, and a LACK of awareness that ANYTHING cosmic might be going on. By that I mean: people who walk around saying, "It's meant to be!" or "Everything has a reason!!" (or "I can feel that this is the year I will meet my soulmate!!") may actually be cutting OFF their access to the cosmic - because they are so insistent on seeing everything as cosmic. Bear with me. There are only 2 or 3 people who read me (uhm -David?) who I think will know JUST what I am talking about. Sometimes those who parrot "It's meant to be" endlessly are not really thinking about what they are saying. Is it really meant to be? Does EVERYTHING happen for a reason? Tell that to Anne Frank. Oh, but wait - you CAN'T tell that to Anne Frank - CAUSE SHE WAS KILLED. Sorry, the "everything happens for a reason" attitude makes me cranky if it is the parroted response to any event, any where. It connotes intellectual laziness, more often than not - an unwillingness to really think about things, and contemplate the fact that shit sometimes JUST HAPPENS. Okay - so you see where I'm coming from? I'm not an anarchist, and I do believe that there are patterns ... we just need to get up high enough to see the patterns ... and very few people can do that. So I was not sitting in that improv club, thinking: "Everything happens for a reason!!" It is only in retrospect, looking back, that I think: "Holy God, something was really going ON that night!"

So here's what I remember.

I remember being very taken with one of the performers. Immediately. He was sooooooo funny, and had a great energy - a huge infectious smile. Very talented guy. He was on one improv team, and before they performed, he sat out at a table in the audience with a couple friends. Every time I looked over there, I saw all of them just HOWLING with laughter. I liked him. I liked how he laughed. Turns out, his name was Phil.

I felt like I was being released from prison, and not just because of the bronchitis. I had been tear-soaked for MONTHS because of my long-drawn-out breakup ... I hadn't been able to even THINK about how fun it would be to be single again! But suddenly, sitting there in the Wrigleyside, I started to feel this shimmer ... this shimmer of excitement ... Like: back in the mating dance again. If I'm interested in that guy over there ... then I just need to subtly send him signals I'm interested. I couldn't do that when I was in a relationship!!

I was not aware that I was sending signals - but apparently he wasn't the only one who picked up on the pheromonal flashing. Uhm ... many others became aware of me. And I swear: I was just sitting at my table with Jackie, having a beer. But ...

Now there is so much else that is weird here - but I won't tell all yet. All in good time.

Here's what happened, and I just so happen to have my journal entry from that moment (member this, Ann Marie??) I've put in initials for one person (M.) - which will become pertinent later. Jackie, since she was taking classes there, knew all of the performers - at least by sight - The same guys performed every week. She pointed them out. "And that's Phil ... and over there is M., the hottie of the improv club ..." Okay, ya got that? Onward to my pheromonal flashes FROM THE AUDIENCE.

The improv had to do with telekinesis and reptilian creatures taking over the earth. The man with telekinesis ended up in a disco. It is so pathetic that there are NO woman in the company. M., I guess, felt that the situation needed to be rectified, because he stood there in his bow-legged stance, and said in his booming bass voice: "BUT ... but ... there were no women at this club! So ..." and then suddenly - oh God - he looked down at me - Me - in the front row and said, "SO HE FORGED OUT TO FIND ONE!" And then the telekinetic individual (whose real name was Ian, I think) jumped off the stage and came SMACK over to me and promptly began trying to use his telekinetic powers on me. I was thrilled yet horrified. Did they plan this? It felt planned to me, as in: "Let's get that orange-haired chick in the front row."

M. watched the telekinetic guy try to press his brain waves into mine for a fruitless minute, and then he became Narrator Man again. "And wasn't it interesting? She - a woman - resisted him. When everyone else succumbed, she was immune to his powers." M. then screamed at the top of his lungs: "SO HE AND HIS FRIENDS FORCED HER TO DANCE WITH THEM!" The entire cast swooped off the stage, surrounded me, lifted me up out of my seat as though we were at a seance, and they carried me up on stage whooping like banshees. Disco music started blaring around us, all of the guys formed a circle around me and disco-danced AT me like maniacs, shrieking the lyrics right in my face. Suddenly I was in the middle of a telekinetically-influenced all-male disco. The audience was going crazy. Finally, they released me and let me go sit back down.

I suddenly got this weird feeling that they were all very aware of me. I just knew that, for whatever reason, I had been discussed. I felt like I was being watched.

This may sound like the thought process of a very vain girl - but it turns out I was right - which I found out later from multiple sources. There was a male pow-wow backstage - "Who is that redhead in the front row? Does anyone know her? Where did she come from? Let's get her." I KNEW it. I could feel it. I had been ambushed.

After the show, everyone trooped downstairs to hang out in the bar of the Wrigleyside. General drunken mayhem ensued. Again, I felt like I was being watched. M. sat at the bar - and I just felt like he was aware of me. Now that's insane - but pheromones are strong and ... I could feel that even though he WASN'T LOOKING AT ME ... he knew exactly where I was at all times. It seemed a little bit crazy that I would think that but I wasn't used to being single anymore - I wasn't used to knowing what kind of signals I was giving out.

And then of course there was Phil. The smiling handsome man I had been so taken with.

Here's what I wrote in my journal:

I peeked over at Phil who had gone over to the two girls who had been in the audience, obviously good friends of his. He had a cigarette stuck behind one ear and a friendly happy smile ... We ensconced ourselves by the jukebox and with my radar detectors I saw Phil. I saw M.. And I remember feeling, or knowing, that some of the guys were as aware of me as I was of them. I had no idea why this would be. Funny, though: I got none of those I-am-aware-of-you vibes from Phil. He was hanging with the 2 girls who had come, drinking beer.

Jackie eventually went off to the bathroom and I sat alone, listening to music, looking around, feeling very conspicuous. And my eyes happened to fall on Phil at the very moment he decided to charge over and talk to me. I thought: "He must be on his way to the bathroom. He wouldn't be coming over to talk to me." But then there he was, leaning across my bar, demanding of me, "WHO ARE YOU?"

I banged my fist on the bar and demanded back, "WHY does everyone in this improv group seem to know who I am? What did I DO?"

He said, "I don't know, man - who are you? Do you take classes here?" He called me "man" - why was I charmed by that? I don't know why but I was.

This, to quote a very famous film, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We began it by shouting at one another. "WHO ARE YOU?" "WHAT DID I DO?"

Cosmic tumblers click click clicking ...

Jackie ended up going home - and I was left to fend for myself. But ... Phil was so nice, and so much fun to talk to ... that I felt okay letting her go. I didn't need my wing-girl, I was okay.

The next cosmic tumbler is coming up ... click clicking down ...

Phil started interrogating me. It was SO much fun, very flirty, lots of laughter - I was a young woman, but I felt like I hadn't flirted in eons, and I had forgotten the joy of it. "Where are you from? Are you from Chicago? Who are you? What's your deal? WHO ARE YOU?" Laughter. Phil's a beautiful person. He really put me at ease. So anyway, I started answering his questions - telling him I had just moved to Chicago from LA. We started bantering about LA. The freeways, the cars, etc. etc.

Onward with the journal:

At one point I sensed a presence behind me, turned, and M. had sat down next to me and was leering at me. At us. Phil gave M. an enormous grin. There was all kinds of significant telegraphing going on in their eyes.

Phil said, "M., this is Sheila. We are talking about LA."
M. said, "I hate California."
I said, "I hate it too."
Then M. said to me, "Hey, that was totally unplanned, what happened tonight."
"Yeah, right."
"No, really!"

Over the course of the evening it became the joke that to get rid of M., Phil and I would launch into a vigorous discussion of LA freeways. I think Phil really was trying to say to M., "Get lost." Finally, Phil looked straight at me, shutting M. out, and said, "And the 10 West goes straight into that Santa Monica sunset!" M. took the hint, and walked away, but he kept trying to join our conversation. Phil would, in the middle of us talking about something else, start bellowing about the Pacific Coast Highway and then M. would cringe and cower like the Wicked Witch of the West and wince away, laughing. Phil and I would sit in expectant silence as M. sauntered toward us yet again, and then simultaneously start babbling into each other's faces at point blank range. 'Well, when the 5 becomes the 101 ..." "Oh yeah, that 101, huh ..."

Oh man, I can so see that whole SCENE. And it just makes me laugh. I can so see now, in retrospect, what was going on there. Because here's the second cosmic tumbler: M. was obviously trying to butt in on Phil's pick-up moment, and thankfully the two guys were man enough to make a joke about it.

But had I known what the cosmic tumbler had in store for me ...

I speak of him now as "M", he comes up a lot here. And THAT is how we met. He had seen me from backstage - and decided to "meet" me, by making me part of the improv show ... but then Phil, a friend of his, "got to me first" (M.'s exact words).

If anyone able to see the future had whispered to me in that moment: "This man is going to end up being one of the most important men in your life ... EVER ... As a matter of fact, not too long from now, you will leave him 40 haikus in 40 days on his answer machine ... " I would have thought ... huh?? What????? How would THAT happen??

It began that night. Magnets. He and I were magnets. And it SHOWED that night ... even though Phil "got to me first".

Eventually, that summer - maybe June or July - my path crossed M.'s yet again. And this time there was no Phil around to block the way, and he got my phone number with extreme efficiency and finesse. Actually, that's not true. He bumbled, and mumbled, and ignored me, and finally asked JACKIE for my phone number, because he thought that he would scare me away. I busted him whispering to Jackie - and overheard him say, "I really like your friend ..." and I was like, "What are we, in 8th grade? I will give you my phone number RIGHT NOW." He called me the next day. Long before he would climb in my window "just to say hi", or stand in my alley to talk to me - looking up at me, leaning out over my window-sill, we went on a couple of dates - the third date I posted here, because it always struck me as just such a funny glimpse at the two of us in a specific moment in time - before we knew each other, before we trusted, before we knew that this thing was going to just keep going. The date was complete and utter anarchy - and would have driven a more conventional girl absolutely INSANE. Like: why aren't we progressing in a normal manner? What does it mean? What ARE we to each other? But when I met M., I didn't want conventional. I had had enough of conventional. And ... voila. There he was. Our third date, as insane as it was, set the tone for all other dates to follow. This went on for YEARS. In a funny way, I think M. knows me better than anyone. He knows everything.

But there he is - immortalized in that first diary entry of my first night out in Chicago ... trying to butt in while ANOTHER guy is hitting on me.

Truly amazing.

Back to the journal entry of my first night out in Chicago - which then moves on to the THIRD cosmic tumbler (again: I had no premonition that ANY of this would be part of a cosmic tumbler. I was just flirting with Phil. I thought M. was sexy - damn sexy, and I was flattered that he was trying to hit on me, to no avail - but it was Phil who had caught my fancy first. No foreshadowing here.)

Phil said to me, "Hey, you wanna come meet all my friends?" Well, of course I did. So with this huge sweeping "follow me" gesture, he paraded me about and took me over to the two girls who had come to see the show. They were so friendly. Phil screamed, "EVERYONE! THIS IS SHEILA!" And there was none of that female behavior of taking stock of me overtly. They both beamed at me and said, "Hi, Sheila!"

Within three minutes, the three of us were laughing about the condom dispensers in the women's bathroom, and the condoms bearing the name SAVAGE LOVE. We all watched the softball game on TV.

One of those girls would turn out to be Ann Marie - only we wouldn't REALLY meet until MONTHS later - when I went back to a Pat show, and we started conversing in line for the girls' bathroom. We did not put it together that we had actually met each other before until some time after that ... and of course, when we remembered it - all we could do was SCREAM in each other's faces: 'THAT WAS YOU??? I REMEMBER YOU!!" I so remembered her smiling face grinning up at me, when Phil introduced me. The woman has spectacular dimples, and I remembered them. I also remembered how open and welcoming she was to me - this random girl their friend was blatantly hitting on. She didn't give me hostile competitive vibes, she was so nice, so friendly, and a really cool woman - that was apparent immediately.

Phil did end up getting my phone number - he followed me outside to get it. He gave me a quick little kiss and brandished my phone number at me, "I WILL be using this!" Such a sweetheart.

Little did I know that he and Ann Marie had had a BET over who could get someone's phone number first that night. bwahahahahahahahahaha Of course, all of this only became clear months and months later as well. Phil had obviously liked the looks of me ... but he was DETERMINED to seal the deal with me (ie: get my digits) so that he could win the bet. Hence the single-mindedness. The guy could charm the bonnet off an Amish woman, I'll tell you that.

So so funny, though ... to remember that moment of introduction. Meanwhile, I was all just an unwitting part of a BET that Phil and Ann Marie had with each other ... but I had no idea that months later, I would meet Ann Marie and within moments it was as though we had known each other all our lives. It was truly as though we SHOULD have been friends in high school ... we clicked on THAT level.

But who could see the future that crazy snowy night at the Wrigleyside? Who could peek forward and see what would happen? That Phil and I would segue into friends. That Phil would introduce me to Pat McCurdy. That Pat McCurdy would end up writing a song for me and putting me on one of his CDs. That Pat would hire Phil, Ann Marie, our other friend Kenny and me to perform with him in front of THOUSANDS of beer-soaked music fans. That Ann Marie and I would end up becoming dear dear friends. Like lifelong friends. I mean ... how often does THAT happen once you become an adult? And that M. and I would have enough insane adventures to fill a small public library. That a couple of years later, I would literally be sobbing on the phone with M., because I was leaving Chicago to move to New York, and I had a fever of 103, and I was afraid I wouldn't get to see him before I left.

Who could predict our future intimacy from our first encounters?

M. says: "That wasn't planned tonight, by the way."
"Yeah, right."
"No, really!"

Flash-forward 4 years.

Me, sobbing, "I am going to be ROBBED of seeing you before I go!"
M., calm, manly, "You just get well. Don't worry. We'll see ea---"
Me, sobbing, insistent, "ROBBED. I am going to be ROBBED."
Long pause.
M. continued, calm, unruffled, "You focus on getting well, Sheila. I'll be here. Don't worry."

What?? From his goofball awkward flirting the first night to that?

Time-travel moments like that blow me away, and this first night out in Chicago provide a ton of them.

Phil shouting, "EVERYONE? THIS IS SHEILA!"
Ann Marie grinning up at me. "Hi!"

Flash-forward a year and a half to THIS magic Mary Mack moment.

Or flash-forward 8 years to our trip to Ireland.

Or flash-forward a couple of years to the time she showed up at my apartment in Chicago, with BARE FEET, so freaked out because a pigeon had flown through her window and basically attacked her like a rabid dog. Ann Marie had shrieked, fled the scene, and drove immediately to my house. The two of us then returned to her apartment, and snuck through her apartment wielding brooms and mops as weapons - as though we were Inspector Clouseau waiting for Cato to strike.

Or flash-forward 2 years to our unbeLIEVable experience in Milwaukee, when we performed on the big Miller Oasis stage at Milwaukee Summer Fest. I mean - WHAT? That literally had to be the funnest 4 days of my life.

The laughter that she and I have experienced ... has been almost dangerous to us, medically. There was one day in particular which we now refer to as our "Beowulf day" because it was so EPIC in scope ... when it literally felt like we had melded into one person. We could not stop laughing for, I am not lying, EIGHT HOURS. I felt my entire personality dissolve. I could not get it back together. We even had to go out that night - with 2 friends of hers who were in from out of town, I believe - and Ann and I were so ravaged by our day-long fit of laughter that we were barely fit to be in public. Ann informed the two guys bluntly, "We share one brain. Watch this." Then she turned to me, BORED her eyes into my head, and said, "What am I thinking about?" I am shaking with laughter now, remembering her face. Her eyes were absolutely insane. Like - YOU try laughing for eight hours straight and see how insane YOU feel!

Our experiences have been many. I have called her at two in the morning, because the heartache was so searingly awful. She has called me at two in the morning, with her own nightmares.

We have seen a man turn into a dinosaur. We have two-stepped with cowboys. We have danced jigs in small pubs in Dublin. We have co-hosted karaeoke parties in random Chicago suburbs. We have pretended we were other people. We have watched Lady Elaine do air guitar. We have propelled ourselves into the blazing star repeatedly.

Ann Marie used to shout at M.: "I AM IN YOUR LIFE!" He would shout back: "YOU ARE NOT IN MY LIFE." A small joke between the two of them. Funny to think about, in the context of that very first night.

I could go on.

She and I would get dressed up to go out, and she would glance at her own outfit, look at mine, and say, "Good. We've got that good girl/bad girl thing going on."

I could go on!

The conversations about Anne of Green Gables! She's read them all! Multiple times!!

I could go on!!

We ACTUALLY met, as in, the beginning of our friendship, standing in line for the girls bathroom at Lounge Ax. But it could not be more perfect that we met on that night at the Wrigleyside - before we actually met. There was always something a little bit cosmic about she and I together. We fit so well together as friends that it was always a little bit uncanny ... We just CLICKED. And perhaps we needed a bit of time to get used to the idea.

To get REALLY cosmic here, it's like the universe pushed Jackie and I to go to the Wrigleyside that night - even though we still kinda felt too sick to be out and about. And the universe then presented me with three people who were destined to be MAJOR players in the course of my life. But nothing came of it that night. Phil and I did not become friends that night. That happened much later. M. and I did not start going out that night. That happened much later. Ann Marie and I did not become friends that night. That would happen much later. But there they all were. There they all were. In one place, at one time. My very first night out in Chicago. My very first night out as a single person. I met them ALL that night. And then walked away ... having no idea what had just happened.

But the cosmic tumblers had gone to work. In their invisible silent way - setting into motion the events that would eventually bring us all - yes ALL - back together again.

Very rarely do cosmic tumblers reveal themselves, very rarely do you hear them click ... click ... clicking down ...

It was only much later that I would look back on that first night at the Wrigleyside, and think: "Hmmm. Now that is biZARRE."

M., by the way, was mainly undaunted by the fact that Phil had obviously set his sights on me. The cocky bastard didn't give up - for that entire first night. He never made a nuisance of himself - (I thought he was damn sexy, anyway ... so having him vy for my attention was so flattering I thought I would have cardiac arrest every time I noticed it going on.) As long as Phil and I weren't boyfriend/girlfriend, as long as I was still up for grabs, M. would let me know he was interested.

In his own ... really retarded way.

We all watched the softball game on TV. At one point, I felt this tapping on my back, incessant, not hard or poking - just touch, touch, touch - like a pulsing neon light. For some reason, I totally assimilated it without turning around to see who was doing the tapping. My attitude was more along the lines of: "Hm. Someone's poking my back. Hm." Finally, I turned around and it was M., who, when I didn't turn around right away to see who the fuck was TOUCHING ME, decided to see how long I would just stand there allowing him to poke me, as though there were nothing out of the ordinary about it. I came to my senses immediately, and then we both started LAUGHING about how I just stood there, nonchalantly drinking my beer, watching TV, letting him poke me in the back.

I am laughing out loud.

To me, he was just a random hot guy who was messing around with me, making me laugh, and being as GOOFY as possible ... which was his way of sending me a pheromonal smoke-signal: "Pick me over Phil!"

I chose Phil. At least to go out on a date with him. But ... who did I end up with? For years? M.

Gotta love the boy's persistence. He couldn't see the future either. I was just a "new girl" on the scene, and he wanted me, so he hit on me. But I guess on some level, on the level where things make sense, on the level of cosmic tumblers ... I believe that he and I were flirting with the larger pattern, the cosmic one, in our brief encounters that night. We just weren't ready to really go there. It wasn't time yet.

Ann Marie smiled up at me, with her beautiful face, her shining eyes, her gorgeous hair - the girl is a knockout - and I felt her warmth, I felt her openness to me, her non-competitive thing - I felt her friendliness, and I was very much drawn to her. She and I were flirting with the larger pattern, the cosmic one, in our brief encounters that night. But it wasn't time for us to become friends yet.

And so I thank God for Phil. The man who took me out on a date to see Pat McCurdy play. And from there ... all things followed.

Without Phil, I would never have met Ann, and I just can't picture that. I can't picture never having have met her. The thought is truly baffling ... and I am telling you: I SHIVER when I think how close the call was. Jackie and I were both still sick. We could easily have stayed in that night. Now perhaps a person who TRULY believes in cosmic-patterns, and "meant to be" would say, immediately, "If it was meant to be that you and she would be friends ... you would have met ANYWAY. Somehow!"

I don't know if I believe that.

Is ANYTHING inevitable, all on its own? Besides death, I mean? Death is coming, whether we want it to or not.

I do believe that I was destined to meet Ann Marie - it's just that it took a couple of different meetings to seal the deal. My life is unimaginable without her in it. Truly ... difficult to even picture it. She was so much a part of my experience in Chicago that I can't separate her from ANY of it. (uhm ... she and I parked in a car outside M.'s house, analyzing the quality of the light we saw in the window to discern whether or not he was there ... "That looks to me like a light left on accidentally when someone leaves the house ... Like, I don't think he's home." Uhm - girls. Does the LIGHT actually LOOK different in different circumstances? No matter. That was the kind of friend she was.)

Her angry face berating the loser post-frat guys who refused to move out of the apartment Mitchell and I were moving into. We showed up on the morning of the move-in, a pouring rainy morning, with a Uhaul truck full of stuff ... to find three stumbling hungover guys who HADN'T EVEN PACKED YET. Mitchell and I were stunned, silent ... The hungover guys tried to bond with us, drunkenly, like: "hahahaha, you know how it is .." Ann Marie peeked around a corner (she had been stalking through the apartment, staring around her in outrage) - and said, "No, you know what? We're really pissed right now." Wipe that smirk off your face!

She was that kind of friend. She would enter into your experience so willingly, if she was your friend. She would live it with you. If you felt the need to propel yourself into a blazing star, she would leap in there with you.

Friends like that are priceless.

Happy birthday, Ann Marie. My life would not be the same without you in it. And I'm so glad those cosmic tumblers were so busy at work that first night out ... making sure our paths crossed ... and then ... (with a little help from Phil) making sure our paths crossed AGAIN. Like the universe was repeating itself, saying to us: "Look, girls, you are going to LOVE each other. We tried to set it up back in March at the Wrigleyside ... but you didn't really run with it ... So ... here you are again, 'randomly' next to one another in line for the bathroom at Lounge Ax. You don't remember it yet - but you have met before ... and TRUST ME. You are going to LOVE each other. You are gonna have to TRUST US on this one. We don't do this often, but we're giving you a second chance right now. So GO. RUN WITH IT."

And we did.

The universe breathed a sigh of relief. "FINALLY. They got the hint. Okay ... we can check that one off the list. Take 'Get Ann Marie and Sheila to become friends' off the list, mkay? NEXT!"

Today in history: March 29, 1848

Ice jam on the Niagara.

Just after midnight, the thunderous sound of water surging over the great falls at Niagara came to a halt. The eery silence persisted throughout the day and into the next evening until the waters of Lake Erie broke through the blockage and resumed their course down the river and over the falls.

Absolutely aMAZING!!

The Books: "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town" (Paul Theroux)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Dark Star Safari : Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Theroux.

I love Theroux's "travel" books. I love his novels, too, but I have a specific affection for his many many "travel" books. I put quotations around the word travel, because really - they don't actually qualify as your basic travelogue in any way, shape, or form. They have to be the crankiest travel books of all time. Sometimes he is outright MEAN to the countries he visits. He just does. not. care. Reminds of me Anne Tyler's book The Accidental Tourist. Theroux has curiosity about other places, but I don't think he really likes people all that much. His books are great reading, and I highly recommend them.

His latest travel book (came out a couple years ago) is called Dark Star Safari. He travels overland from Egypt to South Africa. At some points, the only mode of getting from one place to another is via dugout canoe. Or on foot.

He had lived in Africa for a while in the late 1960s, I believe, as a teacher, and had great affection for the place. The 1960s were a time of heady optimism in Africa, the shackles of colonialism being shrugged off - people had great hopes. Theroux returns to the place where he taught - somewhere in the Great Rift Valley, I believe - and is not only shocked at how little development there has been, but angry. It is an indictment of the entire "aid" community. A lot of the rest of the book is rather light-hearted - I love his visit to Harar, this city outside Addis Ababa where the poet Rimbaud went to live. Theroux just wants to see the place, wants to see the medieval walled town that still has a leper colony huddled outside the wall. Hyenas roam the street. Rimbaud's house is still standing - and Theroux goes to visit it. It's VERY interesting. But a lot of the rest of the book is breathlessly angry. I like breathlessly angry. Especially if you're a good writer, and Theroux is fantastic.

The excerpt I've chosen is his journey into Zimbabwe. It's sentences like this one that make Theroux a really special writer. He says about Mugabe: "Really, there was no deadlier combination than bookworm and megalomaniac." Good Lord, the truth in that unexpected statement!

Here he is, on a bus going into Zimbabwe.

From Dark Star Safari : Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Theroux.

Sitting on the Harare bus, traveling the road through Zimbabwe's eastern highlands, the farming country from Mutare to Marondera, I had an intimation of distress and made a note at the back of the book I was reading: Not many cars. It was a beautiful land of tilled fields and browsing cattle and farmhouses, yet it seemed oddly empty, as though a plague had struck. Much of what I saw could have been the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for here and there were perambulating Africans, and I got glimpses of Spam-colored settlers. Apart from these few individuals, the place seemed curiously unpeopled and inert.

The book in my lap, which I'd bought in Mutare, helped me understand a little of what was happening. It was African Tears: The Zimbabwe Land Invasions, written by Catherine Buckle, a woman who had been robbed in installments. Her Marondera farm had been snatched from her in piecemeal and violent intrusions over a six-month period.

"It's a one-man problem," many white Zimbabweans explained to me. Depending on whom I talked to, they said variously, "The president is out of his mind" or "He's lost it" or "He's off his chump." Even the kindly winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Reverend Desmond Tutu, had said, "The man is bonkers."

The Robert Mugabe rumors, which I dutifully collected, depicted the poor thing as demented as a result of having been tortured in a white-run prison: long periods in solitary, lots of abuse, cattle prods electrifying his privates, and the ultimate insult -- his goolies had been crimped. Another rumor had him in an advanced stage of syphilis; his brain was on fire. "He was trained by the Chinese, you know," many people said. And: "We knew something was up when he started calling himself 'comrade'." He had reverted, too -- did not make a decision without consulting his witch doctors. His disgust with gays was well known: "They are dogs and should be treated like dogs." He had banned the standard school exams in Zimbabwe, "to break with the colonial past." Some rumors were fairly simple: he had a lifelong hatred of whites, and it was his ambition to drive them out of the country. Of the British prime minister he said, "I don't want him sticking his pink nose in our affairs." Noting all this, I kept thinking of what Gertrude Rubadiri had told me: "We called him 'bookworm'." Really, there was no deadlier combination than bookworm and megalomaniac.

Harare did not look like a ruin. Even in its bankruptcy, Harare was to my mind the most pleasant African city I had seen so far -- the safest, the tidiest, the least polluted, the most orderly. After traffic-clogged Cairo, overheated Khartoum, crumbling tin-roofed Addis, crime-ridden Nairobi, disorderly Kampala, demoralized Dar es Salaam, ragged Lilongwe, desperate Blantyre, and battle-scarred and bombed-out Beira, Harare looked pretty and clean, the picture of tranquility, the countryside an Eden.

Much of Harare's apparent peacefulness was due to the extreme tension in the city, for its order was also a sort of lifelessness, the unnatural silence of someone holding his breath. I had the premonition that something was about to happen, within months or a year perhaps, and this was a prelude of silence and inaction before an enormous collapse, a violent election, social disorder, even civil war. It was wrong to mistake this calm for obedience and belief, since it was more likely the natural reserve of people who had already been through serious upheavals. British rule had ended abruptly when a white minority proclaimed a unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. Britain imposed sanctions thereafter, and a ten-year guerrilla war ended with the black majority taking power in 1980, and then began twenty years of Comrade Bob.

Years of sanctions had made Zimbabweans resilent and self-sufficient. Zimbabwe was at its core an independent and proud place, a country that had a manufacturing industry. There was hardly any gasoline or diesel fuel for sale, but most other necessities were available. Even in these hard times, Zimbabweans were still making things -- paper products, clothing, household furniture, shoes; they had dairies, bakieries, breweries, meat-processing plants, and canneries. There were many good hotels, though most of them were empty.

Seamus on Yeats, Anne on Maud Gonne ... general Irish revelry

Beautiful and interesting piece on William Butler Yeats by Seamus Heaney. Peteb sent it to me a whlie back but I am just getting to it now.

Some great observations:

Conquest, difficulty, labour: these terms indicate the nature of Yeats's creative disposition. From the start, he was enamoured of Blake's conviction that energy is eternal delight, yet the development of his own thought brought him more and more to the conclusion that conflict was the inescapable condition of being human. So, as his art matured and the articulation of his beliefs became more clarified and forceful, Yeats's poems typically conveyed a sensation of certitude achieved by great effort and of contradictions quelled. Poems in which the defiant self is pitted against hostile or disabling conditions - "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death", "September 1913", "Meditations in Time of Civil War"- are complemented by poems that read like discharges of pure, self-possessed energy, poems from which the accidental circumstances have been excluded so that all that remains is the melody and stamina of resurgent spirit - "The Cold Heaven", "Byzantium", "Long-legged Fly".

I had such a good time, this past fall, reading the complete works of Yeats - sitting backstage in my dressing room, I had a lot of time back there during other scenes - and I would sit at the makeup mirror, dressed in my costume, as the show went on out on stage, and read. It's really cool to read all the early stuff - because then the later poems just shine all the more.

I was very very interested to read Heaney's words on Maud Gonne, in terms of her effect on Yeats' life (and, more importantly - his creativity):

And all the while, of course, there was Maud Gonne, "high and solitary and most stern" according to one of the poems about her, "foremost among those I would hear praised" according to another, and "the troubling of my life" according to a famous sentence in his Autobiographies. The passion she inspired - and as readers we experience it more as creative power than erotic need - made her a figure of primary poetic radiance, a Dublin Beatrice, an archetype as much as a daily presence. Nevertheless, Yeats's poetry, his politics and his involvement with the occult received an extra charge of intensity from her day to day reality in his life, and when she appeared in the title role of his subversive play Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902), another kind of maturity was achieved.

This makes me think of Anne's post about Maud Gonne quite a while back (it took me some searching to find it!!) - but it gives a really interesting glimpse of this woman, the great unrequited love of Yeats' life. I read some funny quote somewhere (can't remember where) that said: "Any biography of Yeats would have to have in every chapter the following words: 'And he proposed marriage yet again to Maud Gonne'." Poor man! But oh - the creative energies it unleashed!

Anyway, go read the whole thing. It's goosebump-inducing for me - to read Heaney's words. He expresses so well what I feel, yet in a much more articulate way.

I caved

(To who, Sheila? Were there outside pressures? I think not. Just admit it. You caved to your own obsessive mindset that wants, nay - NEEDS - to create little compartmentalized areas for all of your obsessions to hang out. Fine.)

I created a category for Stalin, and put all the silly posts I've written in there. More to come, more to come.

The Books: "The Gulag Archipelago" (Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Not much I can say - it's a little bit overwhelming. Here's some background on Solzhenitsyn. Imprisoned in Stalin's gulag - the "gulag archipelago" - from 1945 to 1953. This is his book about how the "gulag" worked - but not just the camps themselves - the whole system. He explains, painstakingly, how the interrogations worked - how it was that people confessed in droves to things they did not do - why it was seen as an honor to turn in your family and friends - There are a couple of separate chapters on all of the sensational show-trials and what each one MEANT. Because, of course, the trials were not real. They were completely orchestrated, nothing unplanned about them at all - so we can look at them as symbolic of certain things. Solzhenitsyn's writing is extremely readable - very personable, almost like a diary. This book is HORRIBLE. He goes to the heart of the lunacy, and stays there. Not only does he stay there, but he explains it. He lived it. Russia denounced him for years. His international fame grew to the point that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970. Russia denounced the Nobel Prize. Of course. Typical. He never said what Russia wanted him to say. He still doesn't, come to think of it. A complicated man, someone I admire very much ... I think that The Gulag Archipelago is one of the most important books not only of the 20th century, but ever. It goes a long long way towards explaining the WHYS - and he does it in a way that really resonates with me. It's not just about political policies, or party politics, or power struggles - He talks a lot about psychology. The psychological pressure of the interrogations (which is immortalized so terrifyingly in Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon) - I always put myself in the positions of these people, I can't help myself. Maybe it's just natural curiosity, or maybe that's the part of me that's an actress, that doesn't just want to know facts - but wants to enter into the experience of others. And I can't help but try to imagine myself in those interrogation rooms, being questioned - and ... what on EARTH would have to happen in there to make me betray my friends? My boyfriend? My family? I can't IMAGINE. It's painful to think about, and yet somehow I can't help it. I try to imagine what circumstances would have to exist in order for this to occur. You get my point. That's the way my mind goes. It's horrible to contemplate, of course - it's not a pleasant daydream - but psychologically, it is one of the main things that interests me about this whole period in Russian history. The fabricated confessions. PILES of them. Glorifying that little shit who turned in his parents as kulaks. People rushing to betray their friends. Again, like I've said before - a looking-glass world. Betrayal became a virtue. It became a civic duty. How did that occur? Books like Darkness at Noon, The Great Terror by Robert Conquest, and Gulag Archipelago make great strides in answering that question.

Solzhenitsyn wrote about his own imprisonment - and what it was like - in the holding cells, and then in the forced labor camps. But he also describes the lead-up, the mass arrests, the rounds of show trials through the years, the insane year of 1937 - I'll excerpt a bit from the section on the trials.

Hard to find an excerpt. This one will do. If you haven't read this book - I can't recommend it highly enough. I went into it thinking it was going to be dry and informative ... I have no idea why I thought that. This book is the OPPOSITE of dry. You'll see in the excerpt below. He has a couple of parenthetical snarky comments - he makes fun of what's happening - you'll see how he does it. It's very very readable. All parentheticals are his. All italics are his. He even puts exclamation points in parentheses, to show how ... gobsmackingly AMAZING it all was - amazing as in 'audacious'. I love his observations on the word "Center".

From The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The Case of the "Tactical Center" -- August 16-20, 1920

In this case there were twenty-eight defendants present, plus additional defendants who were being tried in absentia because they weren't around.

At the very beginning of his impassioned speech, in a voice not yet grown hoarse and in phrases illumined by class analysis, the supreme accuser informs us that in addition to the landowners and the capitalists "there existed and there continues to exist one additional social stratum, the social characteristics of which have long since been under consideration by the representatives of revolutionary socialism. [In other words: to be or not to be?] This stratum is the so-called 'intelligentsia. In this trial, we shall be concerned with the judgment of history on the activity of the Russian intelligentsia" and with the verdict of the Revolution on it.

The narrow limits of our investigation prevent our comprehending exactly the particular manner in which the representatives of revolutionary socialism were taking under consideration the fate of the so-called intelligentsia and what specifically they were planning for it. However, we take comfort in the fact that these materials have been published, that they are accessible to everyone, and that they can be assembled in any required detail. Therefore, solely to understand the over-all atmosphere of the Republic, we shall recall the opinion of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commisars in the years when all these tribunal sessions were going on.

In a letter to Gorky on September 15, 1919 -- which we have already cited - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin replied to Gorky's attempts to intercede in the arrests of members of the intelligentsia, among them, evidently, some of the defendants in this trial, and, commenting on the bulk of the Russian intelligentsia of those years (the "close-to-the-Cadets-intelligentsia"), he wrote: "In actual fact they are not [the nation's] brains, but shit." On another occasion he said to Gorky: "If we break too many pots, it will be its [the intelligentsia's] fault." If the intelligentsia wants justice, why doesn't it come over to us? "I've gotten one bullet from the intelligentsia myself." (In other words, from Kaplan.)

On the basis of these feelings, he expressed his mistrust and hostility toward the intelligentsia: rotten-liberal; "pious"; "the slovenliness so customary among 'educated' people"; he believed the intelligentsia was always shortsighted, that it had betrayed the cause of the workers. (But when had the intelligentsia ever sworn loyalty to the cause of the workers, the dictatorship of the workers?)

This mockery of the intelligentsia, this contempt for the intelligentsia, was subsequently adopted with enthusiasm by the publicists and newspapers of the twenties and was absorbed into the current of day-to-day life. And in the end, the members of the intelligentsia accepted it too, cursing their eternal thoughtlessness, their eternal duality, their eternal spinelessness, and their hopeless lagging behind the times.

And this was just! The voice of the accusing power, echoed and re-echoed beneath the vaults of the Verkhtrib, returning us to the defendants' bench.

"This social stratum ... has, during recent years, undergone the trial of universal re-evaluation." Yes, yes, re-evaluation, as was so often said at the time. And how did that re-evaluation occur? Here's how: "The Russian intelligentsia which entered the crucible of the Revolution with slogans of power for the people [so it had something to it after all!] emerged from it an ally of the black [not even White!] generals, and a hired [!] and obedient agent of European imperialism. The intelligentsia trampled on its own banners [as in the army, yes?] and covered them with mud."

How, indeed, can we not cry out our hearts in repentance? How can we not lacerate our chests with our fingernails?

And the only reason why "there is no need to deal out the death blow to its individual representatives" is that "this social group has outlived its time."

Here, at the start of the twentieth century! What power of foresight! Oh, scientific revolutionaries! (However, the intelligentsia had to be finished off anyway. Throughout the twenties they kept finishing them off and finishing them off.)

We examine with hostility the twenty-eight individual allies of the black generals, the hirelings of European imperialism. And we are especially aroused by the stench of the word Center. Now we see a Tactical Center, now a National Center, and now a Right Center. (And in our recollection of the trials of two decades, Centers keep creeping in all the time, Centers and Centers, Engineers' Centers, Menshevik Centers, Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centers, Rightist-Bukharinite Centers, but all of them are crushed, all crushed, and that is the only reason you and I are still alive.) Wherever there is a Center, of course, the hand of imperialism can be found.

True, we feel a measure of relief when we learn that the Tactical Center on this occasion was not an organization; that it did not have (1) statutes; (2) a program; (3) membership dues. So, what did it have? Here's what: They used to meet! (Goose-pimples up and down the back!) And when they met, they undertook to familiarize themselves with one another's point of view! (Icy chills!)

The charges were extremely serious and were supported by the evidence. There were two (2) pieces of evidence to corroborate the charges against twenty-eight accused individuals. These were two letters from people who were not present in court because they were abroad: Myakotin and Fyodorov. They were absent, but until the October Revolution they had been members of the same committee as those who were present, a circumstance that gavde us the right to equate those who were absent with those who were present. And their letters dealt with their disagreements with Denikin on certain trivial questions: the peasant question (we are not told what these differences were, but they were evidently advising Denikin to give the land to the peasants); the Jewish question (they were evidently advising him not to return to the previous restrictions); the federated nationalities questoin (enough said: clear); the question of the structure of the government (democracy rather than dictatorship); and similar matters. And what conclusion did this evidence suggest? Very simple. It proved the fact of correspondence, and it also proved the agreement, the unanimity, of those present with Denikin! (Grrr! Grrrr!)

But there were also direct accusations against those present: that they had exchanged information with acquaintances who lived in outlying areas (Kiev, for example) which were not under the control of the central Soviet authorities! In other words, this used to be Russia, let's say, but then in the interests of world revolution we ceded this one piece to Germany. And people continued to exchange letters. How are you doing there, Ivan Ivanich? Here's how things are going with us. N.M. Kishkin, a member of the Central Committee of the Cadets, was so brazen as to try to justify himself right fromt he defendants' bench. "A man doesn't want to be blind. He tries to find out everything he can about what's going on everywhere."

To find out everything about what's going on everywhere? He doesn't want to be blind? Well, all one can say is that the accused correctly described their actions as treason, treason to Soviet power!

Babysitting

.... by Patrick Hughes.

Nanoseconds after hearing the parents’ car leave the driveway, I’d bellow “KUNG FU!!!” at the top of my lungs and me and the kids would commence to lightly kicking each other in the face for an hour or two, until they were either exhausted or unconscious, and I could just chuck ‘em in bed and commence to the good stuff: the sweet spot between beddy-bye and parental return where I made good money gorging on snacks, hunting for the porno stash, and soaking up that sweet, sweet cable TV with no adult oversight.

But here's the whole thing.

Lazy

Meme from Tanya.

Ten FAVORITES

TV show: At the moment The Sopranos.
Flower: Roses
Alcohol: scotch
Movie: Empire Strikes Back
Color: Green
Sport: Baseball
Phrase: "Y'know what? You're gonna have to stop." (Mitchell - David - you remember this moment!!)
Mall: Wakefield Mall, always and forever
Music: iPod! Whoo-hoo! Right now: Nirvana Unplugged.
Food: Mexican

Seven FACTS

Height: 5'5
Hair color: Red
Hair length: short
Hair style: Straight
Eye color: grey
Shoe size: it depends.
Personality: It also depends.

Six LIFE

How's life? Right now it's good
Whats your mood right now? Looking forward to a couple different things
What are you doing right now as we speak? typing
What are you doing over the weekend? Mitchell and Alex are both in town. Mitchell is staying with me. Also Lawrence of Arabia is playing at the Ziegfeld - I think I need to go see it on the huge screen.
What do you want to do with your life? Geez, lay off, will ya?
Where are you right now? Floating thru cyber-space

Seven LOVELIFE

Have you ever been in love? Yeah
Do you believe in love? Believe in it? I have experienced love, therefore I know it is a reality - it has nothing to do with "belief". I bet the person who made up that question "believes" in soulmates, too, and we all know how I feel about THAT.
Have you ever had your heart broken? Yes
Have you ever broken someones heart? Yes
Have you ever fallen for your best friend? No - or, well, briefly. But I got over it quickly and we just became best friends.
Are you planning on getting married? Sure, whatever. I'd like to get married.
Are you afraid of committment? Sure.

Ten RANDOMS

One thing sitting next to you. iPod
Do you like the color purple? Sure
How many cds do you own? 100? Not that many.
What is your most prized posession? at the moment, my iPod. But also all my books. And the letter Cashel wrote to me about the lightning storm he saw
Who's your closest relative? Uhm - my whole family?
If you could go anywhere? Iran. Central Asia. The 'stans.

Seven HAVEYOUEVERS

Have you ever been caught sneaking out? Of what?
Have you ever skinny dipped? Yes.
Have you ever done something you regret? Yes (but not the skinny dipping)
Have you ever bungee jumped? No
Have you ever been on a house boat? Uhm - no. Not that I can recall.
Have you ever finished an entire jaw breaker? Yes
Have you ever wanted someone so badly it hurt? Yes

Ten AREYOUS

Are you missing someone right now? Yes. A whole bunch of people.
Are you in love with anyone? Not really
Are you happy? Mostly
Are you talking to anyone right now? No
Are you thirsty? Yes
Are you bored? Getting there
Are you German? No
Are you Irish? Yes
Are your parents still married? Yes
Are you crushing on someone? Yes

10 second Oscars

GO NOW and read Alex's post.

I am so gonna have to be a copycat and do my own list.

The Books: "Night Train to Turkistan" (Stuart Stevens)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road by Stuart Stevens. This is a typical kooky travelogue book - I enjoyed it. Four people, 3 guys and one girl, travel across China into the wild west of the country. Stuart Stevens, the author, had read and loved Peter Fleming's book about following the Silk Road to Kashgar - and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. It isn't really historical - it's more about the people they meet, the food they eat, and the cultural shock of - oh, traveling on a bus in China, or trying to find gas, etc. etc. Only one of their group, Mark Salzman (author of Iron and Silk) had ever been to China before. It's a funny book. Not deep or anything. And getting permission to even DO this trip from the Chinese government was hellish - and if I recall correctly, they didn't ask for complete permission - they just went - and each step of the way out west, wrangled with the authorities to go further. The bureaucratic bullshit makes up a lot of the book - that was their main experience of China itself. Being dogged by 'guides', buried in paperwork, etc.

They reach Turpan, and hit some blocks in terms of going further. One of their group, David, decides he has had it, and wants to return not only to Beijing but to America. But ... they are so far away ... how will he return? You can't just hop on a plane from Turpan ... it's in the middle of nowhere ... But David feels he literally must get the feck OUT. He speaks no Chinese. He decides to take the bus back to Beijing. Everyone, especially Mark who has been to China before, tries to talk him out of it. But David is firm. No more for him.

The first sentence of the book gives you some idea of the tone of the whole thing:

From the beginning it was a silly idea, without the slightest utilitarian purpose or merit.

hahaha

From Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road by Stuart Stevens.

We ate in the market that night. The free market in Turpan was the largest, most vigorous I'd seen in China, row after row of stands attended by Uighurs who flamboyantly hawked their goods. They wore round skullcaps circled with bands of fur and tall boots made of hardened felt. At a boot stand, Mark and I tried, with little success, to learn what process was employed to stiffen the felt. Also, I asked if it would be possible to have a pair made for my size twelve feet. The boots had no soles or treads other than the rounded felt; the Uighers who wore them walked with a curious sway, as if they were crossing a pitching deck in a moderate storm. The boots were reputed to be very warm, though what made them such eluded explanation.

We ate noodles with shards of mutton and hot pepper for dinner. The preparation was an elaborate process. On a thick piece of wood, dough was flattened by a young Uigher girl, her older sister stretched the dough into noodles with an exaggerated accordion motion, swinging her arms theatrically. Their mother did the actual cooking, first frying the bright red hunks of lamb in deep oil at the bottom of a soot-blackened wok, then adding the noodles, onions, and peppers.

There was a whole section of the market dedicated to noodle stands. The chefs stood beside their coal-burning stoves yelling and touting their noodles. Behind the cooking area, each of the stalls had rows of long benches, like a Turkistan version of a German beer garden. Modern tape players serenaded diners with high-pitched music.

Turpan in early evening was a place of sharp, surprising images. The sun setting over the desert threw a golden haze over the dusty streets and alleys. Wild-looking Muslim children played in the dirt, striking homemade tops with rough whips. Irrigation canals lined the streets.

Off the main streets, away from the Han troops and the revolutionary statue at the city center, it was quite easy to forget that you were in China. The blue-eyed Muslim men and women didn't wear Mao suits or surgical masks, and didn't spit on the street.

This was a feeling that lasted exactly as long as you could delay dealing with the other China, the official China of permission and reports; the China of CITS and Public Security bureaus.

"We would like very much to arrange your itinerary," the CITS manager told me when I arrived in her office to make arrangements. "But there is a problem with fuel."

"What kind of problem?"

"There is none on road."

I pulled out my worn map. "You mean all along this road," I traced the loop around the Takla Makan, "there is no gas?"

She nodded, seemingly relieved that I had understood so quickly.

"But how do people get from one town to another?"

"Bicycles. Many bicycles in China."

"They bicycle across hundreds of kilometers of desert? And how do they get food and medicine? Here in Hotan," I pointed to the town at the bottom of the desert road, "they make carpets famous all over the world. How do they get these carpets out of Hotan? On a bicycle?"

"Oh no. Trucks. Trucks, of course."

"But if there's gas for trucks, why isn't there gas for your jeeps?" I pointed toward the new Japanese jeeps parked out front.

"Different kind of gas," she said quickly, "for trucks and jeeps."

"You mean diesel? But you have diesel jeeps?"

"But they are Japanese diesel. The trucks are Chinese. Japanese and Chinese use different kind of diesel."

What struck me as so odd about this encounter was that I knew this woman was intelligent. And educated.

David left that afternoon. Mark went with him in the taxi on the hour-long trip across the desert to Daheyon. He returned looking heartbroken.

"It was a nightmare. I left him standing beside the tracks with his handful of phrases. The station was jammed. It's five nights to Beijing ..."

I was in no hurry to leave Turpan. Each morning I woke up to the sound of braying donkeys -- there were many donkeys in Turpan -- and had breakfast in the EXCURSIONS room. Uighurs like coffee, and the EXCURSIONS room offered the best I'd had in China, along with twists of fried dough. Afterward, I would walk around town while the sun rose. This happened around ten o'clock ...

Each morning the rising sun burned away the thick ground fog, gradually revealing a series of dramatic images: the veiled woman hurrying into a walled entrance way; the minarets of the mosque floating disembodied atop the sea of fog; a stream of donkey carts loaded with sugarcane heading to the bazaar. And always there were the old men with spiked grey beards, arms folded into their coats, leaning against mud walls. They struck me, without exception, as angry.

The men were a reminder that, though it looked peaceful enough, Turpan had a past of celebrated violence. When Dr. Albert Regal, a Russian botanist/spy, escaped from house arrest in Turpan in 1879, his guards were executed according to local custom described in Foreign Devils on the Silk Road:

The victim was incarcerated in a specially built cage known as a kapas. His head, firmly secured, stuck out of the top, while his feet rested on a board. The latter was gradually lowered, day by day, until on about the eighth day his neck finally broke.

Potatoes are in the past

Cashel had to give a talk in his class about his ancestors and where his family came from. The whole class has to do this project.

He interviewed my parents on the phone (multiple times - he had to call back and FOLLOW UP on a couple of points he wasn't clear on - hahahaha) - and wrote down the answers to his questions about our ancestors ("Where did we come from in Ireland?" "Why did we come to America?" "What did our ancestors do in Ireland?" Etc.).

Then he had to give a talk to the class.

Uhm, what I wouldn't give to have a video tape of the whole thing???

Apparently, he did really well. He gave his talk. And he closed with a bang: He passed out raw potatoes to the entire class. Each student got one. Nothing like a PROP to make history come to life! THIS IS WHAT MY ANCESTORS ATE. EVERY STINKIN' DAY.

hahahahahaha

Go, Cash-man. Good job, little man.

I tried to talk to him about it on the phone today but he wasn't really interested in re-living it. You know ... His whole vibe was: "that's the PAST, Auntie Sheila. I gave the talk THREE DAYS AGO."

I got monosyllabic answers to my questions.

"So how did it go?"
"Good."
"Was it fun?"
"Yes."
"Did people laugh at the potatoes?"
"Yes."

Cashel's got his priorities straight. Live in the PRESENT. But Auntie Sheila, with her pestering questions about an event from ANCIENT HISTORY needs a little work on hers.

Why do I love Curly?

This is why I love Curly.

Geek moments

-- I cannot even describe how happy it makes me that on my daily run I pass the spot (sort of) where the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr took place. There's a big bust of my dead boyfriend and a plaque memorializing the duel. Of course I'm not happy he had such an untimely end ... but ... GOD. EVERY. STINKIN. TIME. I run by there I have a moment of ... dammit, I am so happy I live where I live. How perfect is that? I live surrounded by the ghosts of Alexander Hamilton. I am a geek, and this thrills me.

-- The other night when David came over we were talking about a project his daughter was working on for school. It had to do with Paul Revere's famous etching of the Boston Massacre. David was helping her with her homework - and I guess she didn't have her school book with her - where the copy of the etching was reproduced. David was fascinated by the whole story - the Boston Massacre, and the story of the etching, etc. - and David said something like, "I haven't seen the etching, though". I calmly got up off my bed, walked to Bookshelf #6, pulled out David McCullough's biography of John Adams - I just knew it would be in there, because John Adams defended the British soldiers in the eventual trial ... I flipped to the pictures, and voila. There it was. Handed the book over to David - who GREEDILY looked at it, and read the caption. I am a massive geek, and also: I am so my father's daughter. This is the advantage of having a huge library, of keeping your books around you at all times. I loved that moment. To be able to behave as a reference librarian for a friend of mine who was interested in a certain topic.

Happy birthday - to Tennessee Williams

This is an edited post of something I wrote last year on his birthday. When I say 'edit' I mean I added MORE to it. hahaha

"You're always having to compete with yourself. They always say, 'It's not as good as Streetcar or Cat'. Of course it's not. At 69, you don't write the kind of play you write at 30. You haven't got the kind of energy you used to have."

-- Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams said the following about Streetcar, and his main point of that entire play:

There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts. Stanley sees Blanche not as a desperate, driven creature backed into a last corner to make a last desperate stand - but as a calculating bitch with 'round heels'.... Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life.

I have been in his plays, I have worked on his plays in scene classes, I have written extensively about his plays, my bookshelves are lined with books filled with references to this most extraordinary man.

Tennessee Williams wrote the following elegiac essay about Laurette Taylor (who created the role of Amanda so memorably in Glass Menagerie and made him star) for The New York Times after news of her death in 1949:

I do not altogether trust the emotionalism that is commonly indulged in over the death of an artist, not because it is necessarily lacking in sincerity but because it may come too easily. In what I say now about Laurette Taylor I restrict myself to those things which I have felt continually about her as apart from any which this unhappy occasion produces.

Of course the first is that I consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known. The second is that I loved her as a person. In a way the second is more remarkable. I have seldom encountered any argument about her preeminent stature as an actress. But for me to love her was remarkable because I have always been so awkward and diffident around actors that it has made a barrier between us almost all but insuperable.

In the case of Laurette Taylor, I cannot say that I ever got over the awkwardness and the awe which originally were present, but she would not allow it to stand between us. The great warmth of her heart burned through and we became close friends.

I am afraid it is the only close friendship I have ever had with a player...

It is our immeasurable loss that Laurette Taylor's performances were not preserved on the modern screen. The same is true of Duse and Bernhardt, with whom her name belongs. Their glory survives in the testimony and inspiration of those who saw them. Too many people have been too deeply moved by the gift of Laurette Taylor for that to disappear from us.

In this unfathomable experience of ours there are sometimes hints of something that lies outside the flesh and its mortality. I suppose these intuitions come to many people in their religious vocations, but I have sensed them more clearly in the work of artists and most clearly of all in the art of Laurette Taylor. There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.

The last word that I received from her was a telegram which reached me early this fall. It was immediately after the road company of our play had opened in Pittsburgh. The notices spoke warmly of Pauline Lord's performance in the part of Amanda. "I have just read the Pittsburgh notices," Laurette wired me. "What did I tell you, my boy? You don't need me."

I feel now - as I have always felt - that a whole career of writing for the theatre is rewarded enough by having created one good part for a great actress.

Having created a part for Laurette Taylor is a reward I find sufficient for all the effort that went before and any that may come after.

It was a two-sided deal there. Her performance launched him into stardom. And his creation of Amanda revitalized her career just in time for her to capitalize on it. She would be dead in a couple of years. She had had a great career early in her life, and went on a 10 year binge following the death of her husband. Laurette Taylor was "washed up". Until ...

And now, she's a legend, her performance in Glass Menagerie is legendary. "What did I tell you, my boy, you don't need me..." Ha. That's what you think, Laurette! But in a way, she was completely right. The play is better than any one performance. The play didn't depend on Laurette Taylor's genius, although thank God she found the vehicle. The star of the play is actually the play itself, and Laurette Taylor knew that. The star of the play was this new voice of Tennessee Williams. And so no, Tennessee didn't "need" her. And about Tennessee saying: "I consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known." Anyone who knows anything about theatre would be hard-pressed to disagree. I haven't even SEEN the woman act, obviously, but I don't need to. I will take the hundreds and hundreds of eyewitness' word for it. In the same way that I know, in my heart, that Eleanora Duse was one of the "greatest artists of her profession" as well. I don't need to have seen her live.

Here's a treat for all you Tennessee and Laurette fans. Here is one of the original reviews of Glass Menagerie, after its premiere on an icy winter night in Chicago. This review focuses on the miracle that was Laurette Taylor's performance.

January 14, 1945

MEMO FROM CHICAGO By Lloyd Lewis

CHICAGO - As this is written there exists doubt as to whether Eddie Dowling has anything more satisfying than an artistic success in his new production, "The Glass Menagerie", at the Civic Theatre, but there is no doubt whatsoever that he has brought back Laurette Taylor as a great character actress.

Not since she did "Peg o'My Heart," exactly thirty years ago, has she been so talked and written about.

In "The Glass Menagerie," which is a tenuous and moody tragedy from the pen of Tennessee Williams, she plays a decaying Delta belle overfond of haranguing her two children, one a warehouse worker (Mr. Dowling) and the other a morbidly bashful maiden (Julie Haydon), upon their duty to rise above the drabness of life in a St. Louis alley flat. Fumbling around the dolorous precincts of her home in a slipshod Mother Hubbard, she is forever reciting the plantation glories of her youth, how seventeen young gentlemen callers were forever complimenting her among the magnolias, and how she could have had this or that grandson instead of the captivating plebeian drunk who took her only to desert her and leave her to current St. Louis blues.

When Miss Taylor mumbles in magnificent realism she is still enough of a vocal wizard to be intelligible to her audiences, and when she pouts, nags or struts in pathetic bursts of romantic memory she is superb as a pantomime. Her descents into hysteria are masterpieces of understatement, dramatic in that they force her audience to do the acting for her.

She accomplishes her tour de force of acting without a single gesture which could be charged with showmanship. Some of her most telling lines are fumbling mutterings delivered over her shoulder. And in a scene wherein she prods her son into bringing home somebody, anybody, who might possibly marry his psychopathic sister before he himself wanders off, as his mother knows he will, into the big, blue and tipsy yonder, she gives a performance that could fit into the best of the Abbey Theatre's Irish plays.

One moment she is a ridiculous pretender and the next only a poor old woman dreading so soon to be dead because her helpless daughter will then be alone. When a 'caller' is eventually dragooned and brought to the house for dinner, Miss Taylor's appearance in an ancient taffety and high-toned manners is a delicate feat in the creation of that narrow line between the absurd and the sad.

Oh. Oh. For a time machine.

Here's a picture of Tennessee Williams out on his beloved Key West in 1980:

Make voyages. Attempt them. That's all there is.

-- Tennessee Williams, "Camino Real"

I'm deeply attached to the works of Tennessee Williams. Too many stories to even tell. I realized things about myself - and my life - through working on Miss Alma in Summer and Smoke - that pretty much forever changed me. My journal entries from that time are ... hard to describe. I went into it a little bit here. Sheila and Alma had completely merged. It's one of the only times that's ever happened. Funny: I love to post my Diary Friday excerpts from high school days, because haw haw haw we can all sort of chuckle at the exuberance and silliness of youth. But I would very much hesitate to post those Sheila/Alma entries - which were, first of all, much more recent - but also - I don't know if I would ever want to expose that side of myself here. That is the real Artist Sheila. I couldn't bear to have anyone roll their eyes or chuckle at HER. NOBODY can tell me that Alma is "just" a character in a play. She LIVES, she breathes. I certainly felt possessed by her.

When people who knew him talk about Tennessee Williams, they always mention his laugh. Apparently, he had this wild high-pitched out-of-control Mozartian giggle, completely infectious to anyone near him. His plays may have had tragic elements, but that was how he worked out his own tragic upbringing, his sister's lobotomy, etc. He himself was not an openly tragic or introverted figure. He put all of his grief and sadness into his plays. The man was deeply sensitive - like all of his female characters. But if this seems like he was a bleak or depressive personality, that's incorrect. He always balked, too, when reviewers would characterize all of his female characters as "desperate". He didn't agree with that assessment at all. He saw each and every one of them as survivors - women trying to break through and live a happy and meaningful life. Other people assigned the meaning "desperate" to them, but Tennessee always hated that. Here's part of an essay he wrote for The New York Times in 1948 where he addresses this whole "desperate character" thing - In this essay he uses Miss Alma in "Summer and Smoke" as the jumping-off point:

All at once, I found myself hammed in by three women in basic black who had been to the Saturday matinee and had apparently thought of nothing since except the problems of Alma Winemiller, the heroine of "Summer and Smoke". When you are eating, a great deal can be accomplished by having a mouth full of food and by making gutteral noises instead of speech when confronted with questions such as, What is the theme of your play? What happens to the characters after the play is over? What is your next play about and how do you happen to know so much about women? On that last one you can spit the food out if it really begins to choke you.

For a writer who is not intentionally obscure, and never, in his opinion, obscure at all, I do get asked a hell of a lot of questions which I can't answer. I have never been able to say what was the theme of my play and I don't think I have ever been conscious of writing with a theme in mind. I am always surprised when, after a play has opened, I read in the papers what the play is about, that it was about a decayed Southern belle trying to get a man for her crippled daughter, or that it was about a boozie floozie on the skids, or that a backwoods sheik in a losing battle with three village vamps.

Don't misunderstand me. I am thankful for these highly condensed and stimulating analyses, but it would never have occurred to me that that was the story I was trying to tell. Usually when asked about a theme I look vague and say, "It is a play about life." What could be simpler, and yet more pretentious? You can easily extend that a little and say it is a tragedy of incomprehension. That also means life. Or you can say it is a tragedy of Puritanism. That is life in America. Or you can say that it is a play that considers the "problem of evil". But why not just say "life"?

To return to the women in the alcove. On this particular occasion the question that floored me was, "Why do you always write about frustrated women?"

To say that floored me is to put it mildly, because I would say that frustrated is almost exactly what the women I write about are not. What was frustrated about Amanda Wingfield? Circumstances, yes! But spirit? See Helen Hayes in London's "Glass Menagerie" if you still think Amanda was a frustrated spirit! No, there is nothing interesting about frustration, per se. I could not write a line about it for the simple reason that I can't write a line about anything that bores me.

Was Blance of "A Streetcar Named Desire" frustrated? About as frustrated as a beast of the jungle! And Alma Winemiller? What is frustrated about loving with such white hot intensity that it alters the whole direction of your life, and removes you from the parlor of the Episcopal rectory to a secret room above Moon Lake Casino?

I came across this essay when I was working on Alma Winemiller - and I can't tell you how much of an "A-ha!" moment it gave me. If I felt drawn towards portraying her as sexually FRUSTRATED, or emotionally FRUSTRATED ... I remembered Tennessee's words. I remembered the truth of them. Do not play the frustration. How boring. Play the OBJECTIVE, play the DESIRE, play what you WANT with all your heart ... Let the CIRCUMSTANCES of the play frustrate you ... but never ever take your eye off your objective. And THAT is where the tragedy lies.

Brilliant. So so helpful to any actress who works on ANY of his great parts to keep in mind.

I love that drive in him - the drive to pour all of the darkness and fear from his background into his work - he was a man driven to do so - it was therapeutic for him, yes, but never just therapy. Art that is just therapy is usually bad art. Or - perhaps not bad - but it will not stand the test of time. Tennessee worked on his craft, and always cared more about the PLAY than about the personal demons exorcised by said play. Read his letters, his journals, his instructions to directors ... the level of detail there is astonishing. Really inspiring to me. To be such a great artist, but to also have such an understanding of craft, and structure.

"Nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof - is there? Is there, baby?"

-- from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The lead of the last play I did was the lead in Tennessee Williams' last play - Something Cloudy Something Clear - done here in NYC at Cocteau Rep. Williams died soon after the play went up. Craig shared with me his memories of working with Tennessee. Precious.

Everyone talks about his "laugh". Actors and actresses who were in his plays talk about hearing his laugh from out in the audience. It was a generous laugh, a laugh full of joy. If an actor or actress was doing well, he had no problem with letting them know, with enjoying their performances openly. (Other playwrights are not so kind. It seems as though other playwrights have this thought process: "No actor could EVER live up to the perfection that resides in my mind. My play is perfect as is ... it's the ACTORS who are messing it up!!" Playwrights like that, usually, are big bores, and don't have a lot of talent. Like: okay, you want perfection? Build a feckin' statue, and don't hire live actors. Mkay? That way your precious words will be safe from contamination. Ahem. I have a ton of stories.) But Tennessee, while kind of intimidated by actors, he never knew what to say to them ... LOVED them when they were wonderful. He did not consciously withhold approval - like so many do. If someone sucked, he had no problem with sending a note to the director saying: "Please have her realize that she needs to be light and funny on that one line - she is dragging down the entire scene with her dismal line readings..." hahaha He would never say such a thing to the actor's face - he let the director do his job - but if he was pleased? He would sit out in the audience, and just HOWL with laughter. He loved being an audience member. So many people in the theatre, because the theatre is their job and livelihood - forget how to just be an audience member.

Here, to me, is a quintessential Tennessee Williams statement.

An interviewer asked him: "What is your definition of happiness?"

He replied, "Insensitivity, I guess."

His experience of "happiness" as being, in its essence, "insensitive" came from his background. Those who were "sensitive" were crushed and shattered by cruelty, by life itself. His sister Rose was institutionalized and lobotomized. This was something Tennessee never really recovered from. (But he didn't really HAVE to recover from it, I guess. All of his feelings about it went into his work. If he had "recovered", or "worked it out" in his mind, then he might not have written Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, et al.) He was a perpetual outsider. He was on the run from his past. He was able to "get out" of the past ... his sister Rose was not. The guilt of that never left him. The guilt of being "the one" who was able to live in the real world dogged him at every turn. If one was "happy", if one was able to manuever thru a world that lobotomized some of its most sensitive members, then "happiness" required some kind of a hard outer shell - a shell that Tennessee himself lacked, that other "sensitives" (his word) lacked. He did not begrudge people their happiness ... he just didn't understand it. He couldn't get "in there", ever. Again, this is kind of a blessing, at least as far as we are concerned - merely because that sort of baffled response to how on earth to LIVE in this world ... is the emotional place from which he wrote all of his plays.

He WAS Blanche. He WAS Tom in Glass Menagerie. He WAS Alma. He WAS Maggie. All of these people, these "sensitives", trying to make their way through, trying to bear up under disappointments and cruelty ... trying to SURVIVE.

Again and again, Williams reiterated that he never wrote about victims. He didn't see any of these people as victims. He saw them as survivors. Beautiful triumphant survivors. I love that about him.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

-- Tennessee Williams

The Blache DuBois', the Laura Wingfields, the Miss Almas ... these are sensitive people, deeply wounded people, on the edge of shattering - just like his sister Rose did. Of course blatant casual "happiness" would be seen as insensitive through their eyes.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

-- Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams is one of my own personal heroes, for more reasons than one, and I am aware (on a pretty much daily basis) of how grateful I am to him for his plays. In the same way that I am pretty much always conscious of being grateful that there was a Shakespeare, and that we have his works with us today. I still read Tennessee Williams plays now, over and over, reading them countless times, never ever getting tired of them, never ever feeling like all my questions are answered.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.

-- Tennessee Williams

And I'll leave you with another really telling and beautiful anecdote, this one from Elia Kazan. I LOVE this, because it says to me, in no uncertain terms, why Tennessee Williams is a god among playwrights - and why he is so unusual. Nobody else can touch him, really. I love Arthur Miller's plays, but there's always a social conscience in them which can get preachy and tiresome if it's not controlled. Death of a Salesman has a perfect balance, but his later plays have the feeling of pamphlets.

Tennessee Williams has none of that. There is no "social conscience" in his plays. There is no deeper social criticism going on. Perhaps the only "criticism" that Tennessee consistently levels at "society" is the way it treats the "sensitives".

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

-- Tennessee Williams

Here's the setup for the excerpt I want to post (which has to do with the rehearsals and also the opening of Streetcar Named Desire):

Jessica Tandy, who originated Blanche on Broadway, was already a celebrated actress. Marlon Brando was practically unknown. Kazan noticed which way the wind was blowing during rehearsals, and it concerned him on many levels.

Basically what was happening was that Marlon Brando was acting Jessica Tandy off the stage. Without breaking a sweat, Brando stole the show right out from under her. Jessica Tandy fought to keep her ground (which, actually, is perfect for the theme of the show and for the character of Blanche Dubois), but Kazan's main concern was that Blanche would turn into a laughable character and lose the sympathy of the audience. Kazan was worried that the audience, because of Brando's undeniable stage presence, and the electricity of his acting, would completely side with Stanley, and not have any sympathy for Blanche at all. This, Kazan felt, would be a disaster. Stanley rapes Blanche. This event must be seen as horrifyingly wrong, not as Blanche getting what she deserves. But Brando's power took over the play, it was a runaway train, it wasn't a matter of him playing Stanley as sympathetic - he wasn't. It was just that he was a force to be reckoned with, a powerhouse - you couldn't take your eyes off him. Jessica Tandy barely registered, when she was beside him.

Here's a photo from that production: Brando, Kim Hunter, and Tandy:

And so Kazan feared, as rehearsals went on, that the balance of the play was off.

Here's what Kazan wrote about all of this in his marvelous autobiography.

It is Tennessee Williams' "advice" to Kazan at the end that really packs a punch:

But what had been intimated in our final rehearsals in New York was happening. The audiences adored Brando. When he derided Blanche, they responded with approving laughter. Was the play becoming the Marlon Brando Show? I didn't bring up the problem, because I didn't know the solution. I especially didn't want the actors to know that I was concerned. What could I say to Brando? Be less good? Or to Jessie? Get better? ...

Louis B. Mayer sought me out to congratulate me and assure me that we'd all make a fortune ... He urged me to make the author do one critically important bit of rewriting to make sure that once that "awful woman" who'd come to break up that "fine young couple's happy home" was packed off to an institution, the audience would believe that the young couple would live happily ever after. It never occurred to him that Tennessee's primary sympathy was with Blanche, nor did I enlighten him ... His misguided reaction added to my concern. I had to ask myself: Was I satisfied to have the performance belong to Marlon Brando? Was that what I'd intended? What did I intend? I looked to the author. He seemed satisfied. Only I -- and perhaps Hume [Cronyn, Tandy's husband] -- knew that something was going wrong ...

What astonished me was that the author wasn't concerned about the audience's favoring Marlon. That puzzled me because Tennessee was my final authority, the person I had to please. I still hadn't brought up the problem, I was waiting for him to do it. I got my answer ... because of something that happened in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, across the hall from my suite, where Tennessee and Pancho were staying. [Pancho was Tennessee's boyfriend - or maybe it was more of a f*** buddy situation. Pancho was a huge presence in Tennessee's life. They had a really volatile relationship.] One night I heard a fearsome commotion from across the hall, curses in Spanish, threats to kill, the sound of breaking china ... and a crash ... As I rushed out into the corridor, Tennessee burst through his door, looking terrified, and dashed into my room. Pancho followed, but when I blocked my door, he turned to the elevator still cursing, and was gone. Tennessee slept on the twin bed in my room that night. The next morning, Pancho had not returned.

I noticed that Wiilliams wasn't angry at Pancho, not even disapproving -- in fact, when he spoke about the incident, he admired Pancho for his outburst. At breakfast, I brought up my worry about Jessie and Marlon. "She'll get better," Tennessee said, and then we had our only discussion about the direction of his play. "Blanche is not an angel without a flaw," he said, "and Stanley's not evil. I know you're used to clearly stated themes, but this play should not be loaded one way or the other. Don't try to simplify things." Then he added, "I was making fun of Pancho, and he blew up." He laughed. I remembered the letter he'd written me before we started rehearsals, remembered how, in that letter, he'd cautioned me against tipping the moral scales against Stanley, that in the interests of fidelity I must not present Stanley as a "black-dyed villain". "What should I do?" I asked. "Nothing," he said. "Don't take sides or try to present a moral. When you begin to arrange the action to make a thematic point, the fidelity to life will suffer. Go on working as you are. Marlon is a genius, but she's a worker and she will get better. And better."

So extraordinary. It brings tears to my eyes, and it's wonderful advice, advice that any artist would do well to follow. "Don't take sides ..." "fidelity to life ..."

Here is the review of the premiere of Streetcar Named Desire, in New York City, December 3, 1947.

December 4, 1947

FIRST NIGHT AT THE THEATRE by Brooks Atkinson

Tennessee Williams has brought us a superb drama, "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was acted at the Ethel Barrymore last evening. And Jessica Tandy gives a superb performance as a rueful heroine whose misery Mr. Williams is tenderly recording. This must be one of the most perfect marriages of acting and playwriting. For the acting and playwriting are perfectly blended in a limpid performance, and it is impossible to tell where Miss Tandy begins to give form and warmth to the mood Mr. Williams has created.

Like "The Glass Menagerie," the new play is a quietly woven study of intangibles. But to this observer it shows deeper insight and represents a great step forward toward clarity. And it reveals Mr. Williams as a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough and whose sympathy is profoundly human.

"A Streetcar Named Desire" is history of a gently reared Mississippi young woman who invents an artificial world to mask the hideousness of the world she has to inhabit. She comes to live with her sister, who is married to a rough-and-ready mechanic and inhabits two dreary rooms in a squalid neighborhood. Blanche - for that is her name - has delusions of grandeur, talks like an intellectual snob, buoys herself up with gaudy dreams, spends most of her time primping, covers things that are dingy with things that are bright and flees reality.

To her brother-in-law she is an unforgiveable liar. But it is soon apparent to the theatregoer that in Mr. Williams' eyes she is one of the dispossessed whose experience has unfitted her for reality; and although his attitude toward her is merciful, he does not spare her or the playgoer. For the events of "Streetcar" lead to a painful conclusion which he does not try to avoid. Although Blanche cannot face the truth, Mr. Williams does in the most imaginative and perceptive play he has written.

Since he is no literal dramatist and writes in none of the conventional forms, he presents theatre with many problems. Under Elia Kazan's sensitive but concrete direction, the theatre solved them admirably. Jo Mielziner has provided a beautifully lighted single setting that lightly sketches the house and the neighborhood. In this shadowy environment the performance is a work of great beauty.

Miss Tandy has a remarkably long part to play. She is hardly ever off the stage, and when she is on stage she is almost constantly talking -- chattering, dreaming aloud, wondering, building enchantments out of words. Miss Tandy is a trim, agile actress with a lovely voice and quick intelligence. Her performance is almost incredibly true. For it does seem almost incredible that she can convey it with so many shades and impulses that are accurate, revealing and true.

The rest of the acting is also of very high quality indeed. Marlon Brando as the quick-tempered, scornful, violent mechanic; Karl Malden as a stupid but wondering suitor; Kim Hunter as the patient though troubled sister -- all act not only with color and style but with insight.

By the usual Broadway standards, "Streetcar Named Desire" is too long; not all those words are essential. But Mr. Williams is entitled to his own independence. For he has not forgotten that human beings are the basic subject of art. Out of poetic imagination and ordinary compassion he has spun a poignant and luminous story.

I have tears in my eyes.

We are lucky in this country that we have produced such a playwright. We are lucky to have all of his plays in the canon. I can't imagine my life without them.

Happy birthday, Tom.

Tennessee Williams said the following, in a 1981 interview - only a couple of years before he passed away:

"I'm very conscious of my decline in popularity, but I don't permit it to stop me because I have the example of so many playwrights before me. I know the dreadful notices Ibsen got. And O'Neill -- he had to die to make 'Moon' successful. And to me it has been providential to be an artist, a great act of providence that I was able to turn my borderline psychosis into creativity -- my sister Rose did not manage this. So I keep writing. I am sometimes pleased with what I do -- for me, that's enough."

Words to live by. I try to do the same.

The Books: "Berlin Diary : The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941" (William L. Shirer)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Berlin Diary : The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 by William Shirer. Last Shirer book I have - this one is, well, what the title says: his diary from those particular years. He was a newlywed, living in Germany. He traveled all over Europe, as a journalist, and broadcaster - chasing down stories. And he happened to be stationed in Berlin during the rise of Adolf Hitler. He had a front-row seat. If you're into that front-row seat stuff, this is a wonderful book. I'm glad I made it thru Rise and Fall of Third Reich - it's background, it's necessary, it's important ... but I prefer Berlin Diary, just in terms of a reading experience. It's his first-hand impressions of what he saw going on in Germany at that time.

I am going to post a rather innocuous excerpt - I just like it because I like his writing. He broadcast his stories over the radio - he was THE voice of World War II for most Americans. And here is an entry in his diary when he describes what that broadcasting process is like - in Berlin at that time. I especially found the whole censor thing really interesting.

From Berlin Diary : The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 by William Shirer.

BERLIN, March 4 [1940]

Last night, by request, I broadcast a piece about the actual routine of broadcasting from here in war-time. Had never stopped to think of it before. Some extracts, for the record: The daily broadcast at six forty-five p.m., New York time, means our talking from here at a quarter to one on the following morning. If I could get gasoline for my car I could drive to the studio in twelve minujtes. As it is, I have a ten-minute walk down the completely blacked-out Wilhelmstrasse to the subway. It is a rare night that I do not collide with a lamp-post, a fire-hydrant, or a projecitng stairway, or flop headlong into a pile of snow. Safely in the subway, I have a half hour's ride to the Rundfunk House. As half of the route is above ground, the train is plunged in darkness for fifteen minutes. My pockets are stuffed full of passes. If I cannot find the right one I must wait in the vestibule on arriving at the station and fill out a paper permitting me to enter. Finally arrived, I go to an office and write up my script. Two offices down I can hear Lord Haw-Haw attacking his typewriter with gusto or shouting in his nasal voice against "that plutocrat Chamberlain". A half-hour before my broadcast I must have my script in the hands of the censors. Follows a half-hour battle with them. If they leave enough to make it worth while to do the broadcast, as they usually do, I must then, in order to reach the studio and microphone, dash through winding corridors in the Broadcasting House, down many stairs, and out into a pitch-dark vacant lot in the middle of which are hidden steps -- the lot being terraced -- being careful not to bump into several sheds lurking in the way or to fall into a snow-drift. In the course of this journey through the lot, I must get past at least three steel-helmeted S.S. guards whom I cannot see in the darkness, but who I know are armed with sawed-off automatic rifles and have orders to shoot anyone not halting at their challenge. They must see my pass. I search for it with frozen fingers, and if I'm lucky and find it, I arrive at the studio in time and not too much out of broath, though not always in the sweetest of tempers. If the censors keep me, or the guards keep me, I arrive late, out of breath, sore and sour. I suppose listeners wonder why we pant so often through our talks.

Snapshots

-- Cold low grey sky. Lovin' it.

-- Is it weird that I am continuously in love with my apartment now? My love for it grows. I spent the day puttering.

-- My friend Allison is coming over tonight. I'm excited. She's bringing Capote. She's never been to my apartment, so I can't wait to ... yet again ... have a GUEST!!!

-- Read the first chapter of Master and Margarita - keeping with the Stalinist theme in Chez Sheila ... and found the first chapter to be one of the most terrifying things I have ever read. It reminds me of some of the scariest of Poe's stories. It's EERIE. You can tell by the first chapter that this is not just a good book, but an important book. A scary book. A book that NOBODY at that time would have wanted to read. Too threatening. Good for him. I will add it to my growing list of books I am juggling.

-- And my last snapshot is just a thought: You know, I have baby dreams like every other woman. I dream of finding a mate, I dream of getting married, and I also dream of having a baby. It is a dear dream of mine - my future child. But until a couple of days ago, I did not realize that that was only PART of my dream. I was missing a VERY IMPORTANT ELEMENT of that procreation dream. What element, you ask? Here it is, the missing piece of the dear dream: In the very last days of my pregnancy - it is my dream to go hang out at a Yahoo Corporate event, and be jostled by a bunch of camera-wielding web-geeks. I yearn, as my ballooning uterus presses on my bladder more and more with every passing minute, to NOT spend my days decorating the nursery, or talking on the phone obsessively with my sisters, my mom, my friends who have had kids ... I don't yearn to buy little outfits, I don't yearn to coo over little toys that the wee baby will one day play with, I don't yearn to lose myself in anticipation for the big event. I yearn to be shuffled out onto a stage far from my home like a prized turkey, and make stupid "Hi, how are you" conversation with people I care NOTHING about, people who take pictures of me with their cell phones and post them all over the Internet, people who gawk at me like I'm a freak-show. THAT is what I call a relaxing third trimester moment. No better time than the last couple weeks before I deliver to go to a huge corporate event on the arm of my grinning chimp-monkey NOT-HUSBAND Xenu-loving dark-lord jagoff.

Uhm ... what??

UPDATE: Apparently, what I see is an illusion. Or else - I am the only one who is seeing it. I don't know why. I have no explanation. All I know is:

I have no idea how this happened but I noticed that I was getting a lot of traffic from Google Images or something - I don't know how it all works, whatever - but I have just realized that if you Google for images of Edie Sedgwick:

The picture of me as Edie Sedgwick for Halloween (and Mitchell as Andy Warhol) is SOMEHOW on the very first damn page of results.

How on EARTH would that happen?? When there are so many other images of the ACTUAL Edie Sedgwick out there? I don't get it. So so bizarre - is it because of the traffic my blog gets? I mean, that Halloween post wasn't wildly popular or anything - nobody links to it - It's a picture of ME ON HALLOWEEN, for God's sake - why would anyone but me and ... my personal friends care about that shite? I don't understand how Google images work I guess - and I don't really care either - It just makes me laugh ... People go onto the Internet for pictures of her, and they come across THAT. Which was basically a JOKE between Mitchell and I. And they don't even have to dig to come across that ridiculous photo - it's right there on the first page.

hahaha I feel famous in a completely inappropriate and plagiaristic way.

So I need to make an announcement to the THRONGS of people looking for pictures of Edie: I am NOT, in fact, ACTUALLY Edie Sedgwick.

hahahaha I don't get it. But I do enjoy it.

I keep looking at that Google Results Page, and bursting into laughter at the sight.

Happy birthday to Flannery O'Connor

She was born today, in Savannah, Georgia in 1925.

Man, what to say, what to say ... I think she's one of our greatest American authors. Not just a great Southern writer, although she is that, one of the all-time best, in the pantheon!! - but one of the greatest American writers. Phenomenal. Mostly known for her short stories, although she did write a couple novels.

I also, personally, feel that her TITLES are beyond fantastic. She's not afraid to GO THERE in her titles. I don't know how else to describe it. Her titles are not "safe". They have a Biblical feel to them. The Violent Bear It Away. The Life You Save May Be Your Own. Everything That Rises Must Converge. I looooove her titles.

Here is a great site devoted to her. I didn't know that her first published efforts were actually cartoons, in her high school newspaper. She tried to get her cartoons published in The New Yorker - and that went nowhere, none of them were accepted - so she started to focus on writing. She applied to the Iowa Writer's Workshop - and got in. Once there, though, she was kind of on the outside of things - she hadn't read "the big authors" who were in vogue at the time. Her writing idols were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe - seen as 'old-fashioned', and perhaps too Gothic or melodramatic. Classic, sure, but way out of style in this new modern era of Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, and Fitzgerald. So she wasn't really born "in the right time", if you think about it - but she turned that to her advantage. She didn't try to change her influences, or write like other people - and while she was at the workshop, her short stories pretty much blew everyone away. I love that her idols were Hawthorne and Poe - those dark dark writers, those masters of small-town pain and paranoia ... You can so feel it in her writing, although her style is very much her own. Her style is so distinctive that you could recognize a paragraph of her prose without knowing who it was. She's like Hemingway. So - she was a shy girl, the only one in the workshop with a Southern accent, whose writing was so good that she got a contract to write her first novel (Wise Blood - now that is one HELL of a first novel!!)

Right around this time, she got very very ill with lupus (that's why she has the crutches in the photo above). Her father had died from lupus. She was always tired, always dragging through her days - but she had good discipline, and kept up a writing schedule, despite her exhaustion.

I just read her first novel Wise Blood ... and it's shocking to read even NOW. I can't even imagine the impact it had when it came out. Her writing reminds me of Diane Arbus' photographs. Her books are filled with grotesque Gothic characters - blinded crazy preachers, child brides, women with wooden legs, outcasts from society - But her tone is never sensational or sentimental.

If you haven't read her stuff, I really can't recommend her highly enough. I came to her late - and it was really at the pressure of Maria, and my sister Jean, that made me finally give her a go. After reading the first two or three paragraphs of Wise Blood, I was feckin' hooked. I knew: Okay. I must now plow thru this entire book RIGHT NOW. She's that good.

Here's the beginning of that novel:

Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. The train was racing through tree tops that fell away at intervals and showed the sun standing, very red, on the edge of the farthest woods. Nearer, the plowed fields curved and faded and the few hogs nosing in the furrows looked like large spotted stones. Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock, who was facing Motes in this section, said that she thought the early evening like this was the prettiest time of day and she asked him if he didn't think so, too. She was a fat woman with pink collars and cuffs and pear-shaped legs that slanted off the train seat and didn't reach the floor.

He looked at her a second and, without answering, leaned forward and stared down the length of the car again. She turned to see what was back there but all she saw was a child peering around one of the sections and, farther up at the end of the car, the porter opening the closet where the sheets were kept.

"I guess you're going home," she said, turning back to him again. He didn't look, to her, much over twenty, but he had a stiff black broad-brimmed hat on his lap, a hat that an elderly country preacher would wear. His suit was a glaring blue and the price tag was still stapled on the sleeve of it.

There's something really ... WRONG ... here. You can tell ... something is OFF with Hazel Motes ... but Flannery doesn't let us inside his head. It's all in what she doesn't say, and what she chooses to share with us. It's a fantastic opening scene.

Check her out if you haven't read any of her stuff - her short story collections are all well worth reading. She's an American classic.

Flannery O'Connor died at the age of 40.

I came across this quote from Flannery O'Connor, and I just loooove it, it makes me laugh. I'll close this post with it:

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

hahahahaha

Happy birthday, Flannery!!

The Books: "NIGHTMARE YEARS : 1930 - 1940" (William L. Shirer)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is NIGHTMARE YEARS : 1930 - 1940 by William Shirer. A first-person memoir of Shirer's time living in Nazi Germany, and covering not just Germany but what was going on in all of Europe at that time. It actually starts with a fascinating story of his time in wild-west Afghanistan - he's very good at this first-person perspective stuff. But the main thrust of the book is his impressions of Germany at that time - interesting, because he was a journalist, and so had some "access" to the leaders. The leaders, naturally, were liars, and you could never get a clear answer from them - but Shirer's impression of the FEELING in the streets of Berlin, the changing tides, the rising fanaticism - is chilling.

And I've gotta say that the photos he has included in this book are fantastic. Especially of the Anschluss. Terrifying photos of the crowds greeting Hitler, the weeping women, the frenzy, there are some photos where everyone is in a blur, because they are struggling to get closer to Hitler - as though they're seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.

I'll excerpt a bit from the year 1934. Shirer goes to a massive Nazi party rally in Nuremberg.

NIGHTMARE YEARS : 1930 - 1940 by William Shirer.

In Nuremberg, on September 4 [1934], ten days after my arrival in Nazi Germany, I saw Adolf Hitler for the first time.

Like a Roman emperor he rode into the medieval town at sundown, past solid phalanxes of wildly cheering Germans who packed the narrow streets that once had been the gathering place of Hans Sachs and the Meistersinger. Thousands of swastika flags blotted out the Gothic beauties of the city's architecture, the facades of the old houses, the gabled roofs. The streets, hardly wider than alleys, were a sea of brown and black uniforms.

I got my first glimpse of Hitler, as he drove by our hotel to his headquarters at the Deutscher Hof, a favorite old hotel of his, which had been newly remodeled for him. He fumbled his cap, which he held in his left hand, as he stood in his car acknowledging the delirious welcome with somewhat feeble Nazi salutes with his right arm. Probably he was pacing himself, knowing that he would be raising that right arm in salute thousands of times before the week was over. He was clad in a rather worn gabardine trench coat, very much like the weatherbeaten ones we foreign correspondents wore in those days. His face, which was rather flabby, had no particular expression -- I expected it to be much stronger -- and I wondered what there was in his almost modest bearing, in his rather common look, that unleashed such hysterical acclaim in the mob, whose men, women, and children were so wild in their joy at seeing him, their faces contorted in a way I had never seen before, ever.

The frenzy of the crowds fascinated me that evening even more than my first glimpse of the dictator. I had seen vast throngs in India moved by the sight of Gandhi and in Rome by Mussolini. But this German horde was different in a way I could not yet comprehend. Later that evening, I got caught up in a mob of these frenzied people, who jammed the moat in front of Hitler's hotel. They were swaying back and forth, like the Holy Rollers I had once seen in the back country of Arkansas and Louisiana, with the same crazed expression on their faces. They were shouting in unison: "We want our Fuhrer!" When he appeared on the balcony for a moment and waved, they went mad. Several women swooned. Some, men and women, were trampled as the crowd surged toward the hotel to get a closer look at their Messiah. For such he appeared to be to them.

By the close of the next evening, after the events of the first day of the party rally had come to an end, I had "begun to comprehend," I boasted in my diary, "some of the reasons for Hitler's astonishing success." Borrowing from the Roman Church, I noted, he was restoring pageantry to the drab lives of Germans. The morning's opening meeting in the huge Luitpold Hall on the outskirts of Nuremberg was more than a colorful show. It had something of the mysterious and religious fervor of an Easter or a Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral.

The hall was a sea of brightly colored flags. Suddenly the band stopped playing. There was a hush over the thirty thousand people packed in the immense arena. Then the band struck up the 'Badenwiler March," a rather catchy tune and played only, I learned, when the Leader made his big entrances. Hitler appeared in the back of the auditorium, dressed in a brown party uniform, and followed by his aides, Hermann Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Himmler, all in brown uniforms except for Himmler, who wore the black garb of the S.S. He strode slowly down the wide center aisle while thirty thousand pairs of eyes were turned toward him and as many hands were raised in salute. It was a ritual, I was told, that had been followed at the opening of big party meetings for years.

As soon as the Nazi chiefs were seated on the huge platform a large symphony orchestra played Beethoven's stirring Egmont Overture. Great klieg lights played on the stage. Behind Hitler and his entourage of a hundred party officials and a scattering of army and navy officers was draped the swastika "blood flag," which had been carried through the streets of Munich by a Nazi column when the shooting began during Hitler's ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Behind this emblem, holy to the Nazis, stood some five hundred S.A. standards. When the music was over, Rudolf Hess, deputy to the Fuhrer and at that time his closest confidant, rose and slowly read the names of the Nazi "martyrs" -- Brownshirts who had been killed in the streets in the struggle for power. He read out the roll call of the dead slowly and solemnly and there was a hush over th ehall, the members of the vast audience bowing their heads in reverence.

In was in such a hushed atmosphere that Hitler sprang his Proclamation to the People, which the Nazi press office had tipped us off the evening before would be the most important pronouncement ever made by the Fuhrer. Everyone had expected him to read it himself. Instead, to save his voice for seven speeches he was scheduled to make during the week, he had it read by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner of Bavaria, who, curiously, had a voice and manner so like Hitler's that some of the correspondents who were listening on the radio back at the hotel thought it was the Fuhrer himself.

The words of that proclamation I never forgot. They kept coming back to me in the ensuring years, a reminder of the way history turns out differently than some, even the mightiest have planned.

The German form of life is definitely determined for the next thousand years! For us, the nervous nineteenth century has finally ended. There will be no revolution in Germany for the next one thousand years!

So the Third Reich was to last a thousand years! The words stunned me. But they provoked the brown mass in the great hall into a frenzy. The thirty thousand leaped to their feet and wildly cheered and clapped.

It cannot be, I protested to myself, as the crowd continued to roar, that this evil thing, demeaning to a great people, could last for a thousand years -- or even for a hundred. But I had a sinking feeling that it would last a long time. Hitler's grip on the German people was much greater than I had expected.

The throng was up on its feet, cheering again, when the Fuhrer came, as was inevitable, to his customary outburst against communism.

"Germany has done everything possible to assure world peace. If war comes to Europe it will come only because of Communist chaos."

He was back at it again when he spoke at a so-called "Kultur" meeting in the afternoon. "Only brainless dwarfs," he stormed, "cannot realize that Germany has been the breakwater against the Communist floods, which would have drowned Europe and its culture."

It was not difficult for him to convince the German people of this and, in time, many in England and France, even in America. Much later, when Hitler had embarked on his aggressive war against the rest of Europe, Charles Lindbergh would use similar words to express his belief that Germany, Hitler's Germany, "held today the intangible eastern border of European civilization."

Beyond that eastern border lay Bolshevism, in the minds of Hitler, as well as Lindbergh, and his followers the destroyers of the civilization of Europe. But it was beginning to dawn on me, caught up in the Nazi delirium of Nuremberg, that European civilization, at least in Germany, might not survive Hitler's dictatorship.

I had not yet quite realized that in order to keep the German people stirred up Hitler needed enemies to blame for all that had gone wrong before and for all that threatened the new, awakened, authoritarian Reich. Besides the Bolsheviks there were the Jews! Twice that opening day he thundered against them. The chaos from which he had rescued the country, he said, had been the work of "Jewish intellectualism".

"The alien life and form of ideas," he said, "injected into and forced on nations by Jewish intellectualism, which is racially without a basis, led to an alien, rootless state and internationally to complete chaos in cultural life."

He had saved Europe, he boasted, not only from the Bolsheviks but from the Jews, and he wanted his listeners to remember it and be grateful.

Stalin: Taming the Intelligentsia

Note from me: I will probably continue to edit and add to this post - I dashed it off in a FEVER! I am continuing to pick at it - so if it continues to change as you look at it, that's why. Sorry - normally I don't post this way, but whatevs.

So I have now moved into "cannot put it down" mode with Stalin. It's like approaching a dark hypnotic evil mirror - I swear, that's how I experience this guy. Not a mirror as in: I am just like him, or I see my own reflection there (Sheesh, I hope not!) ... but a mirror as in: opposites, inversion, everything backwards. I cannot cop out and say: "THE MAN WAS NOT HUMAN" because you know what? He was. He was a human being ... and he cannot be written off as a "lunatic" - which is why I find him so scary. And interesting. I yearn to understand the motivations of someone so hidden, so calculating, so ... so ... ruthless.

And here's the deal - for me, what is interesting here is the contemplation itself. I don't need to come up with an answer - a label. To me, first of all, that diminishes the subject itself - which is rather enormous, and many-tentacled. To narrow the whole horror down to: A-HA! His mother beat him! And THAT is why he was so inhuman!! would be ridiculous. But a lot of people seem to want to talk about Stalin in that way. (Nobody here, by the way - I really get a lot out of the conversations we all have about Stalin.)

His unexplainability (??) is frightening. I get that. But to search for one label, a label that would make him small, explain-able, understand-able to people like you or me, cut him down to size, I think would be missing the point. Or at least, it can't be the WHOLE story.

It's almost like - well, here's a guess:

Lenin and his Old Bolshevik pals had a lot of grand ideas. They thought they knew what they wanted. And who knows, maybe a lot of them DID want that. Maybe it wasn't just a cynical power-grab - I am sure many of them were true believers. In a very short time, of course, all of that changed - and they literally just had to believe whatever Stalin told them to believe - (there's that famous quote by some dude saying, "You must be willing to change your opinion in 24 hours notice if the Party tells you to ..." woah.) They thought that it would be good to have a society based on certain principles, and they really wanted it to exist. Perhaps they didn't think about the HOWS of it ... like: HOW to destroy the peasants, HOW to get everyone on collective farms ... I don't know. The whole thing seems like such a crappy idea to me anyway that it feels like you would just have to be unbeLIEVably naive and abstract and - er - privileged - to EVER think that it would work ... at least without massive bloodshed. It's hard to get into their mindset. But from how I see it, their mindset was very abstract, lofty, and they probably used the word "should" a lot.

"And once that happens ... then such and such should follow ..."

All naive assumptions embodied in that "should". Anyone who believes in a utopia (in the past or the future) probably uses the word "should" a lot. You know why? Cause they don't understand human nature. They wish that pesky human nature would just ... behave itself, goldurnit!!! Why can't everyone behave the way they SHOULD behave??

Back to our Old Bolsheviks and their lofty ideas: Again, I am really not sure how much of them truly BELIEVED this shit, but here's my guess: They thought that after a certain point, the peasant would just somehow ... gradually ... disappear ... and the farmers would ... somehow ... gradually ... move onto the kholkhozes ... as they "should" ... and the proletariat would rise ... as Marx had predicted ... and ... somehow ... this would all happen in the proper order ... because that's the way it "should" happen, according to socialist theory - which was dogma!

When push came to shove, the only one who had the guts - the only one who literally had the STOMACH to do what needed to be done - to actually carry out these theories to their logical conclusions was Stalin. ("Okay - you want to destroy the peasant and the Russian village? How 'bout a big ol' honkin' FAMINE? How 'bout that?? How 'bout we starve millions and millions of people to death - and then watch how gratefully they scurry into the kholkhozes - how 'bout THAT?") - Now I'm not sure about that - and these guys were all pretty much cruel people, and ruthless in their minds towards "class enemies" - but being "ruthless in your mind" is different from actually have the GUTS to DO it.

To stand firm and strong while millions of people die? Literally begging for their lives? Entire populations of people starving, screaming for help? To stand firm. To refuse to bend. To stick to the plan.

That takes GUTS. That takes ... well, it's almost like it requires that you not HAVE something (like guts) but LACK something (like compassion). In order to not only allow a famine to occur, but to organize it and make SURE it occurs ... you really have to be seriously lacking in certain emotional departments.

But perhaps Stalin was so untouchable - not just because of the Party apparatus that he created - but because psychologically he had the upper hand and he knew it. What he did with collectivization and industrialization was ACTUALLY what all of those intellectuals had been bickering about and chatting about for years on end. His actions were the end result of all their intellectual blithering. He didn't TALK. He DID. Perhaps this, along with the terror of being killed, silenced many people because they realized, way too late, that what they had been chatting about naively for so many years, was, in actuality, the worst kind of totalitarianism. I don't know ... I don't know how many of them had the presence of mind to even look at it that way. It seems that most of them, by that point, were pretty craven-souled opportunistic fellows - the idealists being run out of the country. Stalin surrounded himself with groveling Yes-Men who would do whatever they had to do to save their own hides. Even if it meant killing millions of people in the Ukraine.

I wanted to post yet another long excerpt from the book - the excerpt actually has nothing to do with the famine - I got sidetracked, as I so often do with the dark mirror that is Stalin ... I found this FASCINATING, and also terrifying.

Stalin turned his attention to Russian artists.

Check this out - especially the anecdote about Mikhail Bulgakov. It's kinda terrifying. But I do love the image of all of these persecuted intellectuals bascially crank calling each other. I love Radzinsky's writing style. Again, he's a playwright - and I can tell. He goes right straight to the psychological horror at work here.

From "Stalin"

All this time, from 1929 on, a campaign against "ideological distortions" proceeded in parallel with the trials of wreckers. The intelligentsia was being taught caution in its use of the printed word. The slightest departure from the official view risked an accusation of perverting Marxism-Leninism, or worse.

Biologists, philosophers, educationists, and economists were all assailed. All branches of learning reported the discovery of "distortions". The "pseudo-academics", as they were now called, obediently did penance at public meetings.

Stalin was gradually eliminating shame. Fear is stronger than shame.

The cruel years that had gone before now looked like a reign of freedom. Quite recently, in 1926, the Moscow Arts Theatre had been allowed to put on Mikhail Bulgakov's Days of the Turbins. It was a fantastic success. Spectators watched in amazement a play which portrayed White officers (the enemy) not as the usual monsters but as likable, decent people. The production infuriated writers who were members of the Party. But the play proved to have one seemingly inexplicable devotee and defender. The Boss went to see it time and time again. Was this really odd? Not at all. The play dramatized the wreckage of the old empire. And Stalin, as he settled accounts with the leaders of October, could already see the empire of the future.

Still, he did not believe in playing favorites. In 1929, while he was taming the intelligentsia, the Arts Theatre accepted a new play from Bulgakov. Flight was about the end of the White army and its exodus from Russia. The heroes were the same, the ideas were the same as those of Days of the Turbins. But times had changed. The Boss had the play discussed in the Politburo. The body which governed the whole state was called on to examine a play which had not yet been shown. In his empire that sort of thing would be the norm. He knew that nothing was more important than ideology. He had taken to heart Lenin's dictum "the slightest relaxation in ideology will lead to loss of power by the Party." The Politburo accepted the recommendation of the commission it had set up that "staging of this play be deemed inexpedient". The verdict of P. Kerzhentsev, director of the Central Committee's Department of Agitation and Propaganda, is appended to the minutes: "The author's bias is quite clear: he is making excuses for people who are our enemies." As if at a word of command, the newspapers, each and every one, set about destroying Bulgakov. Agitprop did its job, and The Days of the Turbins was taken off. The experienced Kerzhentsev obviously intended to seek out the rightists in the arts.

The Boss, however, had other plans for Bulgakov.

My father was friends with Yuri Karlovich Olesha. They had both attended the Richelieu High School in Odessa. In the twenties and thirties Olesha was one of the most fashionable writers. But after that ... well, he was never imprisoned; they merely stopped publishing him. He spent his time jotting down mundane aphorisms, drinking heavily, and, when truly drunk, throwing his scraps of paper into the wastebasket. In the fifties the whole street would turn round to look at the man with the disheveled mane of grey hair, the dirty scarf around his neck, and the aquiline nose.

He often visited my father to ask him for money, and they would talk for hours. On one such occasion he told my father how Bulgakov, driven into a corner, decided to write a letter to Stalin. The idea was put into his head by a dubious character widely believed to be an informer. Bulgakov had no money at all, and had tried in vain to find work with the Arts Theatre. He nerved himself to write a desperate letter asking Stalin to let him go abroad. This was suicide when so many intellectuals were standing trial. As Olesha told the story: "It all happened in April. It was April 1 and we all played April fool jokes on each other. I knew about this letter, so I rang him up and said, with some sort of accent, 'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak to you.' He recognized my voice, told me to go to hell, and lay down (he always had a nap after dinner). But then the phone rang again. A voice at the other end said, 'Comrade Stalin will speak to you now.' He swore and hung up, thinking that I just wouldn't leave him alone. The phone rang again immediately, and he heard Stalin's secretary say sternly, 'Don't hang up. I hope you understand me.' Another voice, with a Georgian accent, cut in. 'What's the matter, are we getting on your nerves?' After Bulgakov had got over his embarrassment and greetings had been exchanged, Stalin said, 'I hear you're asking to be sent abroad.' Bulgakov, of course, answered as expected, that 'a Russian writer cannot work outside his Motherland,' and so on. 'You are right. I also believe that you want to work for the Arts Theatre?' 'I should like to, yes, but ... they've turned me down.' 'I think they'll agree.' With that he hung up. And almost immediately there was a call from the theatre asking Bulgakov to start work there."

So Bulgakov wrote Moliere, a play about a king who was Moliere's only protector against a spiteful court camarilla. Kerzhentsev -- who else? -- instantly denounced the author to the Central Committee. "What is the author's political intention? Bulgakov ... sets out to show the fate of a writer whose ideology is at odds with the political order, and whose plays are banned. Only the king stands up for Moliere and defends him against his persecutors ... Moliere has such lines as 'all my life I've been licking his (the king's) spurs with only one thought: don't trample on nme. Maybe I haven't flattered you enough, maybe I haven't crawled enough?' The scene concludes with Moliere's exclaiming, 'I hate arbitrary tyranny' (we amended 'arbitrary' to 'the king's'). The idea around which the author builds his play is sufficiently clear."

The Boss agreed with Kerzhentsev's recommendation to take the play out of the repertoire. But he remembered that only the king had helped Moliere and took note of Moliere's readiness, much as he hated tyranny, to serve his only protector, the king.

In 1936 the old Bolshevik Kerzhentsev would be shot. But Bulgakov survived.

It's raining ... on Pickler's prom night ...

Her dress ... is a me-ess ...

WOW.

hahahahahaha I love life sometimes. Today has been all about fashion, apparently, on my blog. So I will add this to the pot!

(Sigh. I actually have a conscience and now I feel like I'm being too mean to this poor girl. Like ... so what ... leave her alone. Oh well. I'll stop now.)

thanks, Jess, for the dee-lish link.

Speaking of the tragedy of pedal pushers

This is a beautiful post.

First of all: that dress: YUM!!

But I adore the sentiment she is expressing here. I so hear what she is saying.

I also like her list of misguided outfits she once wore.

Example:

Gray miniskirt worn with seafoam green cotton camp shirt, seafoam green ankle socks, and gray jazz shoes. Matching gray hoop earrings. Okay, this was in 1983, but there is still a psychic scar from this level of coordination. It was like my clothes had a Stalin-era work plan.

Go read the whole thing.

Diary Friday

So I'll continue on with the "autumn of Picnic", for those of you who enjoy consistency.

Part 1. The audition

Part 2. The callbacks, and getting in

Part 3.
Boyfriend mania. First meeting with the director.

I can't help it - I'm gonna keep including the stuff I wrote surrounding the whole Picnic experience - because it was such a full rich time - and I was trying to juggle so much - I couldn't JUST focus on the play. I was a senior in high school, I had to get good grades, I had a boyfriend (who HUGGED ME ON THE 7TH DATE - OH. MY. GOD.), and I also was going to be "on staff" at a religious retreat - which I was sooooooooo excited about. I had gone on this retreat myself, with my friends, and it had been amazing - and then I got asked to be "on staff". Rehearsals hadn't started yet - but they were coming. I'd be rehearsing every night. How I was going to manage to do all of this was ... freaking me out. In a huge way.

These couple of entries are from the respite period before rehearsals started and my whole life changed. I had NO idea what was coming.

I was all stressed out about grades, and my boyfriend, and how I would juggle it all ...

But the play I had just gotten cast in was a big unknown. I knew it would be a lot of work. But it wasn't real to me yet. I knew no one in the cast. I didn't know the director. I was leaping off the cliff into a totally new experience. And once I was THERE, once the whole thing started - a TON of stuff just shuffled naturally into place.

I couldn't know that at the time I was writing these entries below, though. I was just anxious and worried and harassed. Trying to stay calm.

And whatever, I'm including a loooong description of one of my dates with the boyfriend - because I had COMPLETELY forgotten it until literally this morning- and at the time, it was just an absolutely HUGE experience ... I hadn't seen Casablanca yet - but it was like I suddenly found myself in Rick's Cafe ... you'll see what I mean. I laughed out loud reading the whole experience and how BLOWN AWAY BY IT I WAS. Diary Friday fans, you will probably recall that my unrequited love during my junior year was the ever-present "DW". Right? Well, "DW" makes an appearance here. "DW" had been a senior when I was a junior - so he had graduated and moved on to college - after completely SHATTERING me when he turned down my invitation to go to my prom. It was really my first experience with true heartache. Awful!!

Too funny - I'm a grown woman, and I've had a ton of crazy things happen to me - much crazier than what I describe in this journal entry - but ... because I was so NEW to the whole "dating" world at that point, so new to basically everything ... my astonishment at the experience just emanated off the page this morning when I read it - and my jaw dropped. I was like: "Holy shit ... I totally forgot about this!!!" I re-lived it, through my own 17-year-old eyes. I love it when that happens.

Okay. Onward.

OCTOBER 8

Mere and I went shopping in Fall River. I bought some rhinestone clip-on earrings and Tom Cruise dark glasses. [bwahahahaha Tom Cruise!! "Risky Business" had just come out. Little did I know that Xenu had already captured his soul by this point.] I also bought some weird shoes. We had fun. I also memorized my Millie lines on the way up and back.

On Sautrday, I went over Kate's. She lives right on a lake. I couldn't stand the beauty of where she lives. All the leaves are flaming red or yellow and they float on the lake. Then, Kate and I sat on two rocks at the shore and fed two swans. Oh Diary, their beauty brought tears to my eyes. They were close enough to touch [But you didn't touch them ... did you? Timothy Treadwell?] Their necks and white white feathers. Kate and I sat silently for about a half-hour just watching them. One of them sort of stretched its neck way out and flapped out her feathers - almost lifting off the lake. I held my breath. Kate and I could hardly move. Their beauty hurt me. And they were so close to us and so incredibly beautiful and white. I could have watched them forever. They were eating the bread crumbs right at my feet. I've never been that close to a swan before. I never felt so one with nature. I felt a part of them.

I wonder how the swans saw us. What we looked like to them.

When that one swan stretched her whole body out and flapped her wings - I thought I was gonna die. I felt shivers all over me.

I felt so close to God. I can't tell you how much I can't WAIT for our retreat. Lisa T. - one of my favorite people in the world is ON STAFF! When I told Kate that, she started screaming, we both started crying and hugging.

Betsy is Rector. I hope that I can be to someone what others were for me. Ted. Sue. I'm praying - I want to be a channel of God's peace for someone else. I can't wait! Also - it's gonna be in the middle of November - a November that's going to be so crazy that I'm trying to block it out. I wish I could cancel my birthday. [hahahaha] I almost can't bear the anticipation and just the thought of what it's gonna be like. To be on staff with Kate - I really need it.

I had a great time at Kate's. We just talked quietly on the shore about the swans and God and stuff. [hahahahaha]

Sometimes I feel like that Simon and Garfunkle song - The 6 O'Clock News - horrendous news being reported as Silent Night is sung in the background - that there are so many awful awful awful things going on today that are so unfair and terrible, but lying somewhere below it - we have to believe that there is good. Why does the bad always overshadow the good? I have to have faith. I mean - of course I have questions, and sometimes I even wonder, "What if we're wrong? What if -- we are wrong?" But I don't believe it. I have faith. And I'm so glad I'm being given a chance to share this with others - the way people have shared it with me. I can't wait. It's gonna be incredible. What a birthday present.

Oh, and monumental news:

I weigh 120!! [hahahahahahahahahaha No segue. Faith, God's love, weight loss ... it's all part of the same thing] I practically haven't eaten since those auditions. I'm not hungry anymore. I don't have time for breakfast and I never eat my sandwich at lunch. [Uhm, eating disorder?] And Diary - it's not like it's only a difference numerically on the scale - I can see it. I look better. When I wear my purple pedal pushers [bwahahahahahahahahaha] - I've been so used to (for so long) being mildly unsatisfied with my weight. I look okay now!

OCTOBER 9

Oh God. November. SATs, Drama Club play, retreat (much work), and - Picnic - plus getting good grades before grades close for seniors. I have to do it all. I can't drop any of it.

Then there is also TS. That is what is making me so miserable. I'm just so worried all the time. All the time. I can't even think about it. I don't know how anyone can just naturally have a boyfriend. And have it not be a big deal. [I still don't] I mean, I don't think I could just casually have a boyfriend. I don't know if it's good or bad. It's not like I'm thinking "Oh, I hope it all just settles itself, so that then we're just 'going out' and it will be one less thing to worry about." I don't think that. It is more to think about. It is the heaviest load I am carrying right now.

OCTOBER 11

I can't believe my life. I cannot believe what my life is. Why -- what is this? All I can do is laugh. Things just happen to me. This is crazy. My life is unbelievable. I must rave like this. Wait til you hear. Why do these things keep happening to me?

I'm calmer than I was last night so let me just tell the night like it was and you will definitely know when I come to the unbelievable part. It's so unbelievable that I can't even think of what to say.

I walked up to the Union. I felt really cool. With my Tom Cruise glasses on. [Girl, one day it will SO not be appropriate to think that anything about Tom Cruise is "cool" - I know it's hard to contemplate, but try to imagine yourself into the future ... You're not gonna believe what happens to that Risky Business boy!!] It's idiotic I know, but the glasses are already one of my favorite possessions. Besides all my diaries, I mean. They make me look like a hood. [A hood in purple pedal pushers?]

The fall colors this year - autumn is so beautiful - all the orange or red - it was raining yellow leaves yesterday. TS and I were talking about this once. TS said, "I honestly think that people feel most at home in the time they were born." We're both November people! I think that's right. I can't wait till it gets cold and I can wear my sweaters and my mittens.

It started to get dusky as I walked, so I took off my glasses. [hahahaha I love how often I'm mentioning them.] I wasn't even really nervous about the date - like I usually am - I was just looking forward to seeing him again.

I got to the Union - all these people were milling around waiting for the bus so I was just looking around - then I saw him sitting on this bench a ways away. We both saw each other, and I started over. He lay down on the bench to make me think I was late. Some people nearby saw this, and started laughing. Right then - as I started over to him, and this guy and girl saw him lie back, then looked at me, smiling at me as I trotted over to him - right then I got this strange outside-of-myself feeling - like being seen as being with TS - That does happen to me a lot.

We had an hour until the movie so we went into the Union and sat in the lounge. He brought his second draft of his script - he finished it! He wanted me to read it. So we sat there for an hour. I read the script. He read the TV section and pretended that he wasn't watching me as I read it. The script is so funny. I'd think so if I didn't know that TS had written it. Some of it made me laugh out loud. When I finished it, we sat and talked about his plans for filming. He said to me, "When is your play gonna be put on?" I said, "End of November." and he said, "Oh - maybe you'll want to auditoin for this." I will! Does he want me to be in it? Me? [Sheila, stop doing that. He's not better than you. Stop making yourself less than him. Thanks.]

Then we started over to the nursing building. [hahahaha what??? I think that that was where the "film noir" series was happening - I believe that that was what we were going to see ...] It was dark by this time. The campus is so pretty. The movie was so good! I want to see it again! Uncle Harry. It was really good. Not so melodramatic as The Letter either - and funny too. A happy ending!

I was sitting next to him thinking: How do people go out with each other? I know it's stupid. I did watch the movie but I was still aware of him. His big hands on his knees, his glasses glinting in the dark. I was aware of his breathing, for Pete's sake! His chest rising and falling - I was just aware of him. I'm so confused. It's so much fun being with TS - but especially since that night when he hugged me - I just don't know what I'm feeling. I really don't. I wish there was someway that I could know. How can you ever be sure that what you're doing is true to how you feel? I mean - when he was hugging me - I suddenly felt like I loved him with every fiber of my being - and I do - but what does it all mean? Do I know what I'm doing? Am I behaving in a way that is true to how I actually feel? I wonder if I'm actually just not ready. Will I ever be ready? Will it come to me in a revelation someday, "Yes, Sheila. It is right."

Okay - so the movie finished. We decided to walk back to my house - it was only 8:30 or so. We talked. He told me about some of Matt's film projects - There were stories that were so funny that at times I had to just stop and let myself laugh. So funny. We were sort of just wandering around campus talking - and we were on some back street, down low in a valley - it was dark - these two guys were walking down the sidewalk towards us - so TS and I sort of stepped around them, but then one of those guys said, "Hey! TS!" TS stopped, looked at them, and said, "Hey!" I stopped, turned around, and saw that it was DW.

We have just reached the unbelievable part, by the way.

Yes. It was DW. Do you believe this? What are the chances of that happening? My heart honestly stopped beating. I could NOT MOVE. I was honestly just standing there, staring at DW, thinking:

"I cannot believe this."

It wasn't even traumatic or anything - just unbelievable - and in a way - very very funny. All I can say about the whole thing is: I can't believe it. I think about it and I just want to LAUGH!

Okay. It was DW and DO (He also went to SK - he and DW were bosom buddies). I can't believe my stupid life. Why do I keep wanting to laugh? Okay, so I saw that it was him. A photograph of me at that moment would have been entitled:

"Sheila O'Malley has turned to stone."

There he was. There stood DW. And TS. And I was with TS. There are no words to express how I felt. I just stood there, as the two of them shook hands, and said, "Hi! How are you? How've you been?" Nobody looked at me yet. I finally just said, "Hi, DW." He looked down at me - (what was he thinking??) - and then took a second look - a closer one - and said, "Sheila?" in this really surprised way. Then he said, really slowly, in this long drawn-out way, "God. You look ... different ........... You belong in college. You look like you're in college." [hmmmmmm] I stood there just smiling like a dopey jerk - but it still so thrilled me - to look at him again - to see his face again - having him look at me, see me, say my name like that. I mean, my heart aches - but he was impressed with what I looked like - the way he recognized me - like - "Sheila?"

And also - just the fact that I was with TS. It was just too funny to even be real - but I felt so on top of things. How can I expalin it except to say that it was unbelievable and hysterical? I'm so glad that I'm YOUNG. I feel very youthful right now - not juvenile - just very energetic, young, and full of hope. There was something about standing there, between those two men, everyone being all nice, and shaking hands, but with all this stuff going on underneath - that made me feel very young.

So the four of us stood there and talked for about 15 minutes. What was DW thinking? [I can tell you exactly what he was thinking. He was thinking: "Damn. She was a little girl when she had a crush on me. And now she's skinny, she's hanging out with a 19 year old guy, and she looks like she's in college!! Hmmmm ... I am now seeing Sheila in a whole new light!"] Whenever we looked in each other's eyes - it's like we know - because a lot has happened. A lot happened between us.

TS talked to DO and I talked to DW - I don't think TS knows about DW and me. Oh brother, I feel so twisted up inside. I liked DW so much, and for so long, that I could easily start it up again. I'm not through liking him yet. [And I think, strangely enough, Sheila - just reading your description here: he'd be open to it now!! He wasn't when you were 16 and he was 18 ... but you could get him now! But that was never my destiny. With me, the timing is allllways off.] Even while I was standing there next to TS, my whole soul was screeching: "DW!!!" I felt so awful and confused.

DW asked me, "So how's old SK doing?" I rolled my eyes and he grinned. "You can't wait to get out, right?" I asked him how he liked college. He said so sincerely, "I love it so much, Sheila. You'll love it, too." He asked about the band. I told him that April was President. I couldn't stand it. I was standing there talking with him again, looking at him, seeing him.. Once again - no wonder I loved him. He is so so nice. Just a nice nice person. I felt like I could talk to him forever. We always had good conversations.

And just the whole thing that - I was with TS. I was with TS. And DW was looking at us, taking it all in. I wish I was a mindreader. I wonder what was going on in his head. DW asked me if "there were any dramatic productions in the making". I told him about Hans Christian Andersen - Then (oooh, I'm a sly devil) I said, "I'm in one here, too." And he said, "No kidding! Good for you! Which one?" So I told him about Picnic (first rehearsal Saturday) - and he said, "Well, I'll have to come see it." [And you know what? He did. Unbelievable. Showed up unannounced, by himself, and waited for me after the show. I'm still amazed by this.]

Oh Diary. If only he had ceased to exist. This is hard. Now I can't stop thinking about him.

Seeing him last night - it's always hard when I run into him - but last night, I felt happy.

OCTOBER 12

I'm so glad this week is over. I'm out of it and I'm very ugly and depressed.

First rehearsal tomorrow. I'm shakin' in my boots.

The Books: "Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich" (William L. Shirer)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William Shirer.

So deciding on an excerpt here was daunting. There's so much in this book - and - I can't even believe, in retrospect, that I finished it. It can be a total GRIND. It's a hard book - thick, fat, with a gazillion footnotes, and - at least in my copy - pretty small print. I have bad eyes. The small print is a challenge. But I'm really glad I read it.

I have two other of Shirer's books which I actually prefer - I'll excerpt those next - The Nightmare Years (his experiences as a journalist in the 20s) and his Berlin Diary - his own personal journal describing living in Berlin with his wife in the early 30s, as he saw all of this stuff begin to happen. Berlin Diary is amazing. But I'm a sucker for first-person stories, anyway.

But Rise and Fall is obviously the book he will be remembered for. It's a massive heavy accomplishment - kind of astonishing when you think of the MOUNDS of paperwork the Nazis left behind.

From Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William Shirer.

With Mussolini in the bag, Hitler turned his attention elsewhere. In August 1936 he had appointed Ribbentrop as German ambassador in London in an effort to explore the possibility of a settlement with England -- on his own terms. Incompetent and lazy, vain as a peacock, arrogant and without humor, Ribbentrop was the worst possible choice for such a post, as Goering realized. "When I criticized Ribbentrop's qualifications to handle British problems," he later declared, "the Fuehrer pointed out to me that Ribbentrop knew 'Lord So and So' and 'Minister So and So.' To which I replied, 'Yes, but the difficult is that they know Ribbentrop.'"

It is true that Ribbentrop, unattractive a figure though he was, was not without influential friends in London. Mrs. Simpson, the friend of the King, was believed in Berlin to be one of these. But Ribbentrop's initial efforts in his new post were discouraging and in November he flew back to Berlin to conclude some non-British business he had been dabbling in. On November 25 he signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, in which, he told the correspondents (of whom this writer was one) without batting an eye, Germany and Japan had joined together to defend Western civilization. On the surface this pact seemed to nothing more than a propaganda trick by which Germany and Japan could win world support by exploiting the universal dislike for Communism and the general distrust of the Comintern. But in this treaty too there was a secret protocol, specifically directed against Russia. In case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan, the two nations agreed to consult on what measures to take "to safeguard their common interests" and also to "take no measures which would tend to ease the situation of the Soviet Union", It was also agreed that neither nation would make any political treaties with Russia contrary to the spirit of the agreement without mutual consent.

It would not be very long before Germany broke the agreement and accused Japan -- unjustifiably -- of not observing it. But the pact did serve a certain propaganda purpose among the world's gullible and it brought together for the first time the three have-not and aggressive nations. Italy signed it the following year.

On January 30, 1937, Hitler addressed the Reichstag proclaiming "the withdrawal of the German signature" from the Versailles Treaty, an empty but typical gesture, since the treaty was by now dead as a doornail -- and reviewing with pride the record of his four years in office. He could be pardoned for his pride, for it was an impressive record in both domestic and foreign affairs. He had, as we have seen, abolished unemployment, created a boom in business, built up a powerful Army, Navy, and Air Force, provided them with considerable armaments and the promise of more on a massive scale. He had single-handedly broken the fetters of Versailles and bluffed his way into occupying the Rhineland. Completely isolated at first, he had found a loyal ally in Mussolini and another in Franco, and he had detached Poland from France. Most important of all, perhaps, he had released the dynamic energy of the German people, reawakening their confidence in the nation and their sense of its mission as a great and expanding world power.

Everyone could see the contrast between this thriving, martial, boldly led new Germany and the decadent democracies in the West, whose confusions and vacillations seemed to increase with each new month of the calendar.

Though they were alarmed, Britian and France had not lifted a finger to prevent Hitler from violating the peace treaty by rearming Germany and reoccupying the Rhineland; they had been able to stop Mussolini in Abyssinia. And now, as the year 1937 began, they were cutting a sorry figure by their futil gestures to prevent Germany and Italy from determining the outcome of the Spanish Civil War. Everyone knew what Italy and Germany were doing in Spain to assure Franco's victory. Yet the governments of London and Paris continued for years to engage in empty diplomatic negotiations with Berlin and Rome to assure "nonintervention' in Spain. It was a sport which seems to have amused the German Dictator and which certainly increased his contempt for the stumbling political leaders of France and Britain -- "Little worms," he would shortly call them on a historic occasion when he again humbled the two Western democracies with the greatest of ease.

Neither Great Britain and France, their governments and their peoples, nor the majority of the German people seemed to realize as 1937 began that almost all that Hitler had done in his first four years was a preparation for war. This writer can testify from personal observation that right up to September 1, 1939, the German people were convinced that Hitler would get what he wanted -- and what they wanted -- without recourse to war. But among the elite who were running Germany, or serving it in the key positions, there could have been no doubt what Hitler's objective was. As the four-year "trial" period of Nazi rule, as Hitler called it, approached an end, Goering, who in September 1936 had been put in charge of the Four-Year Plan, bluntly stated what was coming in a secret speech to industrialists and high officials in Berlin.

The battle we are now approaching [he said] demands a colossal measure of production capacity. No limit on rearmament can be visualized. The only alternatives are victory or destruction ... We live in a time when the final battle is in sight. We are already on the threshold of mobilization and we are already at war. All that is lacking is the actual shooting.

Goering's warning was given on December 17, 1936. Within eleven months, as we shall shortly see, Hitler made his fateful and inalterable decision to go to war.

Message to Kellie Pickler:

If you are going to play the dumb blonde and hope that THAT will get you more votes, because you obviously can't sing your way to the top, and judging from the sort of sad baffled look on your face last night you KNOW THIS - I have some suggestions, because you are a terrible actress:

1. Most people termed "dumb blondes" are actually quite smart and know exactly what they are doing. So-called dumb blondes PROFIT from other people UNDERESTIMATING them. I am thinking of Dolly Parton. Marilyn Monroe. Smart cookies. There are, of course, many TRULY STUPID people who are also blondes ... and maybe you are one of them, hon! Looks so! But here's the deal; You're too dumb to play a dumb blonde. Your performance instincts are ... very lacking. Your little "what's a ballsy" nonsense last night tells me that the jig is UP, sweetheart.

2. Acting 101: If you INSIST on giving yourself a line like, "What's a ballsy?" - first of all: there is such a thing called underplaying. VERY important concept, if you want to consistently get laughs. When you give yourself a dumb and improbable line like "What's a ballsy" - the best thing to do is to play it TOTALLY straight, almost deadpan. You might have gotten a laugh on it. Marilyn Monroe sure would have. Marilyn Monroe was given some of the stupidest text in the world ... and she made it work. Sadly, though, unlike you - she had brains. Those who are not naturally gifted (read: You) sometimes do a little thing called TRAINING - because, whaddya know, not everything is just GIVEN to us in this life jsut because WE WANT IT and we have cute blonde hairdos - so these lesser talented people TRAIN ... so that they can:

a. learn to walk on stage without looking like a gravity experiement
b. learn to loosen up in front of the camera so they don't look like a frozen-eyed dim bulb
c. relax enough so that they can bring their natural persona out more fully. This takes training, girl - not for someone like Mandisa or Chris or Taylor who seem completely relaxed in front of an audience - but you? You need work. Don't let anyone tell you different.

I have no idea what your natural persona is, Pickler, but I'll tell you this. The way you said YOUR OWN LINE from your OWN HEAD "What's a ballsy" shows that you have lost control of your own situation. There wasn't a generous laugh response to it - the way there was for other "Oh my God, I'm so dumb" lines. People were like ... Huh? It didn't work. You've pushed past the point of our tolerance for you.

An analogy, Kellie: You know how little kids sometimes get out of control when something goes well for them? And then very quickly they descend into tears and tragedy? At least this is my observation. For example: A little 7 year old kid makes a joke in front of a bunch of adults - and whaddya know - it is a HUGE hit with the adult set and eveyrone HOWLS with laughter. The kid then becomes GIDDY with his own success - and makes another joke - which maybe isn't quite so good ... and then, filled with shame and 7-year-old self-loathing at having LOST the love so freely given just MOMENTS before ... the child quickly resorts to poop and fart jokes, which do NOT go over well, and maybe Mom or Dad says, "Hon ... that's not appropriate" ... which then leaves the child in a swirling wilderness of pain - so the child publicly bursts into tears, and then has to be ushered out of the room by Mom or Dad. Oh, to fly so high so quickly, and then to have such a tragic descent! I have seen it happen, I tell ya.

Dear Kellie: Your "what's a ballsy" moment was the equivalent of a kid shouting out a poop joke at an adult dinner party, trying to re-create the glorious success of the moment before when everyone had loved him!

Maybe two shows ago, you were being congratulated for this act - people were spontaneously bursting into laughter at your ADORABLE comments about your "eyelashes", and that wide-eyed innocence you have! People lapped that crap up!! I always thought you were a bit of a phony, but that's neither here nor there ... People loved it!! They were charmed by you! Good for you! I thought that maybe you, like Marilyn or Dolly, were in CONTROL of what you were doing.

Last night ... you were giddy with your own success ... and perhaps you were feeling not so hot about what was going on ... perhaps you sensed that the tide was turning against you ... There was maybe something lukewarm in the judges response? As compared to what they said to Chris or Mandisa?

You sat there, and I saw this sort of frozen crestfallen thing on your face ... a 7-year-old expression frankly - like: where is the love???

So to try to get the love back, you created this cockamamie moment - where Ryan said, "Simon thought it was ballsy" - and you said, laughing as you said it, "What's a ballsy?"

No laugh.

Uh oh.

Your charm has already worn thin. You seemed not like a "dumb blonde" who knew what she was doing. But just a dumb person, with a bad haircut, and a frozen crestfallen face. Who didn't know what she was doing. Who has no idea how to be IN FRONT OF PEOPLE, and to let her own self shine through.

The jig's up, baby.

To quote sarahk, who, believe it or not, is much meaner than I am:

"What's a ballsy?" Give me a big fat break, you phony inbred backwoods imbecile. Now she’s not even trying to fake it properly. What kind of complete retard hears someone call her an adjective and says, “What’s a ballsy?"

I can't stand phonies. I don't care about people who maybe can't sing, or who have a lot of work to do - but I can't stand phonies. And she is one.

Great great idea:

Here's a blogger who loved the Babysitters' Club book series growing up - and has decided to re-read all of the books (there are quite a few!!) - and blog about her responses to the books now. Her entire blog is focused on this endeavor. Great idea!!

I never read that series - they started coming out when I was a bit too old to get into them - but if I recall correctly, my younger sisters looooooooved them.

So I have been having just a FABULOUS time re-reading some of these posts.

What a great idea for a blog. I have to read every single one of her posts now.

Some choice quotes below - but I imagine if any of you out there read and loved that series, you will have a BLAST reading through her posts. I love the ADULT analysis of the childhood favorites. So funny!!

From this post:

Sometimes, although not nearly as much as when I’m watching the John Hughes oeuvre, I wonder where the parents in Stoneybrook are. Not necessarily the parents of the BSC’s charges, but the parents of the BSC members. I know that they show up for advice, or to punish the BSC members for not doing their homework. But when something serious is going on, where are they? Seriously.

And from this post - this made me laugh out loud:

Jessi volunteers to help with a six week ballet class for “underprivileged” kids. One of the other volunteers is Mary, who is also in Jessi’s regular ballet classes. When all the volunteers go out for fast food (yeah, right, ballet students going out for fast food after class…my ass), Mary doesn’t eat, she just pushes her food around. She also obsesses about her body in the locker room, if that’s what it’s called in ballet. Well, Jessi gets to worrying, especially after Mary collapses in class. After checking in with the BSC, she decides to confront Mary about her anorexia. Well, of course, Mary denies it; what, has Jessi never seen that tv movie starring Tracey Gold? Or that one after school special? Or Center Stage? Then Jessi talks to big, scary French ballet teacher…and all is well in the world of ballet, you know the one that encourages healthy bodies and even healthier body image.

And this:

So, why do these bitches get mad at their friends for changing their looks? Not just in this one, but also in the-not-yet-recapped Mary Anne’s Makeover. Apparently, when you start to look even a little different, you are a traitorous bitch.

hahahaha

Or this:

Not too much to say about this book. In it, Dawn gets a crush on an older boy (sixteen with his own car) and loses all sense of self. I never read this series for realism, so this one kinda blew…if I wanted to see girls turn into doormats for stupid boys, I’d watch mtv or lifetime or Degrassi.

I am in love with this new blog. I love the comments, too - people who read and loved and remembered the books all weighing in. Awesome. It's called BSC Headquarters. Go check it out.

(via Book Slut)

Today in history: March 23, 1775

Patrick Henry made his famous "give me liberty or give me death" speech at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. The speech changed people's lives, ignited them.

Benson Bobrick writes in his book Angel in the Whirlwind (this is about a speech Henry made a decade earlier) - You get the sense in the following excerpt of Henry's power as a public speaker - the consciousness with where he chose to PAUSE ... and then how he concluded his thought, as the cries of "treason" rose around him - genius:

On May 29, 1765, Patrick Henry rose in the Virginia House of Burgesses to introduce a series of momentous resolutions which he had hastily drafted on a blank leaf of an old law book…Henry accompanied these resolutions with a fiery speech given the next day in which he concluded, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third"—amid cries of "Treason" that arose from all sides of the room – "and George the Third," he continued artfully, "may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Thomas Jefferson, then a student at the College of William and Mary, was standing in the doorway and heard Henry speak. "I well remember the cry of treason," Jefferson wrote afterward, "the pause of Mr. Henry at the name of George III, and the presence of mind with which he closed his sentence, and baffled the charge vociferated."…To Jefferson it seemed as if Henry "spoke as Homer wrote".

Paul Johnson, in his wonderful book, History of the American People, writes of the "Give me liberty or give me death" speech:

A common American political consciousness was taking shape, and delegates began to speak with a distinctive national voice. At the end of it, Patrick Henry marked this change in his customary dramatic manner: 'The distinctions between Virginians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.' Not everyone agreed with him, as yet, and the Continental Congress, as it called itself, voted by colonies rather than as individual Americans. But this body, essentially based on Franklin's earlier proposals, perpetuated its existence by agreeing to meet again in May 1775. Before that could happen, on February 5, 1775, parliament in London declared Massachusetts, identified as the most unruly and contumacious of the colonies, to be in a state of rebellion, thus authorizing the lawful authorities to use what force they thought fit. The fighting had begun. Hence when the Virginia burgesses met in convention to instruct their delegates to the Second Continental Congress, Henry saw his chance to bring home to all the revolutionary drama of the moment.

Henry was a born ham actor, in a great age of acting - the Age of Garrick. The British parliament was full of actors, notably [William] Pitt himself ('He acted even when he was dying') and the young [Edmund] Burke, who was not above drawing a dagger, and hurling it on the ground to make a point. But Henry excelled them all. He proposed to the burgesses that Virginia should raise a militia and be ready to do battle. What was Virginia waiting for? Massachusetts was fighting. 'Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we her idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?'

Then Henry got to his knees, in the posture of a manacled slave, intoning in a low but rising voice: 'Is life so dear, our peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!' He then bent to the earth with his hands still crossed, for a few seconds, and suddenly sprang to his feet, shouting, 'Give me liberty!' and flung wide his arms, paused, lowered his arms, clenched his right hand as if holding a dagger at his breast, and said in sepulchral tones: 'Or give me death!' He then beat his breast, with his hand holding the imaginary dagger.

There was silence, broken by a man listening at the open window, who shouted: "Let me be buried on this spot!'

Henry had made his point.

It's interesting - there's a great description of acting: "Acting is like a sculpture carved in snow." Obviously, that phrase came from the time of stage acting. Movies now can capture the "sculpture" before it melts. But that quote always makes me think of Patrick Henry. Nobody alive today can ever see his oratorical skills. There are no video tapes, tape recordings. We just have to take the word of those who were THERE. So while no "record" exists, and his speeches were, indeed, "carved in snow" ... a whiff of the power of them comes down to us regardless.

Click below to read, in full, Patrick Henry's speech that he made on this day in 1775:

Patrick Henry's Speech, St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775

No man, Mr. President, thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

The Books: "Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran" (Elaine Sciolino)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran by Elaine Sciolino. Elaine Sciolino is a senior correspondent for The New York Times and has been covering Iran and the Middle East for years. I really like this book - with a couple of caveats. She's a wonderful writer - and makes me feel like I am THERE. If you read my blog, then you know my fascination with all things Persian, and my yearning to go there someday. A book like hers makes me feel like I am there. I think she's a bit soft on the regime - I've read that critique of her before - she was good friends with Khatami - and I think that might have colored her response to some of the more disturbing things in that country. So that kind of bugs me. But some of the images she shares in this book have stayed with me a long time - these crazy house parties in suburbs of Teheran - the women showing up in billowing black chadors - entering separate doors from the men - Then once they're inside, off come the chadors, and everyone's wearing teeny sundresses and platform sandals, all the guys in Western dress - and there's booze and dancing all night. Then, when it's time to go home - on go the full chadors, men and women leave separately - and it's as though it never happened. How do the citizens navigate such a situation? It's a strange thing when most of the citizenry is involved in just trying to FOOL their own government ... the government being a big nasty moralistic prude. And the young kids are just trying to have a bit of fun, and "fool Daddy", by sneaking out of the house, and raiding the secret liquor stash. Like - what happened to this pure Islamic Republic? People are OVER it. At least as described in Sciolino's book.

The way she describes the city of Shiraz makes me yearn to go there. Argh. I just don't know if it'll ever happen.

Like I said, I don't think Sciolino is completely reliable - but one of the things I get from her writing, is how much she loves that country, and how much she loves the people she has met there. That passion comes through in this book.

By the way, I was in an elevator with two guys. They were obviously co-workers. They were talking about something, and one guy said to the other, "So - you're obviously a born-and-bred New Yorker, huh?" The other guy said, "Actually - no ... I was born in Iran." I could feel that word just LAND in the elevator. The guy who had asked the question said, "Really! That's ... interesting!" (He really did sound interested.) I wondered what was going through the completely Americanized Iranian man ... if he knows that saying he is from THAT COUNTRY will ... somehow make people feel differently about him? If he's hesitate to share it?? I heard a bit of hesitation in the voice before he said, 'Actually, no ..." The guy who had asked the question said, "So when did you come here?" And it was not at all a surprise (of course) when the Iranian said, "My family came here in 1979."

The exodus.

I'm going to post a bit of an excerpt about Qom, the theological center south of Teheran, where Khomeini got his start. It's Mullah Central down there.

From Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran by Elaine Sciolino.

Qom, a gloomy, dusty thousand-year-old city on the edge of Iran's great salt desert, is only ninety miles from Tehran. It might as well be nine thousand. Its main industry is producing mullahs, much as the industry of Vatican City is training priests. And like the Vatican, Qom is a sheltered, unhurried religious refuge, where clerics can debate without attention to time and without fear of interference from the state. In the Islamic Republic, Qom has assumed another role as well: it is the idea factory for a regime that seeks to regulate daily life with all the worldly tools of a modern state even as it tries to bring its people closer to God. That is the principal reason Montazeri was allowed to continue spreading his ideas, even after he had been stripped of power and liberty.

Before the revolution, Qom was a desolate place known as a center for study and worship and a producer of fine silk carpets and of sohan, a caramel and pistachio brittle. The more the Shah consolidated his own power, the less attention he paid to Qom, a guidebook published by his Ministry of Information and Tourism devoted just three paragraphs to the city.

Ayatollah Khomeini changed all that. His appeal was exceptionally strong in Qom, where he had lived and preached for years before he was sent into exile. In January 1978, a crowd there demonstrated against the Shah in the ayatollah's name. According to some reports, clerics and Islamic militants set up street barricades, smashed buses, halted trains, and attacked banks and shops; they were not silenced even after the police opened fire. Many Iranians came to regard what became a two-and-half-hour shooting spree as the opening shots of the revolution. Afterward, the regime bused thousands of factory workers and low-level government employees to Qom for a counterdemonstration in support of the Shah. But the violent crackdowns sparked a cycle of mourning - and more demonstrations and violence - every forty days until, a year later, the Shah fled the country and Khomeini returned.

The first time I visited Qom I witnessed the slaughtering of a camel. It was a bright, cool, sunny day in February 1979, just a few days after the revolution, and the sacrifice was made to honor Khomeini's triumphant return after an absence of more than fourteen years. His followers made a path of red carnations for him, filled the walls with his portraits, and strung revolutionary posters and banners between minarets and lampposts not only in Persian, but also in Arabic, English, French, and German (for the benefit of foreign journalist, I presumed). Khomeini had ordered that no camels were to be killed in his honor, but his followers paid no heed. The giant beast was forced on its side by a handful of men. One man swiftly slit the camel's throat with a sword. Blood spurted high into the air. The crowd praised God and smeared their hands and faces with the blood. That day, Khomeini sat in the front seat of a white Chevrolet ambulance; members of the foreign media were put on a long flatbed truck. We made our way through a shrieking crowd of clerics who chanted slogans on megaphones, soldiers who had stuck carnations in their rifles, and hundreds of thousands of people who kept running to catch up. In my chador, I slipped at one point and grabbed the arm of a young bearded Iranian assigned to help us. "Don't touch me like that!" he said. "You are in Qom."

Yes, I was in Qom.

It was in Qom that Khomeini set up his government just days after the victory of the revolution. In thoseheady early days, Qom seemed like the center of the universe to its residents. No longer a religious backwater, it became very much like an eighteenth-century European court where people came and went and pleaded and waited for favors. Government officials made pilgrimages by helicopter from Tehran, often several times a week, to consult Khomeini. Courtiers and security guards shielded the ayatollah from most of the supplicants. Every day thousands of people crowded behind green metal barricades at the end of the street where Khomeini lived to get a glimpse of him, usually no more than a one-minute wave from his window. Among the throng one day was a woman who told me she had come with her blind daughter all the way from Isfahan to get Khomeini's blessing, and a widow with seven children who said she had come from Mashad to ask for an increase in her pension.

After the revolution, the city emerged as an even more important Shiite pilgrimage site and the country's most authoritative center of learning. "Islam has no borders," Khomeini said, so the seminaries attracted religious scholars and students from around the world as the exportation of Iran's revolution became one of the pillars of the new Islamic system. The religious teachers of Qom were assigned the task of indoctrinating foreign students with tales about the Islamic revolution and how to duplicate it back home. During the war with Iraq, the ranks of the seminaries swelled, in part because clerical students were exempt from military service. By the turn of the century, tens of thousands of students were enrolled in the Qom theological seminaries alone.

Over the years, I have made the drive from Tehran to Qom more times than I can count: with a group of American tourists, with officials from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, with a nephew of Ayatollah Khomeini, with Nazila. The trip has gone faster since a six-lane highway was built. But I still don't feel as if I fully understand the place. Even for many Iranians, Qom seems alien. Religion dominates the culture and the clerics don't like outsiders. I have worked for a long time with secular Iranian women who hate to go there because of the way the clerics look at them. A foreigner can be spotted from miles away. I keep going back to Qom because I hope that each visit will reveal more. And indeed, it is different every time.

The distinction between what is public and what is private is drawn more starkly in Qom than in the rest of Iran; the curtain of privacy is far more tightly drawn around the clergy, making it especially difficult for an outsider to get inside. Hotels generally don't welcome women traveling on their own, and restaurants are hard to find. Qom has only one main avenue; everything important is within walking distance - the central shrine, the seminaries, even a new Islamic computer center where Koranic teachings and interpretations are on the Internet. Even so, an outsider cannot navigate without a guide. To get anything accomplished, you have to be invited; someone who belongs has to lead you down the narrow streets and do the introductions. It is especially difficult to make appointments in advance. The trick is to start out from Tehran at about 6:00 a.m., arrive at eight, and work until noon. That's when most clerics pray, eat, and nap. Most of the city shuts down until about 5:00 p.m., when work begins again.

The centerpiece of Qom is the grand, gold-domed shrine that houses the tomb of Massoumeh, the sister of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam, who died in the ninth century. Thousands of pilgrims come every day to say prayers, beg for favors, and leave wads of bills as donations. They solemnly finger the silver cage that houses Massoumeh's tomb and then touch their faces, as if her aura will somehow rub off on them.

There is an air of informality in the shrine, as in mosques, that doesn't exist in most churches and synogogues. The religious complex, like others throughout Iran, is more than simply a place of prayer; it is also a place of political mobilization. During the war with Iraq, the clerics set up enlistment centers for teenage volunteers and donation centers here where people could contribute their gold jewelry and coins to the war effort. The shrine is also a place for socializing, for getting out of the house. Women sit on the carpets and eat picnic lunches with their children. And the courtyard is known as a meeting place where the Shiite Muslim practice of sigheh, or temporary marriage, can be arranged by a lonely pilgrim and a woman who needs money.

Qom is a very different place than it was at the beginning of the revolution. It boasts recreational parks and movie theatres. Most of the bookstores sell only religious books, but I have also found English-language volumes: King Lear, Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and a wide assortment of Persian-English dictionaries. Clerics drive motorbikes and some women even dare to go out on the streets in scarves and long coats, rather than black chadors.

"I hope you can help me locate a recipe I lost in the floodwaters of Katrina..."

This article about the demand for cookbooks in New Orleans - made me a bit misty-eyed.

"I am trying to locate 'Aunt May's Eggplant Fritters' published in the Times-Picayune more than 15 years ago. . . . I lost it in my Lakeview home. All of my family members who had this recipe lost it, too. If anyone has this recipe, I would be very grateful if they would pass it on."

Gulp!!!

Just go read the whole thing. Beautiful article. The image of a woman literally hugging The Joy of Cooking to her ... is ... KILLING ME. Tradition ... the importance of tradition ...

sniffle.

American Idol thoughts

I did not watch the whole thing - I got home in time to see only a couple people.

Brief thoughts, with apologies to all:

Katherine McPhee: horrible dress. Adorable hair. I hated how she stalked around the stage. It seemed totally random. She ignored Barry Manilow's advice about keeping a specific person in mind to sing to. It seemed very GENERAL. Which is horrible, when you're a performer. Good performers have many different qualities that make them good - but one thing they ALL have is they are SPECIFIC. To all the singers on the show, except for Mandisa: THINK ABOUT WHO YOU ARE SINGING TO. God - this is where they really show their amateurishness. BUT on the good side: the chick has some major pipes. That's a professional voice. I actually could see her performing on Broadway. Her voice is a Broadway voice. I wish she would let loose with it a bit more - and really LOSE herself in the song. She's way too self-conscious, and too much preening for the audience. Forget the audience. Look at the great singers in their heyday: Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland ... Yes, they are great performers ... but when they are in a song, the entire world goes away, and we see their private inner world - dreams, hopes, longings ... They let us IN there. That's why they are legends. Katherine: stop preening. It's amateurish. Stop strutting around randomly. This is stagecraft 101. If you make a gesture on stage - make sure you have a damn good reason. Otherwise, you look like a puppet. You wanna be a professional? Start taking your art seriously. I'm serious. She's got the best voice on the show. But somehow ... it's not GETTING to me.

Taylor: Sorry, Taylor fans, I thought his performance was a mess. I agreed with Simon. First of all: horrible and lazy song choice. It didn't show off his voice - which is a fantastic voice. I love his voice. Also, the dancing around - I feel sometimes like the atmosphere in that room is artificial (hahaha YA THINK???) and they forget what it feels like to actually have to WORK on an audience. In my opinion, Taylor's getting lazy. Come on, dude - challenge yourself. Go there. Paula and Randy are right - you already ARE a star. But I was bored bored bored by your performance last night.

Lisa: Uhm - she made no impression. She's adorable, and I love her passion ... but I think her voice is unattractive, and again, she looks like a raging amateur.

Kevin: I want to put a frog in his bed. Or booby-trap his locker. I'm sick of this kid.

Elliot: LOVE this guy's voice. But ... it's empty. Weird. Alex and I had a big conversation once about Lorna Luft - we were listening to a tape of her singing - and you can HEAR Lorna's mother in her voice - I mean, God - we all should be blessed with such pipes - but something's missing. It's an empty experience listening to her. It is JUST a good voice. Now Lorna's sister - ahem - Liza Minelli - is the opposite. I think that, actually, Lorna has, technically, the better voice. But Liza is a fantastic performer. She just GOES there. It is NEVER an empty experience listening to Liza. Elliot strikes me like Lorna Luft. Which ... would mortify him. Although I'm sure he doesn't even know who Lorna Luft is. He doesn't connect with the lyrics, or the audience. However: I do love the sound of his voice. He makes it all sound easy.

Kellie: I'm gonna be brutal, so look out. She looks awful. I hate her hair. She DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO WALK ON STAGE. I thought she was going to fall over at any minute. When she came down the small set of steps, I held my breath. She kept looking down at her feet to make sure she didn't trip. Uhm - maybe a nitpick - but that's the deal. Professionals don't behave that way. Mandisa, to me, already seems like a professional. Like she would just CHARGE down those stairs, and if she tripped?? Oh well, she'd keep singing. Kellie Pickler is in way over her head. I also can't stand her persona. Phony. I'm over her. Also, frankly: I don't think she can sing. Her low notes suck (come on, singers - don't just go for the big orgasmic high notes - that's LAZY. Work on your lower registers. You're not all that good yet. You've got work to do.) And there's something ... vapid about her voice. She didn't know WHAT she was singing about. The song had no depth. (The song itself has depth ... but she didn't bring any depth to it.) Amateur. Go home.

Ace: Sigh. I thought he was terrible. I have no idea why people make such a big deal over his falsetto. I think it's atrocious. I literally winced when he hit that last note. Also, Ace: the big floaty arm movements when you sing do not really serve you or your performance. BUT on the flipside: the guy really does seem like a sweetheart. I actually like him very much.

Paula truly seemed like she was jacked up on coke last night. When Simon kept condescendingly shushing her, I guffawed with laughter. hahahahahaha

SO:

Who do you all think is leaving??

My vote is Lisa, even though I WANT Kevin to go. I think it's her turn to leave. What do you think???

Happy birthday - to Billy Collins

Former poet laureate of the United States. Want to see the entire list of poets laureate? Go here. Pretty cool.

One of the things that I love about Billy Collins (besides his poetry, I mean) is that he is a truly POPULAR poet. His books are bestsellers - and BEFORE he was a poet laureate they were. He writes for the "everyman". Now I love poetry of all kind - obscure, experimental, confessional, etc. - but I also love the poets who speak directly into the experience of most people. Billy Collins is one of those poets. A lot of people discount his work because of this - but you know, those people are idiots. The same kinds of people who got MAD at Kurt Cobain for becoming successful and making some money. There's nothing WRONG with being successful. But also there's a deeper issue here: Poets used to be much more important, and poetry was something most people enjoyed. Kids had to memorize poems in class. Poetry was not seen as elitist. Now I think a lot of the people who call poetry elite basically just don't like "fancy book larnin" and they label anything challenging or outside their experience as "elitist" - so we can discount their opinion. Or I can, and I do. Happily. But I think a lot of it, too, is that with the birth of confessional poetry in the 50s and 60s - many poets STOPPED talking to the universal. They delved totally into the personal. Hence - we have many INCOMPREHENSIBLE poems filling the - er - air waves - and ... nobody can relate.

Blue stockings
Oh my heart
A glass window, my codeine tablets
Chickadee monkey
Flippity floppity
Oh say can you see
I am dying

hahahahaha I mean, whatever. Now ... am I supposed to RELATE to that? Uhm - no.

These are the artistic children of such geniuses as Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton - true masters of their craft. Yes, they wrote about theie own lives, and mental illness - but nobody could EVER say that they were not good at their work. You may not like that type of poetry - a lot of people don't (I happen to adore it) ... but everyone imitating them now just ... they only go for the CONFESSIONAL part of the equation, and forget about the - er ... ART.

Again, though, I want to make myself clear in light of the whole "I'm not much for fancy book-larnin'" type: I don't like art only when I can RELATE to it. I'm not only looking for MYSELF in a poem. I like words, I like language, I like writers. But the fragmented BAD writing which makes up most of modern poetry is kind of disheartening - and it's no wonder that people aren't into poetry anymore. Bring back the Dead White Male contingent, please!

Anyway: because Billy Collins is so POPULAR, he is not as respected. Which is just a sign of the times, I suppose. I happen to love his stuff. He's a good writer. Perhaps not as complex as I normally enjoy, and not as howling-at-the-moon-with-despair as I enjoy and relate to - but he's a fine writer, and it was quite a triumph, I thought, when he was asked to be Poet Laureate. It was fabulous!!

I also love his web site. I love it because whoever put it together obviously has never put together a website before and I find something charmingly naive about that. There are no real links on that first page. It's strange ... then when you get to the Link Index, I am so charmed by this sentence:

BOOK BILLY FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT
Mr. Collins is available for real live appearances

I just ... To me, that completely encapsulates who Billy Collins is. Accessible. Friendly. He makes "real live appearances" ... It's so human, so simple. I love it.

Anyway, I highly recommend you checking out his work if you haven't already - and as a way of saying Happy Birthday, I'll post the poem that he wrote following September 11 - when he was Poet Laureate. I've posted it before.

Never ever fails to tear at my heart.

The Names

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

The Books: "10 Days That Shook the World" (John Reed)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is 10 Days That Shook the World by John Reed.

Before I get to this rollicking effective fabulously-written piece of propaganda, I have to get something out of the way:

You know how some bloggers are always arguing with an imaginary confrontational audience? In the posts? Their writing goes like this:

"Now I realize that most of you will find this offensive ..." "I am willing to bet that 90% of you will be angry at what I'm about to say ..." Everything must be prefaced, or couched, or framed ... They are overly aware of the readers' response. Or they even flat-out get INTO it with the imaginary audience: "Don't tell me that there isn't a such and such for the so and so ... I am fully aware of all of the implications, thank you very much." Like - they start up an argument, and then keep arguing - even though no one's there. This is not along the lines of someone taking a point and defending it, or expressing why they are angry about this or that - this is being overly conscious of the readership. I honestly try not to do that. It's bad writing. I mean, you learn that in high school English. Pick a point and argue it. Imagine putting all of that stuff into a high school term paper. "I know that you, my teacher, may find my argument immature, but you just need to sit back and listen to where I'm coming from when I say that the green light across Gatsby's bay symbolizes the lost hopes of the Jazz Age. I know it's controversial, and I know you probably don't agree, but just hear me out." Uhm - horrible. You'd get an F. In my view - argue about that stuff in the COMMENTS - but I try to keep it out of the post itself. Because this is about me expressing myself - and all of that apologetic stuff or defensive stuff weakens the writing. It's hard not to succumb to it - but sometimes I cave - because I just KNOW that someone's gonna say THIS, and I need to address that BEFORE they say it - etc. Beth once pointed it out to me - in a very very nice private email - saying she thought it was a shame when I did that, I should just write what I want to write, and not preface everything with some argument with an imaginary reader. I really appreciated her email, I really did. Now if I find myself going that way, I edit it out. As much as I can. Because she's right. I find bloggers who do that habitually kinda unreadable ... I like the bloggers who just flat out say what they want to say, and just share their opinions wihtout hemming and hawing to their "readers".

Anyway, all of this DOES have a point!!

And in another post about the Russian Revolution - where John Reed's book came up - I argued with imaginary readers - and it makes my point, so what the hell, I'll quote myself:

I've read John Reed's 10 Days that shook the world, and it's a brilliant piece of propaganda - one of the best. It is, of course, propaganda - and you can argue that it's a dangerous piece of work, whatever - that argument bores me, frankly. I want to read anything I can get my hands on - and that is a first-hand account of the October Revolution. He was the one who "sold" the Revolution to the outside world. Whatever you think of his beliefs (and again - I find myself rolling my eyes when I read it - the enthusiasm! The belief that the whole world would rise up in a red wave! Etc.) - the dude can write. Don't bitch about me about what I should or should not read. That's another form of totalitarianism. I recognize Reed's work as propaganda for the cause. I read it anyway. So don't foam at the mouth, mkay? I love first-person accounts of any historical event - biased or no. I like to feel like I am THERE.

That "don't bitch to me" and "so don't foam at the mouth, mkay?" is what I'm talking about. It's a struggle to not put comments like that in - but like I said - Beth was right. My point is well made in the above paragraph without the "don't foam at the mouth". I mean, I know that I have readers who WOULD foam at the mouth - but - er - why is that my problem? There are going to be people who just think I'm an idiot - and who read me in order to CORRECT me. I despise those people, but again: why is that my problem? I am not going to address my posts TO those people. hahahaha It's so weird, when I step back from it. This has only occurred in the last year or so when I've gotten so many more readers than I had before. So - it's been a balancing act, and kind of a fun challenge.

I didn't set down to write all this this morning, but I do know that when I saw the next book on the shelf, I felt a bit apprehensive - like: Oh God. As though people would be mad at me for even having it on my shelf. How was I going to FRAME this?

Good Lord. Who cares?? I ain't gonna frame SHIT.

So. John Reed. Who, strangely enough, did NOT look like Warren Beatty (hahaha) was a journalist. Here's some good information about him. A fascinating life. The value of his book is, for me, the first-person account of the events of those "10 days" - his writing is phenomenal. He was swept away by the enthusiasm of what was happening, so obviously he was duped - as many were duped - but his writing!! The descriptions!! You get the smells, the sights, the brief personality portraits, the "foul blue cigarette smoke" in the air, the smell of unwashed people, the frigid wind ... Fabulous.

Here is an excerpt from his description of November 7, 1917. The bulletin that Kameniev hands to John Reed is stunning, I think. Good Lord. They stated their intentions up front and ... God. You just know that MILLIONS died carrying the plan out. "transform into a state monopoly" ... wow, guys!! Great idea!! Good luck with that! (It's funny that this book came up a day after I wrote this.)

Oh, and one thing: John Reed uses ellipses a lot. I've not taken anything out in the excerpt below - the ellipses are already in the text.

From 10 Days That Shook the World by John Reed.

The massive facade of Smolny blazed with lights as we drove up, and from every street converged upon it streams of hurrying shapes dim in the gloom. Automobiiles and motorcycles came and went; an enormous elephant-coloured armored automobile, with two red flags flying from the turret, lumbered out with screaming siren. It was cold, and at the outer gate the Red Guards had built themselves a bonfire. At the inner gate, too, there was a blaze, by the light of which the sentries slowly spelled out our passes and looked us up and down. The canvas covers had been taken off the four rapid-fire guns on each side of the doorway, and the ammunition-belts hung snakelike from their breeches. A dun herd of armoured cars stood under the trees in the court-yard, engines going. The long, bare, dimly-illuminated halls roared with the thunder of feet, calling, shouting ... There was an atmosphere of recklessness. A crowd came pouring down the staircase, workers in black blouses and round black fur hats, many of them with guns slung over their shoulders, soldiers in rough dirt-coloured coats and grey fur shapki pinched flat, a leader or so -- Lunatcharsky, Kameniev -- hurrying along in the centre of a group all talking at once, with harassed anxious faces, and bulging portfolios under their arms. The extraordinary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was over. I stopped Kameniev -- a quick-moving little man, with a wide, vivacious face set close to his shoulders. Without preface he read in rapid French a copy of the resolution just passed:

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldier's Deputies, saluting the victorious Revolution of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison, particularly emphasises the unity, organisation, discipline, and complete cooperation shown by the masses in this rising; rarely has less blood been spilled, and rarely has an insurrection succeeded so well.

The Soviet expresses its firm conviction that the Workers' and Peasants' Government which, as the government of the Soviets, will be created by the Revolution, and which will assure the industrial proletariat of the support of the entire mass of poor peasants, will march firmly toward Socialism, the only means by which the country can be spared the miseries and unheard-of horrors of war.

The new Workers' and Peasants' Government will propose immediately a just and democratic peace to all the belligerent countries.

It will suppress immediately the great landed property, and transfer the land to the peasants. It will establish workmen's control over production and distribution of manufactured products, and will set up a general control over the banks, which it will transform into a state monopoly.

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldier's Deputies calls upon the workers and the peasants of Russia to support with all their energy and all their devotion the Proletarian Revolution. The Soviet expresses its conviction that the city workers, allies of the poor peasants, will assure complete revolutionary order, indispensable to the victory of Socialism. The Soviet is convinced that the proletariat of the countries of Western Europe will aid us in conducting the cause of Socialism to a real and lasting victory.

"You consider it won then?"

He lifted his shoulders. "There is much to do. Horribly much. It is just beginning ..."

On the landing I met Riazanov, vice-president of the Trade Unions, looking black and biting his grey beard. "It's insane! Insane!" he shouted. "The European working-class won't move! All Russia --" He waved his hand distractedly and ran off. Riazanov and Kameniev had both opposed the insurrection, and felt the lash of Lenin's terrible tongue ...

It had been a momentous session. In the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee Trotsky had declared that the Provisional Government no longer existed.

"The characteristic of bourgeois government," he said, "is to deceive the people. We, the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, are going to try an experiment unique in history; we are going to found a power which will have no other aim but to satisfy the needs of the soldiers, workers, and peasants."

Lenin had appeared, welcomed with a mighty ovation, prophesying world-wide Social Revolution ... And Zinoviev crying, "This day we have paid our debt to the international proletariat, and struck a terrible blow at the war, a terrible body-blow at all the imperialists and particularly at Wilhelm the Executioner ..."

Then Trotsky, that telegrams had been sent to the front announcing the victorious insurrection, but no reply had come. Troops were said to be marching against Petrograd -- a delegation must be sent to tell them the truth.

Cries, "You are anticipating the will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets!"

Trotsky, colly, "The will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets has been anticipated by the rising of the Petrograd workers and soldiers!"

So we came into the great meeting-hall, pushing through the clamourous mob at the door. In the rows of seats, under the white chandeliers, packed immovably in the aisles and on the sides, perched on every window-sill, and even the edge of the platform, the representatives of the workesr and soldiers of all Russia waited in anxious silence or wild exultation the ringing of the chairman's bell. There was no heat in the hall but the stifling heat of unwashed human bodies. A foul blue cloud of cigarette smoke rose from the mass and hung in the thick air. Occasionally some one in authority mounted the tribune and asked the comrades not to smoke; then everybody, smokers and all, took up the cry "Don't smoke, comrades!" and went on smoking. Petrovsky, Anarchist delegate from the Obukhov factory, made a seat for me beside him. Unshaven and filthy, he was reeling from three nights' sleepless work on the Military Revolutionary Committee.

On the platform sat the leaders of the old Tsay-ee-kah -- for the last time dominating the turbulent Soviets, which they had ruled from the first days, and which were now risen against them. It was the end of the first period of the Russian revolution, which these men had attempted to guide in careful ways ... The three greatest of them were not there: Kerensky, flying to the front through country towns all doubtfully heaving up; Teheidze, the old eagle, who had contemptuously retired to his own Georgian mountains, there to sicken with consumption; and the high-souled Tseretelli, also mortally stricken, who, nevertheless, would return and pour out his beautiful eloquence for a lost cause. Gotz sat there, Dan, Lieber, Bogdanov, Broido, Fillipovsky, -- white-faced, hollow-eyed and indignant. Below them the second siezd of the All-Russian Soviets boiled and swirled, and over their heads the Military Revolutionary Committee functioned white-hot, holding in its hands the threads of insurrection and striking with a long arm ... It was 10:40 P.M.

Dan, a mild-faced, baldish figure in a shapeless military surgeon's uniform, was ringing the bell. Silence fell sharply, intense, broken by the scuffling and disputing of the people at the door ...

"We have the power in our hands," he began sadly, stopped for a moment, and then went on in a low voice. "Comrades! The Congress of Soviets is meeting in such unusual circumstances and in such an extraordinary moment that you will understand why the Tsay-ee-kah considers it unnecessary to address you with a political speech. This will become much clearer to you if you will recollect that I am a memeber of the Tsay-ee-kah, and that at this very moment our party comrades are in the Winter Palace under bombardment, sacrificing themselves to execute the duty put on them by the Tsay-ee-kah." (Confused uproar.)

"I declare the first session of the Second Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies open!"

The election of the presidium took place amid stir and moving about. Avanessov announced that by agreement of the Bolskeviki, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Menshiviki Internationalists, it was decided to base the presidium upon proportionality. Several Mensheviki leaped to their feet protesting. A bearded solider shouted at them, "Remember what you did to us Bolsheviki when we were the minority!" Result -- 14 Bolsheviki, 7 Socialist Revolutionaries, 3 Mensheviki and 1 Internationalist (Gorky's group). Hendelmann, for the right and centre Socialist Revolutionaries siad that they refused to take part in the presidium; the same from Kintchuk, for the Mensheviki; and from the Mensheviki Internationalists, that until the verification of certain circumstances, they too could not enter the presidium. Scattering applause and hoots. One voice, "Renegades, you call yourselves Socialists!" A representative of the Ukrainian delegates demanded, and received, a place. Then the old Tsay-ee-kah stepped down, and in their places appeared Trotsky, Kameniev, Lunatcharsky, Madame Kollentai, Nogin ... The hall rose, thundering. How far they had soared, these Bolsheviki, from a despised and hunted sect leses than four months ago, to this supreme place, the helm of great Russia in full tide of insurrection!

The order of the day, said Kameniev, was first, Organization of Power; second, War and Peace; and third, the Constituent Assembly. Lozovsky, rising, announced that upon agreement of the bureaus of all factions, it was proposed to hear and discuss the report of the Petrograd Soviet, then to give the floor to members of the Tsay-ee-kah and the different parties, and finally to pass to the order of the day.

But suddenly a new sound made itself heard, deeper than the tumult of the crowd, persistent, disquieting -- the dull shock of guns. People looked anxiously toward the clouded windows, and a sort of fever came over them. Martov, demanding the floor, croaked hoarsely, "The civil war is beginning, comrades! The first question must be a peaceful settlement of the crisis. On principle and from a political standpoint we must urgently discuss a means of averting civil war. Our brothers are being shot down in the streets! At this moment, when before the opening of the Congress of Soviets the question of Power is being settled by means of a military plot organized by one of the revolutionary parties--" for a moment he could not make himself heard above the noise, "All of the revolutionary parties must face the fact! The first vopros (question) before the Congress is the question of Power, and this question is already being settled by force of arms in the streets! ... We must create a power which will be recognized by the whole democracy. If the Congress wishes to be the voice of the revolutionary democracy it must not sit with folded hands before the developing civil war, the result of which may be a dangerous outburst of counter-revolution ... The possibility of a peaceful outcome lies in the formation of a united democratic authority ... We must elect a delegation to negotiate with the other Socialist parties and organizations ..."

Always the methodical muffled boom of cannon through the windows, and the delegates, screaming at each other ... So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, new Russia was being born.

Domestic bliss and neurosis

On Saturday, I had my friend Jen over. This next weekend I'm having my friend Allison over. The following week, Mitchell arrives and he will be staying with me for a bit. And at the end of April, I'm having a dinner party for all O'Malley cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings in the area. Well, and some are driving in from OTHER areas. Should be interesting, considering the SIZE of my apartment. And the fact that I only have 4 chairs. Oh well. And I want to have another girlfriend-sleepover party with my friends from Rhode Island. When Mere's foot heals!!!

Anyway. Simone (the cross-dressing red-glittery-lipsticked palm-reader who accosted all of us last Monday after my show) kept saying to me, "Home ... you need to make your house a home ... have people over ..." etc.

This was already the way the wind was blowing - but it's really happening now. Every time I have had my friends down from Rhode Island - it is always SUCH a joy to ... have people over, man. I just love it. New York is much more of a "Let's meet out at a restaurant" type of culture. It's just easier - since everyone is usually sprawled all over the city - and it's easier to pick some central location, where everyone can catch their trains home, etc. And fuggedaboutit if you live in Joisey. Even if my house is closer to the city than most spots in Brooklyn. It's still just easier, in general, to meet in the city. But the joy of having people come over ... let them into my world ... return the favor (because all of them have hosted me on numerous occasions) is SUCH an intense joy for me that I get all excited about it.

If you're not like me then you will have NO idea what I'm talking about - but if you ARE like me, then maybe you'll get it. I'm a hermit. And I'm a loner. I get into habits. Habits of hibernation. Like - I disappear off the face of the earth. My apartment is a private little castle, dedicated to my obsessions. I get shy about letting people in there. My books. My movies. My writing. It's MY place. And ... I've been shy about having people over. It's a very VERY big deal for me to have company. It doesn't have to do with the STATE of my house or anything like that. It's an adorable and cozy apartment. It's very ME. It expresses who I am. It's not like I have old food smeared on the floor, and empty gin bottles piled up in the sink. hahahaha It's just I'm in a habit of ... NEVER having people "drop by".

But over the last couple months, I've sensed that a lot of this needs to change. I need to open my house to my friends, my family - more. It gives me so much joy when Beth, Betsy, Mere (and once: Ceileidh!) come over, and stay. And use my kitchen, and give me compliments on the coziness of it ... and make themselves comfortable. I love it and I need to do it more. I need to get some air in there. It will do me good, and ... somehow I sense it will change me. In a way that I need to change. My social self has pretty much receded in recent years. For various reasons. I've had some disappointments in life that I have taken too much to heart. I have retreated.

And I've realized that my apartment - the space where I live - is a metaphor for larger things. My whole life. WHO. I. AM. What breakthroughs would be possible for me if I just throw open those doors?

So I've done that.

I'm neurotic about my apartment - but that's only because I'm usually the only one who sees it ... so I get self-conscious about it. Basically what it comes down to is ... I'm self-conscious about who I am. That's all. And I'm determined to work on that. So what that every inch of wall space is taken up by books? So what?? I can work on this self-consciousness on my own, intellectually, and I have - but I've also found that just having people over, and opening up my life to them (my dear friends) ... is highly relaxing and gratifying. I start to look around and see things in a different way. I lose the self-consciousness. I look at my curtains and realize, yet again, how beautiful they are. I look at how the lamplight falls on my pale yellow walls and get a deeper appreciation of how pretty it is. I look at my hard wood floors and go: "Damn. That's so nice looking!" My reticence dissolves. It becomes a place where I can actually CELEBRATE who I am. Because the place so expresses me perfectly.

Letting people in to my space - and being the hostess - and having food for my guests - and all that stuff - is, for me, like giving gifts on Christmas. This is my space. This is who I am. It's a nice place. It's very me. It's a gift I can give to others. There are some people who are like that with their homes. Their doors are always open. You will always find a space at their dinner table. They LOVE to be the hosts. It gives them great great joy - those are always the funnest houses to visit. I'm learning. That's the kind of relationship I want to have with my space. And it's hard for me. I am sooooooo private. And did I mention neurotic? But by holding back, by WITHholding my living space ... I'm withholding who I am. It's been so much fun to just ... throw that mindset away!!

Jen - who helped me feng shui the joint up - hasn't been to my apartment since then, even though we live 5 minutes away from each other. I mean, granted, we're both busy, our lives are nuts, yadda yadda ... but God, it was so NICE to have her over. She walked in this past weekend - and just wandered around for a while - taking it all in. She's a dear dear friend - she gets how my whole apartment-thing is a pretty big deal to me. She gets it. She had a comment for EVERYTHING. "Oh! That bookcase looks great there!" Etc. We were roommates for 9 years ... so she was exclaiming over certain objects. "Oh! I remember that knick-knack!! Oh man ... I miss having all your BOOKS around!" It took her half an hour to take everything in. This is why I love this girl. I've got tears in my eyes right now. She looked at everything. She complimented me on all my plants. One of the plants she gave me - 9 years ago - it was a teeny fragile stalk - and it is now a huge tree. Well - huge? It's almost as tall as I am. But it was literally 3 inches long when she gave it to me. I sat back, and watched her walk around, looking at stuff - and I started to see the place through her eyes. She's very sensitive to space, to how things are set up ... when I needed to rearrange everything, she's the one I called. She's just got a great eye for it. I do not. So to watch her walk around, nodding happily, saying, "I love it here ... it has a really good energy, Sheila ... I love it ..." meant so much to me.

It's funny. I'm a grown woman. But having guests is still a novelty to me ... and I still find it thrilling.

Coming out of my shell. That's what's happening, in more ways than one. Coming out of my shell.

Fungus in Red Square

Member this whole story?

About Lenin sprouting fungus in the middle of Red Square? The whole embalmed leader thing has always fascinated me on a very abstract level. It's so creepy, and - so labor-intensive - like - people's entire JOBS had to do with keeping that body from decaying - I am creeped out by it, and yet I kind of can't look away. It somehow dovetails with my whole cult-fascination thing. The turning of a man into a god. But not really a god. It's more of an empty SYMBOL. A symbol that got emptier and emptier with every passing year. And yet still - the charade was kept up. Embalming him like that did not turn him into a god - it turned him into an OBJECT. There's something very openly cynical about the whole thing - or so it has always seemed to me.

In this book I'm reading now - Stalin - the entire event of Lenin's death - and the power struggle that went on then - and Lenin's dying gasps of breath - and his warnings about Stalin's "rudeness" - and all of that - is painted in GRAPHIC detail. It's terrifying. Lenin had helped to consolidate Stalin's power. Or ... "Koba", as he was known then. And Lenin realized (too late) that it was not good for one man to have so much control. YA THINK??? Dipshit. I can't stand all those guys, I really can't. hahahaha But again: Lenin's deathbed realization came too late.

The whole back and forth between the dying Lenin and the strategizing Stalin is absolutely gripping - It's been told a gazillion times before, and nobody told it better than Robert Conquest - but still: different writers bring different talents to oft-told stories, and Radzinsky is a wonderful writer. He, like Conquest, tries to go into the mystery of it - the mystery of Stalin.

Both come to the same conclusion - but I'll use an excerpt from Radzinsky's book which I have right here. This is a quote from one of Radzinsky's anonymous informants - which kind of just sums it all up:

"Bolshevik documents are peculiar in that wherever they say 'peaceful demonstration' they most probably mean 'armed uprising.' The general rule is that 'yes' almost invariably means 'no'. Somebody has called this an 'in-depth' language - a false-bottomed language, in which words have two or three meanings. Add to this that Stalin was a grand master. To understand the reasons for his moves you must look at the result. Only then will certain things become clear."

Think about that: To understand the reasons for his moves you must look at the result.

Conquest had been saying that for years. And scoffed at, scorned, ridiculed - we all know of his vindication now.

But think about that. To understand the reasons for his moves you must look at the result.

It is only in the RESULTS that we can even begin to "grok" Stalin. There aren't too many people (especially leaders) you can say that about. Most people have more egotistical or narcissistic personalities - and so therefore must leave behind evidence of what they see as their genius. They write letters, they leave behind journals, they jabber to their friends, they make big speeches, they make huge glaring errors, they flail about publicly - we can think of many leaders who behave this way. Their egos are over-involved, they are openly power-hungry, and they have a need (which often leads to their downfall) to have any "result" be attributed to them. They want people to be able to point to a result and say: "THAT. THAT happened because of HIM." You get that? It has to do with wanting glory. Whether we agree with the morality of the result or not is irrelevant. We're talking here about a personality type. Stalin had the opposite thing going on. He never wanted people to be able to point to anything and say, "THAT. THAT happened because of HIM." Never. He wanted to be invisible, ubiquitous, everywhere, omnipresent, and yet in a position where he could deny everything. In his early days in the Party, people who met him never could really get a line on him - he seemed to make the OPPOSITE of an impression. People would say he seemed like a "blob", or like a "lump" ... He inverted. He became anti-matter. He was NOT THERE. But behind the scenes? Look out. You could not see his fingerprints on anything. You just need to look at the results.

Now this, to me, is one of those unending mysteries - and which is why I have 10 books about Stalin on my shelf, and why I will continue to buy up books about this time period.

Because of the eternal fascination of this sentence: To understand the reasons for his moves you must look at the result.

Radzinsky and Conquest use some of the same overriding language - Conquest, in his masterpiece The Great Terror - says over and over again, about Trotsky, or Zinoviev, or even Lenin: "He did not understand Stalin yet." It is as though these "colleagues" of Stalin had all the signs - but they misinterpreted them. Or ... such cold calculatedness is actually very difficult for normal people to grasp. You think: There HAS to be something else going on here! Or ... it was put off as just Stalin being "rude". If he just had better manners, maybe he would be a more effective leader. I mean, honestly - this is the looking glass world of nutso-land that these people were living in. Stalin was rude??? Uhm. Yeah. I'll say. But again: it took most people a while to "understand" Stalin. In the begining, the Bolsheviks valued others for their cruelty and their ability to focus ruthlessly on one goal. They were revolutionaries. They thought Robespierre was to be emulated. They knew blood would be shed. They felt that blood HAD to be shed. Stalin was valued for his cruelty ... and his "dedication" - but again, like the excerpt above from the informant ... all of these words kind of lose their meaning when you talk about Stalin in any serious way. It's quite incredible. You start to get close to the guy - and everything begins to invert. George Orwell knew what the hell he was talking about. Lunacy.

And yet - NOT. Lunatics eventually lose control. They eventually show their hand. Why? Because they yearn for glory! Or booty! Or riches! Or whatever. They are fallible, they are susceptible to temptation. Not so Stalin.

What frightens me most about him is how much SENSE it all makes - if you look at it through his eyes. Lots of insane things make a lot of sense. It's just that very very few of us have the willpower to go about and make everybody else do what we want them to do. Most of us have a little thing called COMPASSION, most of us have a little thing called a CONSCIENCE ... which stops us from imposing our will on everyone around us. We actually have something called BRAKES. Most people do. Most people say, "Uhm ... no. Not gonna go there ... even though I want to so much!!" Stalin did not have those brakes. And when I say his mindset makes "sense" - I am not endorsing it, so don't say I did. I am saying that from his perspective, his behavior was literally the only way to go - and - if you look at the results - you can see that he was 100% correct. He got what he wanted. A totally paralyzed and atomized society where he was the only person who really mattered.

THAT is the fascination, for me. It's terrifying. I suppose you could say what really interests me then is the psychology. The psychology of Stalin. I know that I "do not understand Stalin yet", and perhaps I never will ... but the questions will continue to pester at me.

How to "grok" Stalin. Hmmmmm.

So back to Lenin's death - and the eventual result of the dude sprouting fungus in public 80 years later.

Here is Radzinsky writing on Stalin's creation of the Lenin Personality Cult (which is amazing - because by the end of his life, Lenin had turned on Stalin - or at least had serious second thoughts about him) ... but Stalin knew he had to turn the "Party" into a religion. And every religion needs a God. His cynicism about religion in general - his revelation during his seminary years that "there is no God" - did not mean that he discounted the need for religion. On the contrary. He understood that need intuitively - and he set about creating a religion - in a land that was supposed to be now full of atheists.

Did Stalin set about, cynically and calculatedly, to create this cult of Lenin so that he would be in the shadows? That any ultimate blame for this experiment failing would never rest solely on his shoulders?

See, that's the thing: He didn't set about creating a cult for HIMSELF. That happened over time, yes - but Lenin was ALWAYS present. Leningrade, Lenin Squares, yadda yadda - all decreed by Stalin. A narcissistic egotist would insist on all the glory.

Nope. Stalin was smarter than that. Greater glory means greater blame when things go wrong. I can only guess but it seems that his entire life's goal was to stay in power. And staying in power was IT for him. No glory? Fine. As long as he was still in power.

I'm trying to look to the results, I really am.

Anyway: Here's the excerpt from the book about Lenin's death, and Stalin's creation of the personality cult, and embalming the dude and putting him on display.

FROM "Stalin" by Edvard Radzinsky

By October the previous year Lenin had given up the struggle and was rapidly sinking. The Leader who had once been such a brilliant seminarist devised an unprecedented propaganda campaign which might have been called "Departure of the Messiah". Stalin had taken the measure of his country long ago. Under the Romanovs, during the Revolution, in the past and in the future, it was forever looking for a god and tsar. (We shall hear his own formulation of this idea later.) He decided to present it with a new god, in place of the one overthrown by the Bolsheviks. An atheist Messiah, the God Lenin.

In the autumn months he was already planning the "Ascension". He sent delegations to Nizhny Novgorod. Ritual farewells to the Messiah were instituted: representatives of the toiling masses vowed to the departing God that they would continue his immortal work. Representatives of the heroic Red army made their farewells. Lenin was enrolled for all eternity as an honorary Red army man, and presented with a bundle containing his uniform. In November the half-dead Lenin had to receive the proletariat as represented by a delegation from the Glukhov factory. An old workman delivered greetings which were also an epitaph: "I am a blacksmith ... We shall forge all that you have designed."

Lenin still had several months to live when the Gensek first spoke about his funeral in the Politbuor. "I learn that this question is also a matter of great concern to some of our provincial comrades." He went on to report a surprising request made by those comrades. "Do not bury Vladimir Ilyich. It is essential that Ilyich remains physically with us." Trotsky, who was present, realized that Stalin intended to transform the atheist Ulyanov into a sacred relic to be worshiped by the faithful. Molotov recalls that "Krupskaya was against it, but we did it by decision of the Central Committee. Stalin insisted." He had his way and produced an imperishable Marxist god.

He had thought of everything. When the death of the God was imminent, doctors advised the ailing Trotsky to take a cure at Sukhumi. After Lev's departure Stalin saw to it that none of the remaining leaders visited Lenin, in case one of them turned up at the Messiah's bedside at the very moment when he began withdrawing into eternity, and turned the dying man's mumblings into "last words" to suit himself.

But it happened just as he feared. Bukharin, who was receiving medical treatment right there in Nizhny Novgorod, appeared at Lenin's bedside. He described that "when I rushed into Ilyich's room ... he heaved one last sigh. His head fell backward, his face was terribly pale, I could hear a hoarse gurgle, his arms went slack."

Stalin corrected Bukharin's mistake, simply wiped him out of the deathbed scene, transferred him from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow. As a result, Zinoviev was shortly writing in an article that "Ilyich had died ... An hour later we were on our way to Nizhny Novgorod where Ilyich was already lying dead -- Bukharin, Tomsky, Kalinin, Stalin, Kamenev, and I."

Trotsky would later speak of "Stalin's poison". But this is irrelevant. Professor V. Shklovsky, son of the eminent physician M. Shklovsky, found in his father's records the testimony (originally meant to be destroyed) of V. Osipov, one of the senior doctors attending Lenin, and the speech therapist S. Dobrogayev. We read in particular that "the final diagnosis dismisses the stories of the syphilitic character of Lenin's disease, or of arsenic poisoning. It was atherosclerosis, mainly affecting the cerebral blood vessels. The calcium deposit was so thick that during dissection the tweezers made a noise as if they were rapping on stone. Lenin's parents also died of the disease." But the story that Lenin had been poisoned would never die. Stalin killed too many others for anyone to believe that he had not also sent his most dangerous enemy to the grave.

While preparations were being made for Lenin's funeral, a telegram was sent to Trotsky: "Funeral takes place on Saturday, you cannot get here in time. The Politburo thinks that the state of your health makes it essential for you to go to Sukhumi. Stalin."

In fact the funeral had been postponed until Sunday. But Stalin was not simply lying. Where there is a god there are loyal and disloyal disciples. The disloyal, who have insulted the Messiah in his lifetime, must not be present at his obsequies.

Stalin devised a grandiose plan for the God's funeral. The arrival of the Body by train was a solemn ceremony in itself (the compartment which held the sacred remains and the locomotive which pulled it would be stationed forever in a building clad in granite and marble). The loyal disciples devotedly bore the precious Body from the station across Moscow to the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. Few of those helping to carry the Lord's coffin would survive.

At 7:00 pm the public were admitted to the Hall of Columns. The God Lenin lay there in his khaki tunic. And Stalin, also wearing a tunic, kept vigil over him. People filed past all night long. The frost was incredible, and bonfires were lit. There was a frozen mist; people were wreathed in the steam of their own breath.

The Body had been embalmed on the morning of January 22. It was a temporary job, done so that the Messiah could lie in state in the Hall of Columns for several days. But Stalin had thought up a fantastic scheme: he would show that the Bolsheviks could conquer even deateh. The God would be imperishable. Thousands of telegrams from workers called for postponement of the funeral. In response to the wishes of them and millions of others, the Kremlin announced: "It has been decided to preserve the coffin with Lenin's body in a special Mausoleum on Red Square near the Kremlin wall." Simultaneously, "at the request of the workers of Petrograd" the capital of the Romanov empire was renamed Leningrad.

By the end of January a wooden mausoleum designed by A. Shchusev had been erected over the coffin. Stalin meanwhile was working out the details of the new cult. "Red corners" in honor of Lenin would be set up all over the country. At one time the "red corner" was where the icons were hung in a peasant hut. Now portraits of the God Lenin would hang there.

Behind the closed doors of the Mausoleum Stalin's unprecedented idea was already being realized. When experts declared that contemporary science lacked the means of preserving a body for any considerable length of time, other experts were found. The anatomist Vladimir Vorobyov and the young biochemist Boris Zbarsky undertook to embalm the body as required.

The scientists worked day and night, and Stalin himself went down into the Mausoleum several times. He obtained a result in time for the Thirteenth Congress in May. Kamenev, presiding, announced on the second day that after the morning session delegates would be able to see Lenin in his new immortal guise. They were stunned. Asked by Zbarsky whether "the likeness has been preserved," Lenin's brother said, "I can't say anything, I'm overcome. He's lying there looking just as he did when I saw him after he died." Thus, Stalin's present to the first Congress held without Lenin was -- Lenin.

When he had created an empire, he would rebuild the wretched little wooden Mausoleum in marble, porphyry, and labradorite, with columns of different kinds of granite. Such would be made the dwelling place of the imperishable God, his holiest shrine in the atheist empire. Krupskaya, when she lived in the Kremlin complex, often went down into the Mausoleum. Zbarsky tells us that "six months or so before she died she visited the Mausoleum. She stared for a long time, and then said 'he's just the same, and I'm getting so old.'"

In the West, not everybody believed in the "ever-living" Lenin. They alleged that the figure lying in the Mausoleum was a wax doll. So Stalin arranged in the thirties for a group of Western journalists to be shown the relics worshipped by the Bolsheviks. Lenin's biographer, Louis Fischer, was one of their number. He has described how "Zbarsky opened the glass case containing the remains, and pinched Lenin's nose. Then he turned his head to right and left. That was no wax doll. It was Lenin. The iconoclast had become a relic."

Stalin had given them their imperishable God. Next he must give them a tsar.

ipod thoughts

Thought I'd update everyone on my iPod progress. Because I know that it is just SO FASCINATING and you all are WAITING WITH BREATH A-BAIT to hear about my upload process.

Listening to the shuffle feature is now a distinctly humorous experience - because I have uploaded my entire CD collection (which, actually, is not that extensive - I still listen to cassette tapes as I have said a gazillion times) - so now I'm walking along the street, listening to the Shuffle - and Led Zeppelin comes on. Whoo-hoo. Let's rock out. Next song. Some random Clancy Brothers song. hahahahaha I LOVE THAT. I have 15 Clancy Brothers albums ... so you can imagine how often they come up now. It's hilarious. But I love it!! I'm rarely in the mood to listen to a Clancy Brothers album all the way through - although I have gone through phases where they are all I can listen to. But to hear them sprinkled in among Nirvana and the Eagles and Fiona Apple ... is just delicious.

I have written before about my strange and deep response to the Everly Brothers. Or perhaps not so strange - they're classic! But it's strange to me in that - it's a response that seems to come from outside of me. Like: I NEED to hear them on an almost daily basis. I don't know why this is. There's something very very familiar to me about them - and I didn't grow up when the Everly Brothers were in their heyday - this is not a personal memory being brought up ... And yet they make me feel nostalgic. They also make me feel CREATIVE and ready to get to WORK. I do not know why. More than any other music. You know how some music just makes you feel positive? Like: Wait a minute, I can get myself OUT of this bad situation if I put my mind to it ... Or it makes you suddenly feel like: wow. Everything is going to be okay. Everything already IS okay. I don't know - maybe that's just me. I have a hard time just feeling like everything is going to be okay. The Everly Brothers - especially "Bye Bye Love" (even though it's such a damn sad song!!! hahaha) make me feel okay. In a real UBER way. I hear them, their harmonies, their lyrics, their melodies ... and suddenly, I am not only FEELING okay, but I am ready to get down to whatever work needs to get done.

I am so not explaining this well.

All I can say is - I have The Everly Brothers Greatest Hits on, of course, a cassette tape. And since I have discovered what they give to me, emotionally, not a day goes by when I don't listen to at least one of their songs. Mainly Bye Bye Love. I listen to it as I get ready to face my day.

So I've been so busy with the iPod upload - that I have turned a blind eye to all my damn CASSETTES - which I cannot upload. Argh - gonna have to get to work on that.

But a couple days ago, I was walking down the street - listening to my iPod shuffle (Madonna - Huey Lewis - Clancy Brothers - Elvis Costello - Johnny Cash) and out of nowhere, I thought of the Everly Brothers and realized I needed to buy a Greatest Hits of theirs ASAP. A Barnes & Noble was a block away so I went into their music section, bought their Greatest Hits, uploaded it that night ... and now, on occasion, they show up in the Shuffle.

And EVERY TIME I hear the opening chords of one of their songs ... it's this strange uplifted feeling. I rise up out of myself.

What is that?? I have no idea. Just know that it is so.

Oh, and I took a 4 mile run the other night - and at one point during the run, the song "Sit Down, John" came on - from one of my favorite musicals (Duh) 1776. I haven't heard that song in years. And as I ran, I just started LAUGHING out loud listening to it - it's so MARVELOUS. The loud male chorus - of all the delegates at the Convention - singing out: "SIT DOWN, JOHN ... SIT DOWN, JOHN ... FOR GOD'S SAKE - JOHN - SIT DOWN!!!" I just looooooooove it. Marvelous.

Oh, and I'm really into Franz Ferdinand. Weirdly: I wasn't as much into their stuff on the CDs I had - maybe because I just didn't like listening to them all the way through, not in the mood for them for 8 songs at a time. I don't know. But every time one of their songs pops up on Shuffle, I feel this thrill. Their songs work well as stand-alone songs.

The Books: "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia " (Ahmed Rashid)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid. This book came out in 2000 and did not make a splash at all - I guess because most Americans didn't care about what was going on in Afghanistan until it affected them. After September 11, you could not find this book on the shelves. It was perpetually out of stock. It was re-released in a massive paperback edition after September 11 - and now you see it everywhere. Rashid is a journalist from Pakistan - and he writes in his introduction that this book was "21 years in the making". All of his experience and work life had been leading up to this moment. He's a go-to guy. He shows up in books as an expert in many other books about the area - Robert Kaplan interviews him all the time, Christopher Hitchens - all of those guys who have been determined to explain that whole area and its history to us use him as their main guide. His name comes up all the time. I bought this book after reading Kaplan's book At the Ends of the Earth - where he shows up in the chapters on Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid is a wonderful journalist - he truly does honor to his profession.

Here's a section from chapter 2 - which kind of explains the culture of the Taliban.

From Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid

In March 1995, on the northern edge of the Dashte-e-Mango -- the Desert of Death -- plumes of fine white dust rose in the air above the narrow ribbon of the battered highway that connects Kandahar with Herat, 350 miles away. The highway, built by the Russians in the 1950s skirted through the brush and sands of one of the hottest and most waterless deserts in the world. After years of war, the highway was now rutted with tank tracks, bomb craters and broken bridges, slowing down the traffic to just 20 miles an hour.

The Taliban war wagons -- Japanese two-door pick-ups with a stripped-down trunk at the back open to the elements - were streaming towards Herat laden with heavily armed young men in their bid to capture the city. In the opposite direction a steady flow of vehicles was bringing back wounded Taliban lying on string beds and strapped into the trunk as well as prisoners captured from the forces of Ismael Khan who held Herat.

In the first three months after capturing Kandahar, the Taliban had broken the staleate in the Afghan civil war by capturing 12 of Afghanistan's 31 provinces and had arrived at the outskirts of Kabul to the north and Herat in the west. Taliban soldiers were reluctant to talk under the gaze of their commanders in Kandahar so the only way to learn something about them was to hitch lifts along the road and back again. In the confines of the pick-ups where a dozen warriors were jam-packed with crates of ammunition, rockets, grenade launchers and sacks of wheat, they were more than eager to share their life stories.

They said that since the capture of Kandahar some 20,000 Afghans and hundreds of Pakistani madrassa students had streamed across the border from refugee camps in Pakistan to join Mullah Omar. Thousands more Afghan Pashtuns had joined them in their march northwards. The majority were incredibly young - between 14 and 24 years old - and many had never fought before although, like all Pashtuns, they knew how to handle a weapon.

Many had spent their lives in refugee camps in Baluchistan and the NWFP provinces of Pakistan, interspersed with stints at imbibing a Koranic education in the dozens of madrassas that had sprung up along the border run by Afghan mullahs or Pakistan's Islamic fundamentalist parties. Here they studied the Koran, the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, and the basics of Islamic law as interpreted by their barely literate teachers. Neither teachers nor students had any formal grounding in maths, science, history, or geography. Many of these young warriors did not even know the history of their own country or the story of the jihad against the Soviets.

These boys were a world apart from the Mujaheddin whom I had got to know during the 1980s -- men who could recount their tribal and clan lineages, remembered their abandoned farms and valleys with nostalgia, and recounted legends and stories from Afghan history. These boys were from a generation who had never seen their country at peace -- an Afghanistan not at war with invaders and itself. They had no memories of their tribes, their elders, their neighbors nor the complex ethnic mix of peoples that often made up their villages and their homeland. These boys were what the war had thrown up like the sea's surrender on the beach of history.

They had no memories of the past, no plans for the future while the present was everything. They were literally the orphans of the war, the rootless and the restless, the jobless and the economically deprived with little self-knowledge. They admired war because it was the only occupation they could possibly adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic puritan Islam which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to and which gave their lives some meaning. Untrained for anything, even the traditional occupations of their forefathers such as farming, herding or the making of handicrafts, they were what Karl Marx would have termed Afghanistan's lumpen proletariat.

Moreoever, they had willingly gathered under the all-male brotherhood that the Taliban leaders were set on creating, because they knew of nothing else. Many in fact were orphans whoh had grown up without women - mothers, sisters or cousins. Others were madrassa students or had lived in the strict confines of segregated refugee camp life, where the normal comings and goings of female relatives were curtailed. Even by the norms of conservative Pashtun tribal society, where villages or nomadic camps were close-knit communities and men still mixed with women to whom they were related, these boys had lived rough, tough lives. They had simply never known the company of women.

The mullahs who had taught them stressed that women were a temptation, an unnecessary distraction from being of service to Allah. So when the Taliban entered Kandahar and confined women to their homes by barring them from working, going to school and even from shopping, the majority of these madrassa boys saw nothing unusual in such measures. They felt threatened by that half of the human race which they had never known and it was much easier to lock that half away, especially if it was ordained by the mullahs who invoked primitive Islamic injunctions, which had no basis in Islamic law. The subjugation of women became the mission of the true believer and a fundamental marker that differentiated the Taliban from the former Mujaheddin.

This male brotherhood offered these youngsters not just a religious cause to fight for, but a whole way of life to fully embrace and make their existence meaningful. Ironically, the Taliban were a direct throwback to the military religious order that arose in Christendom during the Crusades to fight Islam -- disciplined, motivated and ruthless in attaining their aims. In the first few months the sweeping victories of the Taliban created an entire mythology of invincibility that only God's own soldiers could attain. In those heady early days, every victory only reinforced the perceived truth of their mission, that God was on their side and that their interpretation of islam was the only interpretation.

Reinforced by their new recruits, the Taliban moved north into Urozgan and Zabul provinces which they captured without a shot being fired. The marauding Pashtun commanders, unwilling to test their own supporters' uncertain loyalty, surrendered by hoisting white flags and handing over their weapons in a mark of submission.

The Books: "On Another Man's Wound" (Ernie O'Malley)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is On Another Man's Wound by Ernie O'Malley. Like my dad said when he told me to read this book: "Most memoirs of IRA members are not well written. It's all 'Then we blew up the lorry and hid in the bushes.' But O'Malley can actually write." He sure can. This is literature, a beautifully written book. Luscious language, filled with Irish songs and poems, personal portraits of people he met, a real sense of the time. Ernie O'Malley was a medical student in Dublin when the Easter Uprising happened in 1916. He was kind of indifferent to the whole thing at first - but as the fighting continued - his perspective changed. So much so that he joined the IRA. He traveled around Ireland (in the South, not the North) and organized battalions, training farmers and regular people in the ways of war.

This is his story, written in his own words. But again, what sets this book apart from other revolutionary memoirs is his talent for writing. It's almost like he is determined to get down as complete a picture of Ireland at that very moment in time as he possibly can. It's like Synge's book on the Aran Islands. Everything is going to change ... and people will change ... so let's get it all down NOW before they do.

On Another Man's Wound is filled with lots of Irish legends, told around peat fires in the West - the songs they would sing, the poems they would recite ...

It's hypnotic. A lovely and elegaic book. It's a love letter to Ireland. It reminds me a lot of Synge's stuff.

Here's an excerpt.

From On Another Man's Wound by Ernie O'Malley.

The brigade Vice-Commandant, Maurteen Devitt, and the Quartermaster, Peadar O'Loughlin, were on the run in their part of Mid Clare. They had more time for Volunteer work and knew the by-roads and the general direction of police patrols. Maurteen was thin in body, pale faced and energetic with a sharp turn of tongue in speech and wit; satiric.

Maurteen Devitt's father was an old man, an Irish speaker, his favourite curse being, "the curse of the crows upon you," but he sympathised with us and did not regard us as half wits, as many others did. Once I arrived early in the morning, tired out, as I had walked a long distance, I knew the songs were out at a dance and that the father was alone. He came to the window and when I told him I wanted to get in, he said: "Be off with you, Patsey Mitchell, you playboy." I mentioned my name, but he did not seemingly know it, as it had not been spoken of in the house, although I had been staying there some weeks. He cursed me fluently, ending up with the curse of the crows; I knocked again, but as he became more exasperated i gave it up, buttoned up my coat and went to sleep on thte ground. One of the sons found me in the morning sleeping, white with hoar frost. The old man always bore this in mind and never ceased to blame himself when he met me.

In the night time I often sat opposite to him in the fireplace listening to his talk. He always wore an old hard hat, light green with sun, brown mottled in spots with a torn brim and a dint on the top. He had a hoar stubble of a beard. He slurred his words in English through gaps in his stained teeth, but Irish seemed to flow swiftly enough. He had a great friend who came often; then they spoke Irish all the evening; sometimes the old man would translate or begin a story in English with many pauses. He would hold a match in his broken clay pipe or a piece of glowing sod, then puff, hold the pipe in one hand, talk, draw on the pipe to find it had gone out. Time and again the pipe went out; intent on the story he used it to emphasize words. Refilling the pipe was a ceremony. The 'baccy was pared from a hard black piece of plug or twist, ground slowly between the palms and rammed down into the bowl; some of the last pipe's ashes on top, then a tin cover with a hole in the top. The pipe was cleaned by sticking the bowl in the red turf glow.

Sometimes they'd laugh together and shake their heads with delight when speaking of Pedlar McGrath or Se�n O'Twomey. Some poems he would not translate; they seemed to enjoy them all the more. "The ould fellow is worked up," Maurteen would say, when he began on Rafferty or Donnchadh Ruadh MacNamara. Then I regretted I had not studied Irish thoroughly. I knew next to nothing of these poets save in translation. But here the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries lived again, for these two men could tell story after story of the poets' pranks, drinkings and songs, and describe them as if they had lived in the same parish. They recited verses of men whose names I did not know. I think the only thing that left me with a shred of reputation was that I had a battered copy of the Love Songs of Connacht.

Old Devitt and his friends were like the others I had met in this stretch of Clare and in the Rosses. Their sense of literature was on the lips and in their faultless memory. In craggy Carren an old man recited the whole of The Midnight Court for me. They were not literary nor had they any pretence to learning. The extension of their knowledge made them simple; they were not conscious of it, but they knew more of poetry as a living feeling than had anybody else I had met save poets themselves. They could curse hard and long mostly for emphasis and the sound of words, but also in anger.

What I liked most about him and others was their independence, their air of being true to themselves. In the towns people conformed their suppressed selves to an outward convention; here they created their own environment in and through themselves. They had no feeling of equality or inequality, but a definite reality, and it would be a long time, I knew, before I could ever hope to have anything as real in myself as they had.

They had a sense of life that made them fresh and interesting to listen to and the flavour of a life of the open air was in their words and thought. They were starkly real like chunks of their own earth when they spoke of the land, its irritable uncertainty and its aching sweat, but a feeling for words and phrasing would lift a talk about manure.

Old women screwed with rheumatism, their faces like ploughed fileds, took snuff or a draw of the pipe in the corner while they fingered their beads. These were the obvious signs of outward realism and the harsh background of their lives; but there was a deep content, an ease in life and a depth in themselves that could well up nourishment. They were able to entertain and amuse themselves easily. Song was a definite expression as natural as talk, and they all sang. They sang at the end of the a hard day's work and were refreshed or musicioners used fiddle or melodeon in a manner peculiar to themselves. In spite of aching land work they had the leisure of the wealthy and they made use of it simplyl and fully. Gentleness and fierceness, lack of sentimentality and a definite concreteness merged with poetry and sharp realism in speech; kind towards suffering and callous towards cattle and dogs and their burden-bearer the skinny ass.

In praise of Charles Lane

I watched Sybil last night. I've seen it a gazillion times. So what the hell. I sat down to watch that wrenching thing AGAIN. I've got a lot to say about it - about the acting, in particular - but I just wanted to write a small post of praise for Charles Lane, who plays the small-town doctor from Sybil's home town. He has one scene, and I've gotta say: he knocks that shit OUT OF THE PARK.

THIS is the kind of acting I love. I mean, I love my stars, too, you know I love my big ol' movie stars ... but the acting that really turns me on are these random people, these character actors, who show up - do their job SO WELL - and never get the glory. Mitchell and Alex and I talk a lot about people who we think win "10 minute Oscars". By that we mean - the people who do not star in the films, but without whom the entire film would not work. People who just kick some serious ASS in their parts. My favorite "10 minute Oscar" is Brooke Smith's acting in Silence of the Lambs. She's the girl in the bottom of the well. Man, oh man. That is some good acting there. I mean - think about it. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins star - and they both give unforgettable performances. (Interesting that Hopkins is only on screen in that film for 15 minutes himself. Isn't that wild??? It seems like he is in it for MUCH longer - but he is not. Phenomenal. So I guess he DID win an Oscar for a performance not much longer than 10 minutes!) But back to these more unknown actors who show up and do their jobs like nobody's business: without the scenes of Brooke Smith in the well - the film would not have the same impact. And she just GOES THERE. What I love about her performance is that, obviously, she is a victim of circumstance. I mean, good Lord. She's AT THE BOTTOM OF A WELL. That sucks. But she is not a docile creature - she doesn't JUST weep and wail - We also see her strategizing. We see her kidnap the dog. Smart!!! I love when she's coaxing the dog down - she's using the normal voice you use when you're talking to a dog - but she's so pissed, so DETERMINED that she will survive this ordeal - that she also says stuff like, "Come on, you little fucker ... get in the fucking basket ..." I love that. It's so real. And yet so unexpected. A lesser actor would just play the victim. She would play to the hilt the "oh my God, I am so TRAPPED" - Brooke Smith plays that as well, but she also expresses the rage one would feel when one is so trapped. It's a fantastic choice. She seems like a real girl. I also love when Jodie Foster bursts into the room - and then says down into the well, "Okay ... I'll be right back." And we hear Brooke Smith start shouting, "Don't leave me - you fucking bitch!!!" hahahahaha I just love that. She's not just falling over herself in gratitude ... she has HAD it ... she wants OUT. Do not leave me down here!! Anyway - for me, that's a perfect example of a 10-minute Oscar. She knocks it out of the park. The movie wouldn't be the same without her performance. Even though the two big stars show up and do THEIR jobs really really well too. I've met Brooke Smith a couple of times - at stage readings, and stuff like that, and I have no idea how to say, "Uhm ... you won a 10 minute Oscar in my mind!!!"

So back to Charles Lane. Here he is - this is about the age he was when he played this part.

Joanne Woodward plays the psychiatrist Dr. Wilbur. I have so much more to say about Joanne Woodward ... I need to do a big Woodward post - she's one of my favorite actresses - but I will keep my focus. I will try, anyway. So anyway, Dr. Wilbur ends up taking a trip to Sybil's old hometown to see if she can kind of piece together Sybil's childhood for her - since Sybil can't remember any of it. She goes and looks up the old doctor who used to treat Sybil for the "normal childhood aches and pains" - to see if he could maybe illuminate anything for her. Charles Lane plays that doctor, Dr. Quinoness. He doesn't have any huge emotional outbursts, he doesn't have any showy explosion of rage ... His part is simple. He is a country doctor. He works out of his house. He has been a doctor for seventy years. He has wonderful manners, he is welcoming and kind. The kind of man you would love to have as your doctor. You just GET that from the second he appears on screen. He ushers Dr. Wilbur into his office, and he's carrying a tea tray with a teapot, and a couple of mugs on it, a little creamer. Just the way he offers her the tea tells you everything you need to know about his character. He's old-fashioned, he's kind, and he is welcoming to this outsider - she may be an outsider, and she may be a woman wearing a white pant suit with a big Peter Pan collar (I love Woodward's clothes in this movie - they're SO mid-1970s!!) - but she is also a doctor, and he treats her with respect. As a colleague. I don't know - it's really subtle - but without that colleague-to-colleague honesty and respect, the scene wouldn't work.

Joanne Woodward's acting in this entire film is literally masterful. But I'll write about her later. Argh. Getting sidetracked!! Even though Dr. Wilbur is angry at what has happened to Sybil, even though she is in a rage at what happened to this little girl, she doesn't bring that anger to this scene. She is on a fact-finding mission ... and this man was not one of the evil-doers. She's appropriate with him. He is a fellow doctor. She starts asking questions about Sybil's health when she was a child. He is kindly, and tells about when Sybil had her tonsils out, and how frightened she was. Dr. Wilbur says, "Did you ever treat her for anything else?" This is when he says, "Oh, the normal childhood aches and pains." Woodward then asks if he still has the file - "I would consider it a great professional courtesy if I could have a look at it." There's no animosity here. Charles Lane gets up from his desk, "Let me see if I still have her file ..." He goes to a file cabinet and shuffles through the folders. He is forthcoming, direct ... he's not CONSCIOUSLY hiding anything. But at the end of the scene, we realize that ... he knew. He knew what was happening to Sybil. I just got goosebumps all over again remembering the last moment of the scene ... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

He finds the file. He sits back down and starts reading out loud: "Fractured elbow. Hand burned from the stove. Fractured larynx. Broken ankle." Etc. The list goes on. As he reads, you can feel his energy change. It's like - seeing it all in one place, hearing the litany of horrible injuries ... makes him realize the reality - makes him SEE, yet again, after so many years, what was so obvious at the time.

Charles Lane trails his voice away ... there's a long silence between the two of them. Nobody speaks.

Woodward says, "Normal childhood aches and pains, huh?" But she doesn't say it with hostility, or as an attack on him. She's just pointing out what she sees. I love how she says that line. Then she says, curiously, "Did you ever speculate?"

This is where Lane's beautiful acting really comes to the fore. And I have to say this: he does the rest of the scene, except for the final moment, looking out of the window. We do not see his face. He stands with his back to her, talking ... An actor needs his face. The actor's face is one of the most important ways he can tell his story. BUT - oh how powerful it is to have an actor turn his back to us ... How much it can tell you about the emotions he is experiencing, it can be extremely powerful - if used effectively. This is what Charles Lane does here.

He gets up. Goes to the window. His BACK is eloquent. Do you get that? His very BACK is eloquent. You just FEEL for this man, this WITNESS. This kindly gentle man ... who had had evidence of horrible child abuse in his town ... and had done nothing.

After a while, he starts speaking. He leads off with: "I've never told anyone this before ..."

It's a moment that makes me catch my breath every time I see it. Again, he doesn't do it in an overdramatic way, he's not being an ACTOR in this moment. He's being a PERSON. A man, an old man, who has kept a secret for thirty years. He knew. He knew.

But he doesn't show his hand too early, as an actor - and this is why the moment is so powerful. He doesn't greet Dr. Wilbur with a guilty conscience. He doesn't SHOW us the things that the character himself doesn't even know yet. He's not being protective of himself. But once he reads all of her injuries out loud ... he knows that his moment of reckoning has come. He remembers. And it's a painful moment for him. This is why he stands and looks out the window. He is filled with grief at his inaction back then. Again, though: none of this is overplayed. You don't think: "Oooh, look at this actor having a great moment." You think: "This man is tormented. This poor man."

Now this next will be a paraphrase - I wish I had the script in front of me, but this is the general idea:

He says, staring out the window ... all we get of him is his back - his slightly stooped over back, "I treated her for a bladder infection when she was five years old ... very unusual for a child of her age ... I would imagine if you did a gynecological exam on her now, you would see what I did. Scarring of the inner walls, hardened destroyed tissue. Now - we know that the Lord sometimes creates mistakes in nature - but the Almighty had nothing to do with what I saw inside that little girl."

It is an absolutely devastating moment.

Woodward just sits there, listening. She doesn't speak. She doesn't need to.

Then - Chrales Lane - the beautiful character actor Charles Lane - turns around and looks at Woodward.

He says, "I imagine in your line of work, you hear a lot of confessions."

Again: it is a devastating moment. Beautifully and simply played. He doesn't say "will you hear my confession?" It is implied. He wants forgiveness. It is out in the open now. Not just what happened to Sybil - but his complicity in it. He does not START the scene with this self-knowledge. Dr. Quinoness has not been walking around with a load of guilt for 30 years. He has suppressed what he saw way back then. But now he remembers. And it is a terrible terrible moment for him. This kindly old man, wearing glasses, and a black suit. A terrible moment for him.

Dr. Wilbur says to him, kindly, "Dr. Quinoness, it was a long long time ago."

Cut back to Charles Lane, looking at her. His face is simple, open, and pained. He says, and he is truly asking, "How do I find absolution?"

Cut back to Woodward, looking up at him. She has no answer for him.

The scene ends there.

There are many other amazing scenes in the film with some of the best acting I honestly have ever seen ... but that small scene between Charles Lane and Joanne Woodward is my favorite in the entire film.

It's because of what he brings to it.

In less than 5 minutes, he creates a completely three-dimensional character. It's a very important scene - because of the information it imparts. Charles Lane's part is simple: he is there to provide some exposition. That's it. That's the point of the scene. Dr. Wilbur gets confirmation of Sybil's abuse. Now she knows. It's confirmed. But - and this is partly because of the writing - which is quite good - in this scene in particular: Charles Lane takes it to another level in those last two moments - looking out the window, not being able to face her as he confesses that he knew ... and then turning back to look at her - asking for absolution.

It's just a perfectly played scene, on every level it needs to be. Not EVERY actor who has a small part in a big film shows up and makes such an impression. Not EVERY actor knocks a 5 minute scene out of the park. It's very difficult. It's almost easier to STAR in something - because you can develop your character over time, you have many scenes to do it in, you can show THIS side of the person you're playing in THIS scene, you can show THAT side of the person you're playing in ANOTHER scene - You have TIME. I mean, you have more pressure on you, of course ... but at least you have a lot of screen time to do your job. Not so with our 10-minute Oscar crowd. They have ONE scene, sometimes ... and they MUST nail it - in less than 10 minutes. It's tough, man.

So I just want to take a moment to sing the praise of Charles Lane's unsung work in Sybil. It's perfection.

I looked him up last night, just to see his story. He was already an old man when he filmed Sybil - and whaddya know - he is still alive. He just celebrated his 100th birthday. He was actually honored at last year's Emmys - he was one of the founders of the television academy - and he is now its oldest surviving member. I loved this bit of trivia:

Was honored on March 16, 2005 at the TVLand Awards for his long career and his 100th birthday. When he received his award, he said in his still-booming voice, "In case anyone's interested, I'm still available!"

God bless him!!

But his career ... I mean, LOOK at this career.

THAT is the career of a character actor. Stars' resumes are always much shorter. Character actors, successful ones, do 10 movies to a star's one. They show up, do their job for 3 days, and move on to the next one. Charles Lane worked constantly in television - appearing multiple times on I Love Lucy and many other classics.

He has been working since the early 30s. He was in Twentieth Century, he was in It's a Wonderful Life - he was in Arsenic and Old Lace - he was in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - Also, as I scrolled down his resume, I noticed how many times he was "uncredited". He was a workman. Showed up, said his 5 lines, moved on to his next job. Bless those people.

Charles Lane said, "Having had so many small parts, there was a character I played that showed up all the time and people did get to know him, like an old friend."

Old friend indeed. He brings his history with him to every part. You may think of him as "that guy". Oh, wait - that's that guy!!

His work in Sybil is what I, personally, love about acting. It's the kind of thing where I look at it and think: "That. That is what I admire. That is what I want to do." There's no vanity in it. There's an understanding of script analysis - there's an understanding of how your part fits in to the whole - there's also a fearlessness in just doing what the part demands.

Watch how he turns back to her from looking out the window. Watch how he says, "How do I find absolution?"

It don't get any better than that.

The Books: "Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples" (V.S. Naipaul)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples by V.S. Naipaul. This is the sequel to the last book I excerpted Among the Believers. Naipaul returns to the 4 "converted" countries he visited in the first book: Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan. In 1995, he took a 5 month trip through these four places. He had last been to many of them in 1979 - so the changes are startling. Mainly economic changes, especially when it came to Indonesia.

Here's an excerpt from his section on Iran. He meets a man named Ali - who is in his 60s. Ali made a fortune during the Shah's time as a real estate developer. He was a supporter of the revolution - because he wanted his country to be free, his people to be liberated. But as we all know - the revolution took a bit of a turn, shall we say, with the Khomeini return. Ali suffered greatly in the early years of the revolution - because of his success. He was kidnapped three times, arrested, thrown in jail ... But he survived that rough time - learned how to live with the new rules of the new regime.

Anyway, here is part of Naipaul's long interview with Ali. I love these two books. I highly recommend them both.

From Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples by V.S. Naipaul.

Some people Ali knew, supporters of the revolution, turned against it after the first month. Ali thought he should give it a little more time. But then, about two months after the revolution, when the executions began, he had serious doubts. People who had done nothing were arrested and taken to jail. Many of them disappeared. "Then they started charging into people's houses, confiscating their properties. We had no security for our property or our children or our wife." I felt that the word in Ali's word was the word Mehrdad had introduced me to: namoos.

A revolutionary court, the Court of Islamic Justice, had been set up about a month after the revolution. One of Ali's best friends was second in command in that court, and Ali used to go every day to see what he could do to save people he knew.

"That court was going almost twenty-four horus a day. Khalkhalli was the master of that court." Ayatollah Khalkhalli, Khomeini's famous hanging judge. "He used this court as the instrument of his executions. It was in Shariati Street. Before the revolution it was a military court. The Shah had set up this court to try his opponents. Almost the same people who had set up this court were now tried in it, in the same building. My friends were in the court for about two years."

But long before that time Ali had given up on the revolution, and he was deep in his own torments.

"We expected something heavenly to happen -- something emotional. When we were kids of twelve and thirteen we used to read accounts of the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Glorious Revolution in England. And the Russian Revolution. But we were always fascinated with the French Revolution. It was something done by God, you know. In the last generation most of the Iranians who had studied abroad had French culture. We were hypnotized by their stories of the French Revolution. We all thought revolution was something beautiful, done by God, something like music, like a concert. It was as though we were in a theatre, watching a concert, and we were happy that we were part of the theatre. We were the actors now. For years we had been reading about Danton and Robespierre. But now we were the actors. We never thought that those killings would start afterwards."

It took a year for the communists and the Islamics to move away from one another. But the Tudeh, the communist party, had infiltrated every branch of the new government. They even went to the Friday prayers in the mosques. They showed themselves as people of God. The communist party in those early days put itself entirely at the service of Khomeini. They said, according to Ali, that they didn't want executive power; they were content to be counselors. And they were behind the nationalization of banks, insurance companies, factories. They gave the Soviet-style aspect to government and official demeanor which the visitor could still notice.

After six months of the revolution Ali was insecure and bitter. Life wasn't easy. It was impossible to work. The new officials were hostile; they looked upon Ali as part of the old regime. Some people in Ali's company began to agitate against him. Two or three of them would come to Ali's office to "question" him. He had to buy them off. And at the end of the first year he was kidnapped.

"This was in Kerman. I was on my land. We were building houses. They came in a car, three or four of them. They asked me to help them in a building project they had. I got in the car, and they drove me away. They kept me fifteen kilometers away in a desert area and questioned me as in a court. It was in a little shanty house, a shepherd's shelter. They were young boys. They had seen a lot of cinema. Now they had guns in their hands and they felt really big."

The guns were from the armories of the Shah's army. When the army collapsed, and it collapsed suddenly, many people ran to the armories to get guns. For four months after the revolution the guns were piled up in the university and were being given away to anyone who asked for one and could show an ID card. Many people offered Ali guns, but he soon realized that guns were no use to him, because he couldn't kill anyone, even to protect himself. And perhaps if he had had a gun and had tried to use it at the time of his kidnapping, he might have been harmed by his boy kidnappers.

He thought now to move carefully with these boys, in order to find out just how many more were behind them. Perhaps there was no one else. Perhaps there were four thousand, and they were planning to hold him for a ransom. They talked for ten hours in the shepherd's hut in the desert. At last they said they were going to release him, but he had to pay them. He didn't want to pay them too much; he didn't want to encourage others. He promised very small sums. The boys were enraged. They threatened to kill him. They threatened to destroy his building company. But he didn't promise more.

He said, "I was very strict."

And in the end he was released. But this kidnapping added to his insecurity. There were four million people in Tehran; and it seemed that any four of the five million could come with guns to demand money. And all the time now there was trouble with local officals. They began to occupy his land and housing developments. They said they were government property and had to be given to the people.

"The local government man actually confiscated many properties in Kerman, mine and other people's."

"What was he like? Did you get to know him?"

"He was connected to the mujahidin group. Very leftist, one hundred percent against capitalists."

"What was he like physically?"

"He was about thirty-four, short, fat. Full of resentment. An educated man, an engineer. I am sure he was beaten by SAVAK. And he was full of resentment. He caused me a lot of damage. Millions. Many millions. I met him a few years ago. He came to my office. He was poor. He had been kicked out of office. The government had put him in prison. He came to me and asked for a job. He came and kissed me and asked for pardon. He was then about forty-five. He had an old jacket. I told him that every kid had toys, but there is one toy that is the special toy. 'I too have toys. I have been used to living well, to enjoy myself, and every night, all through my life, I have had lavish food. I am still doing that. And that is my favorite toy. If because of what you have done I didn't have my lavish living for one night, I would never forgive you. I would never pardon you. But what you did was like a little fly walking on my skin. It couldn't hurt me.'"

A lawyer friend of Ali's had come into the room where we were and was sitting with us -- it was a Friday morning, the Muslim sabbath -- and I felt that the presence of this third person was encouraging Ali's unusual passion.

I asked, "Did you give the man the job?"

"I didn't give him the job. Because people of this kind can never be enlightened. If they had the chance again, they would hurt me again. So they should be kept away."

And now, a year into the revolution, Ali was being pushed from every side, by government people, by communists within the government, and by simple agitators. He was kidnapped three or four more times.

"I wasn't much afraid to go with them, because I knew that my reasoning was stronger than theirs. The first time you think it's a wild animal, it's going to tear you apart. But once you tame this animal, you can order them around."

There was now, too, a constant harassment from the Revolutionary Guards, jumping into the garden and looking through the windows to see whether anyone was looking at television or videos, or breaking into the house to search for alcohol or ham or women's dresses or men's neckties, all now forbidden things.

"And if you were cleanly dressed, they didn't like it. They would attack you. It was like Pol Pot, but n ot so extreme. Ten percent. It was a full revolution."

"A full revolution?"

"The reins of government went altogether out of the hands of government, out of control. It was anarchy and terror. The reason was Khomeini himself. About three months after the revolution I was taken by my ayatollah friend to meet Mr. Khomeini. The ayatollah friend had explained to Khomeini that I was a developer and a technical man and could help with housing problems. I and the ayatollah friend and Khomeini were sitting together on the ground in Khomeini's house. The door opened. Some mullahs came in. Khomeini started talking with them. Later some more mullahs came in. And it went on and on until the room was full of mullahs, two hundred of them. And they all wanted money to take to their students and religious organizations in their own towns. Khomeini said he didn't have money to give to all of them. Then he said, 'Go to your own towns. Fine the first man who is rich or the first man who has a factor or a huge farm. And force him to pay you.'"

This language from the head of the government shocked Ali. And this was when he realized that Khomeini was leading his people to chaos.

The lawyer sitting with us said, "His mental discipline was different from other people's. He was a man of the people. He understood the majority of the people. The majority were not educated. They wanted to get money and things. They didn't want revolution. They wanted money, and Khomeini knew that."

Ali said, "The majority wanted to loot."

The lawyer said, "So he made disorder in the country and let them loot. He did what they wanted."

Ali said, "When he said 'Follow the law', it wasn't the law of the country. It was his law, the law in his own mind. Before the revolution he said it was un-Islamic to pay taxes to the government. After, he said it was Islamic to pay taxes to the government. He wanted complete chaos. That day in his house I realized this man is not a man of government. He was still a revolutionary. He couldn't control himself. Until the very last day he was making disorder."

I wondered whether this disorder, this constant "revolution" (a word with misleading assocations), wasn't an aspect of Shia protest. But when I made the point neither Ali nor the lawyer took it up. They were disillusioned men; they spoke out of a great torment; but they were so deep in Shiism, it was so much part of their emotional life, that they couldn't take this step back, as it were, and consider it from the outside.

They began to talk instead of the Islamic law of necessity, in whose name Khomeini, always acting religiously, had said and unsaid things.

Ali said, of this law of necessity, "To protect yourself, you can sometimes do something wrong. The ayatollahs can mediate between the first level of laws, which come from Allah, and the second level. When the need arises, the ayatollahs can for a short time issue secondary orders." The example he gave was close to him. "In Islam the protection of people's property belongs to the first level of laws. But during Khomeini's regime, while he was alive, there was a shortage of land for housing. So Khomeini said, 'Using my privilege of ordering the second order of laws, I am going to grab plots of land that belong to anybody in the town, without paying any compensation, and I am going to subdivide it and give it to the people who need it. Because there is necessity.'"

And now, to prove that this action of Khomeini's was excessive, the lawyer began, as I felt, to take me down the lanes and ancient alleyways and tunnels of Islamic jurisprudence such as was taught in the theological schools of Mashhad and Qom.

The lawyer -- delicately eating small green figs whole, and, in between, peeling and eating other fruit -- said, "About a hundred years after the birth of Islam one of the caliphs in Mecca wanted to take land around the holy place. People were living in houses around this holy place, the Kaaba. But the law didn't allow the taking of the land. Protecting people's property was a duty of the caliph. So the caliph invited the big muftis to his house, to find some way. The best opinion was that of a direct descendant of Prophet Mohammed, the fifth Shia Imam, Bagher. He said, 'You can take those houses around the Kaaba because the Kaaba came first. Value the houses, and pay the owners, and send them away.'"

Ali said, "Khomeini has set a bad example. Every ayatollah now can claim necessity, as Khomeini often did, and break the law." And Iran was still living with his Islamic constitution, which gave him supreme power, and established the principle of leadership and obedience. The constitution provided for an elected assembly, but there was also a council, which could override the assembly.

Ali said, "He had an instinctive brain. He was instinctively intelligent. An instinctive, animal intelligence. Because of this he could command the people. He did not have an educated intelligence. He didn't become emotion. He was very cool."

Bacchanal

MAJOR bacchanal last night. I don't really DO bacchanals any more. But last night was a lunatic bacchanal. SO. MUCH. FUN. We hooked up with an entire rowdy group from West Virginia, all wearing green hats, and green shirts - and we had to sign their shirts - and there were beers drank - and beers spilled - and then one random girl showed up with two huge pizzas - for the entire crowd (no food at the bar ... so this needed to be rectified). I love that girl. She didn't know any of us ... but she knew the entire bar needed food.

There was this one poor guy Morgan who - I have no idea why - but the entire bar, randomly, would start to chant his name ... calling upon him to chug the rest of his beer. "MorGAN MorGAN MorGAN MorGAN ..." And Morgan - who was hilarious - would down beer after beer in one gulp. The man truly was amazing. I didn't know Morgan before last night - and he now is a legend in my own mind. We acted like we all were lifelong friends. Did you know that most architects are colorblind and gay? We befriended an entire crowd of architects and one of them told us this little-known fact. None of the guys we met last night were gay, but two of them were colorblind. hahahaha Morgan sat down at our table. He was introduced to all of us. "And what do you do, Morgan?" someone asked. He said, "I'm an architect." I shot at him flatly, "Are you colorblind or gay?" Morgan had not been there for the colorblind/gay conversation - so it was as though he had sat down with a table of lunatics. Why is this strange girl shooting these questions at me?? But he took it in stride, (and I'm telling you, the guy is a legend - nothing ruffled him) and said, "Neither!" One of the other architects said to me, "Damn, you just became a sniper for a minute."

There was a moment where one of the architects shoved his friend angrily and said, confrontationally, "You're NOT fighting China?" I cannot explain the history of that moment ... or why it was so damn funny ... so much would be lost in translation ... Suffice it to say, that was the first thing I thought when I woke up this morning, and I burst out laughing. Like: this guy was PISSED that his friend was NOT fighing China in some future war. Even just writing this much is lessening the funny - we all were literally crying with laughter.

Beers. More beers.

All of us standing and shouting: "MOR-GAN MOR-GAN MOR-GAN ..."

At one point, this really drunk dude with long curly blonde hair and a peaceful beautiful face stood up on his chair - and started to try to make an announcement to the entire bar. It was URGENT to him that he somehow communicate with all of us. But it was way too loud in the bar - no one paid any attention - and he stood up there, alone, waving his arms, and shouting to no avail. Johnny and I were like, "Holy shit ... Jesus is here ... he's trying to speak to us ..." It looked like Jesus. But a WASTED Jesus. Johnny and I tried to tune in to what he was saying and all we heard was something like: "Germany will rise again ..." We were like ohhhhh shit! We could not stop laughing after that. He looked so peaceful - this beautiful face, and long hippie hair ... and he was shouting German nationalistic statements. Dude, please don't start screaming about Germany rising again. He almost got thrown out of the bar. The enormous bouncer came over and tried to calm Jesus down - giving him a warning. Half an hour later, Jen and I were up at the bar, waiting for the bartender to notice us, and we turned around, and we saw Jesus, even MORE drunk, being held up by his two friends, and he was STILL trying to make his announcement. They kept trying to suppress him, and ... dammit ... he just SO NEEDED to communicate with a large group of people. He could not be stopped. Jen and I were like, "He's still goin'! Still tryin'!"

We had an enormous group discussion about rectal exams. It was AWESOME. There was a doctor in our group, and he told us about the first rectal exam he had to do. AWESOME. More beers!

The noise was so out of control that when I had to make a phone call I had to go outside. The streets were absolute PANDEMONIUM. Now I'm actually not a big St. Patty's Day fan. Why not? Same reason I'm not a New Year's Eve fan. Not too wacky about amateur drunks. I enjoy people who can hold their liquor. But the parade of drunken people on the street was, indeed, very entertaining. Especially the big meaty macho guys - strolling by wearing green velvet top hats with Amish beards attached on a string. Smoking, walking, talking ... as though they weren't wearing anything weird at all. So funny.

But while I was out there I saw something pretty cool. There were two Irish girls and an Irish guy - real Irish - I heard their accents, and their faces were obviously Irish. Anyway, they were smoking, hanging out, and I heard the two girls start singing - they were adorable, by the way. Little short spiky haircuts, with plastic barettes, wearing jeans, big boots - They were not drunk. They seemed sane. The two girls were laughing, and singing a song together - the song had many many verses - and I heard "Finnegans Wake" over and over and over ... some long-versed Irish folk song - they kept trying to remember lyrics, one would take over, the other would flounder, then catch up - It was obviously a song from childhood, one they were pulling up out of the memory banks. Much laughter between the two of them - and then one of them, I kid you not, started river dancing on the sidewalk. The guy who was with them started guffawing with laughter, saying, "Oh shit ..." lighting another cigarette - The other girl stood up and they started step-dancing around each other, singing "Finnegans Wake". They were goofy, sweet, lively, and I felt really happy that I had witnessed it. On an insane street, packed with drunken Americans, dressed up in green and gold with flashing green necklaces and shamrock hats, etc. - two Irish girls started riverdancing, unselfconsciously, just enjoying each other, and enjoying the memory of that song. Beautiful!

Back inside.

The bartender looked so much like Philip Seymour Hoffman that I honestly wondered if it WAS Hoffman, and he was there researching his next role, as a harassed bartender on St. Patrick's Day.

The bar became ONE. That almost NEVER happens here. Not like it did in Dublin that one night.

But last night - 85 people BONDED. We became ONE. We were all in this thing together, this St. Patty's Day Bacchanal together.

Mor-GAN Mor-GAN Mor-GAN Mor-GAN!!!

Kinda scattered

Okay, so I haven't finished a book in ... 4 weeks?? 5 weeks?? The last book I finished was, I think, At Swim-two-birds by Flann O'Brien. After that, I started a couple of different books (I have different needs ... commute books are different from LEISURE books - also, my Hamilton biography is hardcover and weighs 20 pounds - I won't lug that around) I haven't been able to finish anything - mainly because 90% of my brain space was taken up with getting ready for (or procrastinating getting ready for) my show. I just couldn't focus. Then along came the iPod and along came the daily exercise, and boom - I seem to not be reading anymore. I wonder if I could get my sleep-needs down to 3 hours a night?? Then I could have more reading time. Probably not. I'm pushing it as it is.

Here are the books I'm kinda sorta working on in a half-assed way - and the last one has definitely got a hold on me - I might finish that one first.

I just looked at this list of books and just have to laugh.

The Autobiography of Ben Franklin - this is taking me shamefully long to get thru. It's actually quite short, and very fun to read. It should be way done by now. But ... can't finish. Too scattered.

Ron Chernow's Hamilton - at the rate I'm going, I'll finish this book in the year 2016. It's fantastic. But I can only focus on it for 2 or 3 pages at a time.

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (haunting. She's so feckin' good. Her writing scares me.) But again: I got 5 chapters in, and now have lost the thread. She was my commute book.

Judy Blume's Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret - whoo-hoo! It arrived. It's just as good as I remember. But in a normal Sheila time, I'd read this thing in a couple of hours. Just can't do that now.

Gene Wilder's autobiography Kiss Me Like a Stranger - I love him - have been wanting to read this for a long time ... but I am going at a SNAIL'S PACE.

And here's the last book I'm working on - and this one has actually taken a hold on me - I look forward to the free half hour or so when I get home where I can sit down and just read it. I'll be posting more on it"

Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky - I honestly don't know why I haven't read this before. It's kinda blowing me away. Radzinsky is a Russian playwright - and ... well, I need to post on it a bit. You know. When I'm not so scattered. But it's terrific. Gripping - out of the all the books i'm juggling, this is the one I can't put down. I stand in line at the bank, or at the deli, and read it. It's THAT kind of book.

But still. Kinda scattered.

Simone, the cross-dressing palm-reading astrologist who we met the other night said that I was focusing on domestic stuff, making my house into a home. She kept saying that. "You're making your house into a home ... all good things will follow, once you create that home space ..." Which is pretty spot on. She expressed what's been going on for a couple months now. So I got the bookcases. I got the framed pictures. I have bought more plants. I am having guests over this weekend. It's vulnerable for me to do that. I'm a hermet. My home is mine. A private space. No one ever comes over. I need to change that. I do believe that miracles will occur if I change my relationship to my house. My house, as of now, is CLOSED. No one comes over. It is a private dream space. Only I am allowed to go there. But ... well. Only an idiot would not see the metaphor at work here. This has been going on for some months now - my commitment to changing my relationship to my house ... and Simone, with her scarf on her head, and her red glittery lipstick, nailed it. Thanks, Simone!

So. It's okay that I'm not reading too much right now. At least I got another bookcase to add to my domestic delights!

And there's something about Stalin ... It doesn't surprise me that that is the only book I can focus on right now. It's like he emanates a dark light of fascination from beyond the grave. I'm serious. I don't need to WORK to be interested in Stalin. Honestly - I don't. I'm on the part right now where the Bolsheviks and SRs begin their fight - but there are all these other parties involved - Whites, and invading Germands, etc. etc. Trotsky still in the picutre - but Stalin has already narrowed his sights. Trotsky is now "Enemy". Soon Trotsky will be the Imaginary Friend everyone blames everything for. Oh, we can't feed our own country? It's saboteurs, organized by Stalin! No electricity? No railways? Trotsky did it! Trotsky did it! At this point in the book I'm reading - Stalin knows he will get rid of Trotsky sooner or later - but it can't look like he was the one who orchestrated it. Stalin just needs to sit back ... play chess with human lives ... stay in the shadows ... and wait ...

The mixture of patience and ruthless cruelty seems very rare. Most dictators are impatient. But the ability to just hang back ... hang back ... Stalin had that in spades. Some Soviet official who worked with Stalin said, when it was all over, that Stalin had the deadliest of combinations in his personality: Laziness and capriciousness. If you think about it - that really is rare - and with someone who lacks human compassion - or lacks a conscience, it can be very very dangerous. Also: Stalin to me seems notable because he appeared to lack greed. At least for material things. Many dictators are undone by their own greed. They yearn for BOOTY. They want to live like a king!! They want cars, money, palaces ... they will starve their own countries so that they can own a gazillion Mercedes Benzes. But Stalin didn't care about any of that. He was impervious to money. He had no greed for THINGS.

So ... to be patient ... to be cruel ... and to be impervious to monetary temptation ... At the moment I can't think of another dictator who had all of these qualities at the same time. Castro, maybe? Regardless, it seems to me that this is why Stalin was so terrifyingly effective, and why he lasted so FUCKING LONG.

Like I said.

I'm scattered.

Diary Friday

I'm going to continue on with diary entries describing my experience getting into Picnic when I was a senior in high school.

I am again amazed at how busy I was and how much I was still able to get down in my journal.

Here's part 1. The audition.

Here's part 2. The callbacks. I got in!

Now here's the next bit. I have to put in the stuff about dating TS too - because it's just too funny.

SEPTEMBER 30

Oh Diary.

I'm so so so happy. I am so happy. [You got that?]

Last night I called TS and invited him to the 7:30. Then he called back and said he couldn't get a ride over till later, could we go to the 10:00? Sure! So I put my lenses in to heat for an hour. [Wow. What a time travel moment! Member having to HEAT your contact lenses???] After a while, Jean said, "Sheila! Someone's trying to open the front door!" So I went and opened the door. TS peeked in. "My parents came home early - want to try to make the 7:30?" I went dashing around and ran out. I hadn't changed, my hair was flat, I had my glasses on. Oh well. Who gives a shit. I'm happy.

We had a blast at the movie.

Oh yeah, on the phone he asked me, "So what happened at callbacks?" And I said, "I'm in!" And he was so happy - he took a fit. [How attractive!]

Before the movie started, we just sat there quietly together, not saying anything and then suddenly he sort of punched me lightly on the shoulder and said, "Hey. I'm really psyched!" and started asking me about my part and rehearsals.

I love him.

OH GOD, I can't STAND how much I LOVE HIM!

I'm so HAPPY right now!

I'm in the play!

Everything's so GOOD!

We walked back to my house, talking about the movie - There was a lot of crying in the movie. We were laughing at how we were "judging" crying. TS was saying, "Well, I'm more impressed by the repression of tears, the holding back of emotion. I mean, I saw this movie with Lauren Bacall and she was WEEPING - and her makeup's all over the place and suddenly I realized 'She's about 70 years old.'"

We talked about Picnic. I told him about Millie [that was my part]

He was like, "I don't mean to scare you, but you very well may end up in Washington in front of thousands of people, Sheila."

I LOVE MY FRIENDS. [Where did that come from?] OH! J!! AND BETH! KATE. BETSY. MEREDITH. I love the world. Wow wow wow

We got back to my house. Brendan was at the dining room table listening to Prince [I love you, Bren] so we sat down with him and talked for about 45 minutes. About Drama, the movie, Purple Rain. Just stuff. It was fun. TS called his parents and they were gonna meet him on South Road, but not for a while yet, so we sat down again, talked some more. He found this Diary under a pile of papers and leered at me. I grabbed it.

TS said, "Well, I better be going." I suppose I was obvious but I said, "Oh, I'll walk you down." Not that I wanted to protect him (hee hee) but I was having such a BLAST talking to him. Every time I see him it gets better. We could talk forever and I'm me and he likes being with me. [Very important.]

So we left. It was black black outside. So much so that I could hardly keep my balance. TS and I kept bumping into each other. Then suddenly I remembered that TS had left some Greek homework at the coffee house (Betsy gave it to me later) - and I remembered that that homework was back at my house so I stopped still and said, "Oh! Your Greek!" And through the black, I heard him say, "Well - Scottish, actually." That is still making me laugh out loud.

Then we ran back to my house, I burst in saying, "We're back!" I grabbed his papers and gave them to him and then we started out again.

As we walked, we talked - But I barely listened to what he was saying. [hahahahahahahaha] What a beautiful person he is!

Last night is a dream. I still can't believe it happened. I can't even remember what we talked about, but we got to South Road, and he was sort of quiet as we walked toward the road - I didn't know why. So there we stood at the tip of Clark, and TS said, "Well, I guess I'll just wait until they find me."

I said, "Okay." Then we just smiled at each other. He looked different though. Then he said, "Well - thanks." Oh, I'm fainting. [hahahahaha] I smiled at him. It's a dream. He smiled back - but not the normal TS smile - a different one - He stepped forward, put his arms around me and hugged me. I was standing there thinking: Oh my dear Lord. I hugged him back. Diary, he hugged me so tight! We hugged for so long. I felt him kiss me on my cheek. Then we just HUGGED.

Oh, I hate writing these things down on paper.

[Then I completely fall apart, and my writing goes all over the page]

Oh help Oh, I love him

!!!!

He loves me ...

AS A PERSON

Oh

my

GOD!

Can you believe this?

I still can't. I haven't even convinced myself it happened. He hugged me.

Oh, I don't ever want to look at this entry again. [Oh, but you will, Sheila! In the year 2006, you will look at it again!!] I'll just remember it.

LATER:

In the daylight it seems even more momentous. HE HUGGED ME. [I love what a huge deal a HUG was.]

J. and Kate know. I don't know who else to tell - Mere, Betsy, Beth, maybe Anne. I don't know. I can't believe it.

Was the reason he was quiet walking was because he was planning it? Getting up his guts?

A hug is so wicked special. [hahahahahaha]

Walking home, I was so washed over with goodness. I just looked at the sky, thinking: GOD, I LOVE THIS WORLD.

I got up at about 6:00 and lay in bed for 2 hours just thinking about it.

Now what?

It took us 7 dates to get this far. I am so happy!!

OCTOBER 1

What a weird weird awful wonderful day.

First of all, on Wednesday, I have a personal meeting with Kimber [the director of Picnic] cause he wants to get to know people he hasn't had before as students. Oh dear Lord. Another thing to worry about!

The hug is already growing fuzzy in m y mind.

I've been thinking about it a lot. So many kids at school have superficial relationships - and I DO NOT see how this is possible. Or how someone could just go out with someone wihtout liking them. When TS and I hugged, it was ... how could 2 people share something like that and still maintain a stupid high school romance? It was so deep. So devoid of fakeness. [Please note that I am talking about the hug as though it were a 10 person orgy. "How could 2 people share something like that ....]

J. came in and said, "Where was it? Show me the exact spot on your cheek." I swear, she has kept me sane this frenzied weekend.

Today in school they announced over the loudspeaker: "Congratulations to Sheila O'Malley, who was chosen for a role in the university production of Picnic to be put on in December."

I feel so good. I'm sort of a little celebrity. Whenever Stephanie sees me, she sing songs, "Sheila's a professional actress!" And Brian Records called down the stairs to me, "Sheila! Sheila!" I stopped and he came down to me saying, "I'm so proud!"

People are GREAT. I still can't believe my life.

Look at my life! I have too much to think about, but I can't throw any away, cause they're all good things. But it's OVERLOAD.

Oh Diary Diary Diary.

We hugged. IT'S TOO MUCH FOR ME! [hahahahahahaha I love the innocence. I really do.]

OCTOBER 2

Awhile ago, when we went to that Film Noir series, we were sitting in Kingston Pizza. TS' mother's cousin came over. He was this old guy who was obviously drunk but friendly enough. In fact, before TS knew who it was, he was sort of making fun of him. Anyways, he came over, looked at the two of us, and said, "God, would ya look at the mirror image here?" We do dress alike. On Saturday I had on a black coat, a short-sleeved collar shirt, jeans, and hightops. TS had on a black blazer, a white short-sleeved shirt, and black hightops. But not just that of course. We are so much alike.

Was it hard for him to hug me? [I'm sure it took him 10 years to get up the guts.] People who have superficial relationships must block out what they're missing - or they don't know any other way to deal withi things. Because being hugged by him was so real - I mean, no kidding about it - God, talk about defenses down - Maybe that's why it felt so awkward after because we both felt exposed. I know I did at least. I loved it though.

I don't know how many times I've kicked myself for acting so casually after. J. yells at me: "Sheila -- what were you supposed to say? 'Till we meet again?'" [hahahahahahahahaha]

Too much is happening right now. I have to calm down. What a way to start my senior year. It's like there's this movie camera in my mind, playing and rewinding over and over again. All I can see is TS' dark coat, his shoulders pressing against my face -

Am I doomed? [Yes.] I feel very tentative now. I'm tiptoeing all the time. What's it gonna take to make me happy? God, I walk around in a fog all day. I can't stand how droopy I get. I can't smile sometimes. Everyone's like "You, of all people, should be riotously happy." And they're right. Look at me. I'm in a play - and it's not a minor part. It's a GREAT and EXCITING part.

All right, the next few months are going to be absolute chais.

I have to remain CALM.

OCTOBER 3

Today was like a bad dream. I kept thinking, "Why the hell did I get up?" Things kept getting worse until finally I was like resigned to my fate. [You were "like" resigned to your fate? Or just resigned?] Maybe that was stupid, but I just sat back and let it all pile on. I mean - nothing bad happened. But all the time now I feel so worried or restless. Perpetually. I don't know what about, but I always feel worried, hassled, sick. [My schedule was probably busier then during that fall than it has ever been since.]

I can't do it all. Well, I can but I have to get used to being this busy. I feel so nervous and worried all the time. I'm not gonna pretend that TS doesn't have anything to do with it. Are you kidding me? I used to think going with someone would solve all my problems. It only creates more.

Splash is at Edwards this weekend. [Splash!!!!] I'll ask him to go and I'll ask him to go to the dance. But I still feel so worried and insecure.

So anyways, today was really rotten and blue. I also had my meeting with Kimber. I was not at all getting psyched for it. Because today is Wednesday - stupid Film Noir night - every dumb Wednesday I just sit around sinking lower and lower and every time the damn phone rings, I just hold my stupid breath. I hate Wednesdays.)

So my meeting was at 4. I came home on the bus for about the 2nd time all year. Mum drove me up. Ho hum. I was still quite the depressed and quiet.

I walked up to the front doors. This building is a dramatic looking building - all cement, and this long walk up where you can see yourself approaching in the dark glass doors. Also, you can only see silhouettes inside. So up I strolled, trying to look like I knew what the hell I was doing. I came into the lobby, and there was Brett (the guy in the audition who smiled at me). He's so CUTE. He struck me as so wicked nice, cause at callbacks, I was just sitting alone and he looked at me, smiled, and said, "And your name is?" I smiled and said, "Sheila. Hi." He held his hand out to me. "I'm Brett. Hi." It was so friendly, it really put me at ease. At the first audition, I came into the room - he and the girl were sitting there with Kimber - I glanced at them. He gave me this reassuring smile. As I was leaving, I was sighing in relief - that yes, I had lived - I glanced at him - He winked.

Diary, I CAN'T WAIT to get to know all these people! It's so exciting! I cannot WAIT.

So anyways, he was standing there with the one other girl who had been out for Millie. You know, it's funny - but at callbacks, I was just sitting there observing everybody and I didn't know that she was trying out for Millie too, but I was looking at her, thinking, "Oh, I hope I don't turn into someone like you." I mean, she was funny, but she seemed "on" all the time. I think it's great when first impressions are wrong. Because mine was. NEVER rely on first impressions. It's a huge mistake, and it felt GOOD to be proved wrong.

Anyway, I came into the lobby, they both looked at me, and immediately both shouted, "Congratulations!"

Brett (who is adorable) hailed me, "Sheila! Congratulations!" I felt so happy, so welcome. Not alienated or too young at all. I walked over to them - Brett held his hand out to me - "Hello. I'm Brett - and you're Sheila." He paused to remember my last name. I said, "O'Malley." The girl giggled, "Don't you mean O'Millie?" She was COOL - I mean, yes - she is "on" - but she is also NICE. She held her hand out to me and said, "I'm Dina. I was out for Millie too, but you were the right choice - you're much better than me." [Uhm - wow - the generosity there is really quite stunning.]

Brett hugged her mockingly and she said, "Hey, I'm being honest! Besides, I'm not the sort of person who goes --" and she started stamping around grumbling, "I DIDN'T GET THE PART! AHHHHH." Brett grinned at me. "The minute you turn around, she's gonna take out a hatchet."

When I went back on Friday to find out if I got in, there was a dance class warming up in the lobby. I guess they were both there, but I didn't see them. Brett told me that they watched me walk calmly by - and then 5 minutes later - watched me zoom back out. I said, "So who are you in the play?" And he smiled at me - really cool and real smile, and said, "I'm your friend. Your buddy!" I said, "Oh! You're Alan!" Wicked cool! Then I said, "Oh! I have a crush on you!" Brett said, seriously, "I'm flattered." We all burst out laughing. He asked me, "So you're a senior in high school?" I nodded. They were ... nobody JUDGED me.

I can NOT wait to work with these wonderful people!

Brett said, "So you're here to talk to Kimber?" I said, "Yes. I don't know what the hell I'm doing." And Brett grinned at me - and said, "Then we will escort you to Kimber!" So they did. They brought me into the audition room with this big fanfare. Brett yelled, "SHEILA O'MALLEY!" And he and Dina started applauding.

I also can't wait to work with Kimber. After one meeting with him - I feel like I can improve so much. I learned incredible things I've never even thought of before. Like: don't learn the lines. Just learn the words. Learn them in a complete monotone. Don't interpret yet - because interpretation depends on the interpretation from other actors. Acting comes from reacting to other actors. So if you start interpreting the lines in a certain way on your own, you're sort of depending on the other actor to give you a CERTAIN interpretation. And that's bad. Then you can't act and react in the moment. Kimber said that it's harder to get out a good interpretation if you interpret on your own, alone - That thought has never entered my mind.

I walked home. As I walked along, I heard this screaming: "SHEILA! SHEILA!" I looked up and there down the sidewalk was Stephanie, tearing towards me with outflung arms. I've really gotten close to her this year. She's in my Project Adventure, and also French. Just then, this car swerved into the curb, and Laura Moran was driving. She was screaming out the window at me, "GET A JOB!" The cars driving by were looking at me as though they were worried about me. Laurie DeW. was in the car too - she is such a sweet nice person. I leaned over to say, "Hi!" - and unlike other popular girls - she didn't just BESTOW a kind smile at me - she smiled at me in a real way, and said, "Hi! How are you! Congrats on the show!"

Oh. It's all so great.

AMBITION!

The Books: "Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey" (V.S. Naipaul)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey by V.S. Naipaul. VS Naipaul went on a 7-month journey in the early 80s through 4 "countries of the converts" - non-Arab countries, countries of converts to Islam. He has no sympathy for religious fervor whatsoever, and he makes no bones about it. He distrusts fundamentalism of every kind. He and Christopher Hitchens are brothers in this respect. He is right in his assessment that converts are usually more fanatical than those born into a faith. I've known a few recent born-agains in my day, and I can say that he speaks the truth. Uhm - wow. Total personality change. Total erasure of sense of humor. Where did the personality go? A lot of people can't stand Naipaul because of this hostility towards religion, but in my opinion - this personal bias makes him a clear-eyed critic of certain aspects of faith-based societies. Same with Krakauer who wrote that blisteringly hostile book about Mormons - Krakauer came right out and stated his bias in the beginning, so you, as a reader, know what you're dealing with. I don't share Naipaul's distrust for people who have faith - not at all - but I do share his abhorrence of fundamentalists, of any stripe, and I make no bones about it either. Naipaul has no patience whatsoever with those who do not use their MINDS. But anyway, back to this book, which is quite quite wonderful: He travels to Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. He talks to people. A lot of the book is conversation. He speaks to students in madrassahs, he speaks to mullahs, he speaks to regular everyday people on the street.

There's a sequel to the book which I'll excerpt tomorrow - he returns to the same 4 countries a decade later - and looks up all the same people he met the first trip. The two books together are fascinating and rather prophetic looks at Islamic countries, and the radicalization of the Muslim faith. Especially his chapters on Indonesia, which I'll excerpt here.

I love Naipaul. He's such a crank. And a damn fine writer as well.

The excerpt gives you a real feel for the book. It's all about PEOPLE. Naipaul tells the history of certain events, certain areas, etc., through one person's personal history. Very very interesting. The following excerpt is a bit long, but it's worth it. It's about an Indonesian man named Suryadi.

From Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey by V.S. Naipaul.

It is dizzying to read of recent Indonesian history. And to look at it in the life of one man is to wonder how, with so little to hold on to in the way of law or country, anyone could withstand so many assaults on his personality.

Suryadi was in his mid fifties. He was small, dark-brown, frail-looking. He was born in East Java and he described himself as one of the "statistical Muslims" of Indonesia. He had received no religious training; such religion as he had was what was in the air around him. He wasn't sure whether he believed in the afterlife; and he didn't know that that belief was fundamental to the Muslim faith.

He belonged to the nobility, but in Java that meant only that he was not of the peasantry. The Dutch ruiled Java through the old feudal courts of the country. But Java was only an agricultural colony, and the skills required of the nobility in the Dutch time were hnot high. Suryadi's grandfather, as a noble, had had a modest white-collar job; Suryadi's father was a bookkeeper in a bank.

It was possible for Suryadi, as a noble, to go to a Dutch school. The fees were low; and Suryadi, in facat, didn't have to pay. The education was good. Just how good it was was shown by the excellent English Suryadi spoke. And recently, wishing to take up German again and enrolling in the German cultural centre in Jakarta, the Goethe Institute, Suryadi found that, with his Dutch-taught German of forty years before, he was put in the middle class, and he was later able without trouble to get a certificate in an examination marked in Germany.

Early in 1942 the Japanese occupied Java. The message from Radio Tokyo was that the Japanese would give Indonesia its independence, and there were many people willing to welcome the Japanese as liberators. Suryadi was in the final year of his school. The Dutch teachers were replaced by Indonesians, and the headmaster or supervisor was Japanese. For six months classes continued as they would have done under the Dutch. Then -- and it is amazing how things go on, even during an upheaval -- Suryadi went to the university. The lecturers and professors there were now Japanese. But the Japanese simply couldn't manage foreign languages. They recognized this themselves, and after a time they appointed Indonesians, who worked under Japanese supervisors.

The Indonesians used the classes to preach nationalism. Already much of the good will towards the Japanese had gone. It was clear to Suryadi that the whole economy was being subverted to assist the Japanese war effort. Thousands of Indonesians were sent to work on the Burma Railway (and there is still a community of Indonesians in Thailand, from the enforced migration of that time). Radios were sealed; the radios that had once brought the good news from Radio Tokyo could no longer be listened to,

Two incidents occurred at this time which made Suryadi declare his opposition to the Japanese. The university authorities decreed that all students were to shave their heads. It was the discipline of the Zen monastery. And Suryadi felt it as he was meant to feel it: an assault on his personality. And then one day on the parade ground -- students were given military training -- a student was slapped by a Japanese officer. All the Indonesians felt humiliated, and Suryadi and his friends held a protest demonstration in the university. Thirty of them, teachers as well as students, were arrested by the Japanese secret police and taken to jail.

In the jail they heard people being tortured for anti-Japanese offences and even for listening to the radio. But Suryadi's group were treated like political prisoners; and they continued to be disciplined in the way of the Zen monastery. They were beaten with bamboo staves, but it was only a ritual humiliation. The bamboo staves were split at the end; they didn't hurt, they only made a loud cracking noise. After a month of this Suryadi and his friends were released. But they were expelled from the university. So Suryadi never completed his education.

They had got off lightly because the Indonesian nationalism leaders were still cooperating with the Japanese. Sukarno never believed that Japan was going to lose the war, Suryadi said. Sukarno didn't even believe that the atom bomb had been dropped on Japan. It was only after the Japanese surrender that Sukarno and the nationalists proclaimed the independence of Indonesia. And four years of fighting against the Dutch followed.

What events to have lived through, in one's first twenty-six years! But Suryadi was without rancour. The events had been too big; there was no one to blame. He had no ill-feeling towards either Dutch or Japanese. He did business now with both; and he respected both as people who honoured a bargain. The Japanese had the reputation in Southeast Asia of being hard bargainers (there had been anti-Japanese riots in Jakarta because of the Japanese domination of the Indonesian market); but Suryadi had found the Japanese more generous, if anything, than the Dutch.

Suryadi was without rancour, and it could be said that he had won through. But there was an Indonesian sadness in him, and it was the sadness of a man who felt he had been left alone, and was now -- after the Dutch time, the Japanese time, the four years of the war against the Dutch, the twenty years of Sukarno -- without a cause. More than once the world had seemed about to open out for him as an Indonesian, but then had closed up again.

He had lain low during the later Sukarno years. Army rule after that had appeared to revive the country. But now something else was happening. A kind of Javanese culture was being asserted. Suryadi was Javanese; the Javanese dance and the Javanese epics and puppet plays were part of his being. But he felt that Javanese culture was being misused; it was encouraging a revival of feudal attitudes, with the army taking the place of the old courts. Suryadi had the Javanese eye for feudal courtesies. He saw that nowadays the soldier's salute to an officer was more than an army salute; it also contained a feudal bow. It was a twisted kind of retrogression. It wasn't what Suryadi had wanted for his country.

And he had lost his daughter. She had become a convert to the new Muslim cause -- the Malaysian disease, some people called it here. At school and then at the university she had been a lively girl. She had done Javanese dancing; she was a diver; she liked to go camping. But then, at the university, she had met a new Muslim, a born-again Muslim, and she had begun to change. She went out with her hair covered; she wore drab long gowns; and her mind began correspondingly to dull.

Suryadi and his wife had done the unforgivable one day. They had gone among the girl's papers, and they had come upon a pledge she had signed. She had pledged to be ruled in everything by a particular Muslim teacher; he was to be her guide to paradise. She, who would have been a statistical Muslim like Suryadi and his wife, was now being instructed in the pure faith.

Suryadi didn't take it well. He thought now he should have been calmer in the beginning; by making his dismay too apparent he had probably pushed the girl further away from him. He said to her one day, "Suppose someone asks you to go out camping now, will you say, 'I can't go, because I have no assurance there will be water for my ablutions before my prayers'?" He had spoken with irritation and irony. But later she came back to him and said, "I have checked. In the Koran there is nothing that says it is obligatory if you are travelling." And Suryadi understood that she had become impervious to irony; that she had become removed from the allusive family way of talking. The intellectual loss was what grieved him the most. He said, "But don't you have a mind any longer? Do you have to go to that book every time? Can't you think for yourself now?" She said, "The Koran is the source of all wisdom and virtue in the world."

She had married the born-again Muslim who had led her to the faith. She had a degree; he was still only a student at the university; but, like a good Muslim wife, she subordinated herself to him. That was the new sadness that Suryadi was learning to live with: a once-lively daughter who had gone strange.

Still, recently he had found a little cause for hope. He was driving her back one day to her in-laws' house, where she lived with her husband. He said, "I have bought that little house for you. Why don't you go and live there? Why does your husband want to keep on living with his parents? It isn't right. Why doesn't he make up his mind to act on his own?" She had said then, "He's got an inferiority complex, Father."

And this little sign, the first for some time, that his daughter still had a mind, was still capable of judging, was a great comfort to Suryadi. She had seen what was clear to Suryadi: that the boy was a poor student, didn't have the background, couldn't cope with university life. He was still some way from taking his degree and wasn't giving enough time to his work. During the month of Ramadan, the fasting month, he had given up his work altogether, fasting all day and going to the mosque in the evening to pray. This was easier than being with the difficult books; and his religious correctness was admired by his Islamic group at the university.

Suryadi's daughter had seen this on her own. That was some weeks ago. And it was now what Suryadi was waiting for: that in time she might see a little more.

At the end, just before we separated, Suryadi said, "But I've been lucky. I haven't been like so many others in Indonesia, switching to another wavelength under pressure."

"Another wavelength?"

"You know how people are like here. But perhaps you don't. They turn mystical. Logical, rational people. They start burning incense or sitting up at night in graveyards if they want to achieve something. If they feel they are frustrated, not advancing in their work or career."

"Do you call that mystical?"

"I don't know what else you call ilt."

Molecular Badness

Someone asked a question about actors reading reviews in the post below this one. I said that in general I try not to read reviews - at least until the show has closed. It can only confuse the issue and it is so damn hard to remind yourself, in the middle of a run, when you might be feeling vulnerable ANYway, that it is just one person's opinion.

However: sometimes you don't NEED the reviewer to tell you a piece of work stinks up the joint. You KNOW it. You KNOW IT IN YOUR DNA. BECAUSE BADNESS LIKE THAT IS MOLECULAR.

So in light of all of that - thought I'd re-post this. I know I wrote it and all, but it still makes me laugh.

Bombs I have been in

I have been in my share of bombs. Plays which made me question whether or not I was doing the right thing with my life. Plays which being a part of made me hate the whole world. Plays through which I understood, on a deeper and more visceral level, just what the word "embarrassment" really means. My long-time dear friend Jackie (she of the brown wool leg-wraps) has labeled the kind of embarrassment you experience when you are up onstage in a HEINOUS piece of theatre as "white-hot shame". That about sums it up. Embarrassment like that is not an emotion. It is a full-body sensation.

The only thing to do when you are in such a cataclysmic bomb is bond ferociously with your fellow cast members about how terrible the play is (hopefully they feel the same way ... If they do not, if they think the play is good, then you are completely screwed ... you will realize what it means to be truly alone) - and have absolutely rocking cast parties where the bacchanals you create will drown out the memory of the SHITE you have just inflicted on an unsuspecting audience.

Some of the best parties I have ever been to, parties that will live on in infamy, were cast parties for some horrific play I was doing. Being in a BAD play is much more condusive to making life-long friends. Because you must cling to one another in agony and white-hot shame.

Bomb #1
I was in a production of Lysistrata in college. Anyone who was unfortunate enough to see it, 15 years ago, continues to use it as a gauge by which to judge other terrible plays. As in: "I saw a TERRIBLE play the other night. It wasn't as bad as that Lysistrata you were in, but it came close."

First of all, the director thought it would be cool (and please, do not ask me why), to call HIS version of the play "Ly-SIS-trata" ... as opposed to the normal pronunciation, which everybody knows is: "Lysis-TRA-ta."

So we, as cast members, were forced, against our will, to participate in this idiocy. He forced us to be accomplices.

Conversations with outsiders would go like this:

"So what play are you working on now, Sheila?"

"Ly-SIS-trata."

"Uh � I think you mean Lysis-TRA-ta." (with a tone of: Wow. You just mispronounced that word, and you're a theatre major!)

"No, no, I know ... but this director wants to call it Ly-SIS-trata."

"Why?"

"Uh ... well...I think he thinks that maybe the audience will ... uh... he wants to show that the play has relevance in today's....Oh, Jesus Christ, I have no idea."

I had countless conversations like that, and I resented it.

3,000 years of Lysis-TRA-ta needed to be upended. For what purpose? If the play had come off brilliantly, then of course the director would be forgiven everything, because it is all about the result. You can be as pretentious and as pompous as you want, as long as the end-result is something to be proud of. That's the deal with the entertainment business. It attracts massive egos. And that's fine. But if you have a massive ego, then you BETTER deliver the goods. Nothing worse than a grandiose personality, filled with dreams of glory, pumped up with a sense of grandeur and originality, who does crap work.

We, as cast members, were held hostage by our own director. He forced us to do things onstage which we found supremely embarrassing and stupid. At one point, I lost it, and pleaded with him, "Oh, come on, you aren't serious, are you?"

I remember one night, as we all were preparing to enter for the first time, I started crying. I just could not go on. I could not subject myself to that meat-grinder of white-hot shame. I wept to my friend Mitchell, as we stood in the wings, "I just don't want to go out there! I feel sick! I don't want to do it! It's so awful!" Meanwhile, of course, we are in our GOOFBALL Roman-toga costumes, talking to each other seriously, having nervous breakdowns at the same moment. The situation was bleak.

Actor-friends would come to see Ly-SIS-trata and not even hold back their contempt and scorn. Normally, when you are in something that is clearly bad, and other actor-friends come to see it, they usually say one of these comments:

"Congratulations!" (complete avoidance of the awful-ness)

"So how did you feel?" (that is my least favorite one)

"Great energy up there!" (subtext: You put all your energy into that???)

"So what's next for you?" (subtext: You need to move on from this nightmare as quickly as possible.)

All of this is code for: "Wow. That was absolutely god-awful."

Well, actor-friends came to see Ly-SIS-trata and couldn't even hide behind any of those stock phrases, they could not lie. To lie about a play that was that offensively bad goes against the grain of human morality. I would come out afterwards, having changed into civilian clothes, washed off the stage makeup, and one of my friends who had come to see it would immediately exclaim, "Oh my GOD, you were NOT KIDDING when you said this was a piece of shit." Or, in the case of my boyfriend at the time: "That was absolutely fucking terrible."

One friend actually recoiled from my hug. As though my even being associated with such an awful production meant that somehow ... my soul was corrupt, or I was a bad person.

The play wasn't just bad. The play was so bad that it made people angry.

Bomb #2
Another TERRIBLE play I was in (and I've been pretty fortunate ... haven't done too many white-hot-shame plays) was a musical version of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. I did it in Philadelphia.

I knew from the first rehearsal, when I met the Anglophile playwright, that I was in trouble. The only way to save myself was to treat the entire process as one long extended GOOF, which did not endear me to said playwright, who thought that Three Men in a Boat was on par with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

A couple of very good friends (Mitchell, Jackie, and Steven) drove down for opening night, to participate in my goofing on the production.

There was an opening night gala afterwards, where I could not contain my apathy for the playwright.

She kept trying to take my picture, for her photo album. I did not want to be in her photo album. By this point, I hated her, because she had wrote the piece of shit that gave me so much white-hot shame. I don't mind if you write something bad. It's hard to write something good. But if you write something bad, and your level of self-awareness is so low that you cannot at all see that you still have work to do - then you have earned my scorn. I can't stand lack of self-awareness and blithe assumptions of perfection. This chick thought what we did was great. She didn't feel the badness in the molecules. So she would aim her camera at me and I would protest. Openly. Not even trying to be polite. "I told you not to take my picture, okay?"

I wanted no evidence that I had ever been involved with this production. But she trapped me a couple of times, taking candid shots of me, her lead actress, swilling back free wine like a free-loader, drowning my sorrows and white-hot shame, whispering with my friends like a conspiring Roman senator, not being enthusiastic at all. All 4 of us guffawing with irreverent laughter.

My friend Mitchell took one look at the playwright, saw which way the wind was blowing, and murmured to me, "She looks like a retired racehorse." Which was so true, and so spot-on, that the ENTIRE terrible experience was redeemed for me, in that moment. I feel like I did Three Men in a Boat in order for Mitchell to be able to make that frighteningly apt observation.

But the crowning glory was the review. It is, by far, the worst review I have ever received. Actually, I escaped comment. All of the actors did. The full brunt of blame for the debacle was placed on the retired racehorse. As it should have been. I even kept the review. I still have it somewhere.

I don't remember anything but the first sentence:

"Not since the Titanic has there been such a nautical disaster."

Even though there was definitely shame involved in being a part of that "nautical disaster", I also admit that I felt tiny pricks of weird pride at being involved with something so monumentally bad. It wasn't just a bad show, a take-it-or-leave-it show. It wasn't your run-of-the-mill bad show. It was HISTORICALLY bad.

Bomb #3
Another white-hot shame production I was in was a new play, (well, actually: since its inauguration with our production of it, it has never been done again, small wonder, so now it can almost be called an 'old play') called Sitcom. It was a spoof on sit-coms. It was written by a friend of mine, who has written other hit shows, shows which have had long and very successful runs in Chicago.

But Sitcom...Sitcom...

Unfortunately, we all went into it with very high hopes. He had just had a very big success. A very good friend of mine directed it - hugely talented, this guy. And the cast was made up of dear friends.

But it didn't work. It didn't work on multiple levels.

It was obvious what he was going for: It was a diatribe against sit-coms, and the whole thing started out as a kind of Cosby Show spoof, and then descended into darkness and evil. The dark Blue Velvet underbelly of the sitcom world. Simple, right?

It had all the right elements. There was a family: a kind of fluttery flaky mother, and a Father-Knows-Best dad.

I played the over-sexed rebellious teenage daughter, like Christina Applegate in "Married with Children". My costume was basically a doily for a skirt, and a string-bikini for a top. I looked ridiculous. I don't mind looking ridiculous in a HIT show but when it's a white-hot-shame show, wearing a string bikini and a doily makes you feel naaaaaaaaaaaaaaasty.

There was a geeky earnest younger brother, played by Mitchell.

There was a younger sister, supposed to be a little girl, a la the once-innocent Olsen twins on "Full House" ... Every time the younger sister came on (played by a grown woman, Rachel, who is, no doubt, one of the funniest women on the face of the planet), there would be a soundcue of the "studio audience" going "Awwwwwww." You know, treacly, sickly-sweet. It could have been funny. In a nauseating way.

There was also a puppet who lived behind the couch, a la "Alf". The actor who had to lie behind the couch, doing the puppet, Rich, again, is one of the funniest men I know, and a wonderful actor. I see him in national commercials all the time, and occasionally remember our bleak days of doing Sitcom, when he, a very good actor, had to lie behind the couch, with a PUPPET ON HIS HAND, talking in a funny little voice.

My very good friend David played my boyfriend .. whose name was Max or Spike or something like that. Spike was a bruiser, a "juvenile delinquent". A "bad boy", but in a sitcom way. My fluttery square parents were supposed to be very concerned that their sweet young daughter (sashaying around in a ridiculous outfit) was going out with such a reprobate.

There was also the "wacky neighbor", who would walk over to peek his head in the window, wearing a scuba mask for no apparent reason. He was just WACKY!!

At some point during the rehearsal process, it dawned on all of us in the cast: Uh-oh. I think we're involved in a stinker here.

We just could feel it in the air, man. Like I said: it was molecular.

David, in a sheer act of actor-desperation, decided that his character (Max or Spike) should actually be more of a heavy-metal type than a Rebel without a cause. He found a long stringy blonde wig backstage (when I say "long", I mean the hair almost reached his butt), he wore a sleeveless denim vest (sleeves ripped off), he drew fake tattoos all over his arms, and he began to behave like an absolute maniac. Staring at me, his onstage girlfriend, with dead lustful eyes, screaming randomly, pumping the air with his fists, going insane. It was a survival technique, completely understandable.

We had one scene where we had to be making out like wild animals on the couch, and the PUPPET interrupts us. Rich lying behind the couch, puppet on his hand, waiting for his cue. I am laughing right now, remembering all of this. So David, a man I have known since I was 17 years old, is lying back on the couch, I am lying on top of him, and I keep getting the long blonde hairs from his ludicrous wig in my mouth. And David would make this crazy grunting sex noises, becoming this lustful heavy-metal dude lying beneath me - But ... please remember: we are BEST FRIENDS. To behave this way with a stranger is a bit easier, because you can pretend you don't have a long storied history - but David and I - BEST FRIENDS - bumping and grinding on the couch in our horrible costumes was almost too much to bear.

Occasionally, as we would be doing this (filled with white-hot shame the entire time, of course), we would make eye contact. Not as the characters. But as Sheila and David. Trapped in this terrible play. Wearing RIDICULOUS costumes. And behaving like morons. I would see such pain, panic, and shame in his eyes that occasionally I would burst out laughing. Onstage.

The worst moment in Sitcom, though, perhaps the worst moment I have ever had on stage ever, was this:

I was in the middle of a scene with my Father (who, remember, was also the playwright). There was an audience there, an audience sitting in stunned silence. Nobody was laughing. Doing the show felt like doomsday. It wasn't just a bad vibe. There was actually a malevolent atmosphere in the theatre. I have never before done a play where I sensed waves of actual hostility coming up at me from the audience.

And then -- in a completely surreal moment -- an audience member had finally had it. He stood up ... an angry figure out in the darkness, yelled at the stage, "WHO WROTE THIS SHIT?" and then stormed out. (I have never experienced something so odd in my whole entire life. Hearing a voice explode from out the darkness...)

But it took him a while to get out of the theatre for a couple of reasons:

First, because he had to get out of his aisle. So as the scene went on (the show must go on), between myself and the actual person who had "wrote this shit", we could hear this man saying, not even trying to keep his voice down he was so annoyed, "Excuse me ... excuse me ... excuse me..."

The second reason was that either the front door in the lobby was locked from the inside, or it was stuck, I have no idea ... All I know is is that the man literally could not get out of the theatre. The door would not open. So we began to hear his rage escalate out in the lobby. Poor man. As the scene trudged on, we would hear random explosions out in the lobby: "Jesus CHRIST ... would this door just OPEN?" And: "Goddammit, get me OUT." And finally he just succumbed to existential despair: "God, would SOMEBODY just get me OUT OF HERE?"

I am not exaggerating.

As I write this, tears of laughter are streaming down my face.

Bomb #4
The final terrible show I must inflict on you all is: the half-hour version of Macbeth I was unlucky enough to get roped into.

At grad school, we had a season of thesis productions. Each one had to be half an hour long. So the actors would have half-hour scenes, whatever the playwrights wrote for their thesis projects had to be half-hour...you get the picture.

Well, there was a director in our program who (for some unknown STUPID reason) wanted to somehow do the entirety of Macbeth in half an hour. Why his thesis project was approved, I have no clue.

I'm still angry that it was.

Angry because I was playing one of the five witches.

("Hold on a second," you might be thinking, "five witches? Aren't there only three witches in Macbeth?")

You may be thinking that but that is only because you are an intelligent person, with a sense of dignity and logic, which clearly was lacking in the mind of the director.

He made there be FIVE witches.

There are too many problems to even discuss ... because it is hard to get past the wrong-headed-ness of the entire idea of the project to begin with.

People were racing around, murdering each other, casting spells, having duels, seeing blood on their hands ... all in half an hour's time.

The man who played Macbeth had an accent - but ... when he played Macbeth his accent became incomprehensible. So the line: "Have we eaten the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?" consistently came out as: "Have we et the insane RUHT that takes the reason prisoner??" RUHT. And he would emphasize that word. It got worse and worse. I think he thought it sounded good, because he started to draw out the R. Have we et the insane rrrrrrrUHT that takes the reason prisoner? It was heinous.

Every time he would say it, every time he was even close to approaching saying it, the five witches (who all had to be onstage at all times, terrible luck, we could never escape to lick our wounds of white-hot-shame) would put our heads down, as we were casting our spooky spells on the five corners of the stage (not the four corners, the five corners), and shake with laughter.

Finally, the director said tentatively, "Uh ... yeah ... could you please say 'root' and not 'ruht'?"

Macbeth said, "I am saying 'ruht'."

Two or three of the witches burst into inappropriate laughter.

The director, trying to hold us all together, and keep us from spiralling out of control, said, tentatively again: "Actually ... you just did it again. The word is 'root'. With an 'oo' sound. If you say 'ruht', then the meaning of the line is lost."

I held myself back from saying, "If you attempt to do Macbeth in half an hour's time, then the meaning of the ENTIRE PLAY is lost."

At one point, I had to run onstage (the five witches, even worse luck, had to double as other characters in this misbegotten piece of shite) - and announce to Macbeth: "The Queen, my lord, is dead!" Once, during rehearsal, things were getting so out of control, and the witches were reaching such a state of frenzied hysteria - that I raced onstage - shouted - "The Queen - " took a deep breath - and then burst into hysterical guffaws, laughing my way through the rest of the line like some kind of jibbering loony-tunes who thought it was a LAUGH RIOT that the Queen was dead! The energy in the rehearsal room was so irreverent that Queen Macbeth, sitting over on the sidelines, now that she was "dead", said, sarcastically, "Thanks a lot." I was pretty much done for the day. I couldn't get through the line without laughing from there on out.

Boom boom boom, scenes came fast and furious. Boom: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth conspire. Boom: Murder and carnage. Boom: The witches race into place and cackle gleefully. Boom: Lady Macbeth staggers on, shrieking "Out damn'd spot" ... and then just as quickly staggers off. Boom: There is a very quick sword fight. Who knows why. People just had duels back then, I guess. Boom: Everybody dies. Except for the five witches. Who live on, eternally. Exeunt

Actors have different ways of surviving terrible shows. The five witches survived this nightmare by literally becoming ONE. We were a five-some. We shared one brain. The normal backstage competition thing that normally goes on, especially among actresses, was non-existent. We bonded into one amorphous being. We completely separated ourselves from the poor stars of this stupid production, who still were trying to actually do Macbeth. The five witches realized very early on that Macbeth could not be done properly in half an hour, so we refused to take anything seriously. Anything. Anything.

Nobody had told us what our makeup should be like, as witches, so the five of us designed our own looks. Our makeup and hair got more and more elaborate and out of control with every performance. We had to arrive at the theatre earlier and earlier in order to complete our transformations in time for curtain. Our faces were literally caked with Kabuki-mask makeup. The more grotesque the better. It was like we were a KISS cover band.

At one point, Eileen, a beautiful girl, turned from the mirror, to display her horrific makeup job ... red circles around her eyes, red wrinkle lines radiating from her mouth, caved-in cheeks, and said to all of us, brightly, "Do I look really gross?"

We validated her. "Yup. Very gross."

My costume, unfortunately, made me look like the chair of a women's studies department at a small college in Vermont. We would all be sitting at our makeup mirrors, and I would suddenly start to pontificate about the evils of the patriarchy, or about holding focus groups to show women their cervixes, and the rest of the witches, slathering on their own makeup, would be cackling with glee about it. I was also in the midst of reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at the time, so there are a couple of pictures of me, backstage, in my "wymyn's studies" Wiccan outfit, twigs sticking out of my hair, big brownish-purple circles around my eyes, seriously reading my book.

Jen, my roommate, with her long mane of curly hair, made her hair bigger and bigger and bigger every night. That became her main goal. To make her hair as large as possible, so that it would completely shield her face. Also, every time she had a line, Jen disguised her voice. Sometimes it was gruff, and manly. Other times whispery and feeble. Regardless: the point was: it was NOT HER VOICE.

The five witches were so taken up by our stupid costumes and makeup that we would hang out in the backstage hallway before entering, taking pictures of ourselves.

Pictures of all the witches peeking their crazy heads around the corner.

Pictures of all the witches making their way down the stairs, like some demented version of the Von Trapp family singers.

Closer ...

Please realize that these were taken probably 30 seconds before we had to go onstage. Literally. Stage managers were looking for us while these photos were being taken. Obviously we had our priorities straight.

We were collectively late for our entrance one night because we were too busy taking pictures of ourselves. We resented the actual SHOW we were doing, for taking away from our time taking pictures of ourselves in costume.

Each witch had to carry a big gnarled stick. The first witch-scene began with us doing what was supposed to be a Celtic dance, I suppose. Or something randomly pagan. Or randomly Druid-like. Lots of drum-beats, and moving in circles, and banging the sticks on the floor. It was interminably stupid, and horrifically embarrassing to execute.

We had to enter, as one, holding up our sticks in front of our grotesque faces, moving as slowly as glaciers. The effect was supposed to be scary and ominous, I guess, but a couple of nights I heard someone in the audience burst into laughter at the first sight of us. I don't blame them.

And occasionally, as we moved on like that, with our sticks, I would hear either Eileen or Jen or Kimberly start to giggle ...and try to choke it down ... but laughter like that catches on like wildfire. Once it begins, it is nearly impossible to stop. So there we all were, supposed to be the scary 5 witches, moving onto the stage, holding up our sticks, shaking silently with laughter.

Jen made a big announcement backstage to the rest of the witches, on the night of our dress reherarsal.

"I have decided ... that when we come on with our sticks----" Long pause. We all waited, breathlessly, hoping that she might actually have an IDEA about how we could make it all better. But then she concluded, finishing her thought, "We look like assholes."

Translate, adapt

Reeeeeeeeallllly interesting analysis of Andrew Upton's adaptation of Hedda Gabler - being done in Sydney right now, with Cate Blanchett in the lead.

I found it fascinating - as I do most issues of translation, especially in the theatre. How does Moliere translate? (Not very well, usually. The rollicking crazy Moliere rhythms end up sounding stilted and stiff in bad English translations.) How does Shakespeare translate into, say, Polish? Etc. What is lost? What is gained? It's an artform, effective translation - and I know now that I grew up with shitty Chekhov translations. I only know that now because I have read multiple translations - I have taken recommendations from friends who prefer this or that translation - and I realize that the one I grew up with, the one in my public library, BLEW. Made Chekhov sound stilted and formal. Chekhov? Formal? Nope. That's just a bad translation.

Anyway - translation is definitely a topic that I love - but the New Yorker article I link to seems to have more to do with adaptation issues, and "interpretation" than translation. FASCINATING.

At the heart of Hedda Gabler is a mystery. Ibsen leaves stuff out. We don't get ALL of her. He does not tell us totally WHY she is that way.

That's one of the reasons why Hedda has more of a grip on the imagination than Nora from Doll House does. Nora can be explained. Nora is a product of her environment. She is a product of the patriarchal system at that time. Ibsen is VERY clear on that. Her money is controlled - that's the main thing. It's a bourgeois middle-class play. Nora does not have her own money - and that is really where all the problems begin. Ibsen believed in freeing up women financially - and once that happened, perhaps this ol' institution of marriage might work a little bit better. So - Nora is explainable, in terms of Ibsen's playwriting, his intentions, and how he set her up. No less an amazing character. No less a challenge to an actress. But Hedda? Nobody can explain Hedda. Or - you can explain part of her - but that still leaves a vast part of her personality in the shadows. Her motives unclear, to some extent. FASCINATING. Hedda Gabler is a truly magnificent theatrical creation.

It sounds to me like Upton is trying to explain her - or at least to get rid of the elements of her that defy explanation.

For example:

As Tesman sees his aunt to the door, Hedda is left onstage alone for a moment. “Hedda crosses the room, raising her arms and clenching her hands, as if in fury,” Ibsen writes. It’s the marvellous “as if in fury” that provides a clue to Hedda’s unfathomable rage. Reared, we assume, in the spartan fashion of a military brat, Hedda is also a nineteenth-century woman, unable to scream or to act out her rage: what man would have her if she shrieked the truth? And, if no man would have her, where would she be? She has no money of her own. Besides, as a member of the bourgeoisie, she cannot go through life as a single woman: no one likes a female who will not join the herd.

In this scene, Nevin, instead of having Blanchett raise her fists, has her trip over one of Tesman’s footrests. Yes, yes, we get it: the domestic obstacles that Hedda must overcome are really her various internal hindrances—the metaphorical furniture of her sick mind. But if Hedda cannot reveal to us the foundations of her anger, how can she convince us that she is more than a spiteful child, adept only at making the less crafty around her uncomfortable?

Brilliant observation. There's much more where that came from in the rest of the article.

PBS - thank you!!!! for Broadway: The Golden Age

Last night, I happened to catch the final half-hour of a certain fund-raising drive on my local PBS channel - and they were showing an absolutely MARVELOUS documentary called Broadway: The Golden Age. It's eventually going to be a 3-part extravaganza - and last night the first part was shown - which talks about "the golden age" - Broadway in the late 40s and 1950s. When there were sometimes 80 new plays a season. What??? Some of the interviews were just absolutely classic - I am so glad I caught just a tiny bit of it. I made my pledge (I always need to be reminded - I am on a newsletter that lets me know when these fundraising drives occur) and sat back to just REVEL in the damn thing.

Stevie - Alex - Mitchell - Curly - have you seen this documentary? I know I saw the huge one on the Broadway musical (Broadway: The American Musical)- that was ALSO on PBS, and it was something like a 10-part extravaganza - and it was unbelievable. It was on a couple of months ago, and I was home on a Saturday, and I watched the whole eniter THING.

But back to "The Golden Age": First of all, the people they interviewed are just GIANTS to me. Angela Lansbury - talking about Mame - and how it was really the only part she could remember really wanting. And she really had to convince them that she could do it. She didn't have a big enough name. But of course she ended up giving the performance of her life - a performance that is now seen as iconic. Lansbury said, near the close of the special, "I will never ... ever ... get a part like that again." And she knew it at the time. She needed to come out of this enormous comfort zone to play that part (even though she was already VERY successful) - and boy did she ever.

Gena Rowlands! My own personal idol. She said, "We were live - there were no mikes on the actors - I remember watching a play with Ben Gazzara - who had the best speaking voice on Broadway - and I was sitting in the balcony, and he was whispering - and I could hear it. We had trained voices then!" Then - the next clip was Ben Gazzara (who, please. I just absolutely love that guy) saying, with a wry little grin, "I remember whispering during some show I did - and being heard ..."

What I wouldn't give to see Ben Gazzara live. Those performances he gave in the 50s ... I mean, they're also iconic. People still reference them. They're still seen as kind of IT. Here he is with Barbara Bel Geddes in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:

It also basically brought tears to my eyes to hear how many times Laurette Taylor was referenced. She is the guiding light - she's "the one" we all aspire to. I didn't even SEE her performance as Amanda Wingfield in the original Glass Menagerie - of course I didn't! It was in the 1940s!! But still. It's a landmark. A high-water mark for everybody. Funny and weirdly gratifying thing: I am now #1 on Google for "Laurette Taylor" because of this post. I wrote that over 2 years ago. And slowly, without my knowing it, it has been climbing the Google rankings ... I can't tell you how many people have written to me because of that post. Laurette Taylor really MEANS something to people who know who she is. And most people don't know who she is. One of our greatest American treasures - and no one knows who she is. Shame, shame, shame. Well, I am proud of the fact that my little post is up there at the top of the list - because it's a tribute, basically - a tribute to this giant of American theatre. She should be remembered. And since that post is now #1, more and more people have been finding it (I can see in my traffic reports) - and that makes me feel even better.

People in the PBS special last night even say her name differently ... it's iconic. It means something. All you need to do in certain crowds is say "Laurette Taylor" and people just KNOW.

Elaine Stritch is just amazing, I love her crotchety honest old self. What a phenomenal performer. Truly.

Tommy Tune was interviewed and he said something about how he felt like it was a shame that "revivals" were taking up so much space - when there were so many NEW plays and musicals that should be nurtured! Then they cut immediately to Elaine Stritch and she says, "There are new generations who should see Kiss Me Kate - who should see Guys and Dolls - one of the greatest musicals ever written - I think the revival trend is great!" Wearing her little wool hat, with her pissed honest eyes. Love that woman. Love Tommy Tune, too. I can see both views ...

There was a big section on Marlon Brando which was absolutely awesome. They interviewed Karl Malden - who worked with Brando many many times, also in Truckline Cafe which was Brando's big break. At least in the theatrical community. That's when he became known to THEM. Streetcar was when he crossed over into the public's consciousness - but Truckline was almost a bigger break, because it made Streetcar possible. There are multiple eyewitness accounts (Pauline Kael, for one) of his performance in Truckline - and how exciting it was. People literally thought they had found some guy off the street and put him on stage - it was that believable. Malden said something very interesting - that Brando "shattered the transitional period between two different styles of acting." There was already a trend towards a more "realistic" style of acting - Montgomery Clift, etc. - and Brando basically trashed the old world with one performance. He didn't set out to do that. That was not his goal. He just was a genius - it was his destiny, that's all.

I did a Google search for photos of Brando in Truckline - but nothing came up immediately. I did, however, find a page of his notes that he made for The Godfather on the back of the pages of his script. It's an insight into the mind of a great actor. I love stuff like this because it is evidence that Brando wasn't just a freak-talent - who worked on instinct. He was a craftsman. He thought about his work. He made choices based on script analysis. The things all competent actors should do. It's just that his instrument, his emotional instrument, was 100% available to him when he got "in the moment". Most actors are lucky if they get to 80 or 90 percent, and they cherish those rare moments when they are 100%. Brando just got out of the damn way when he was acting. No barrier between himself and his impulses. Very very rare.

But look at his notes here:

#Nose broken early in youth to account for difficulty ...

Gives me chills.

They interviewed Kim Hunter who said, "When you act opposite that kind of truth - it makes you better than you think you are. You are in a whole new world." Then there was a still from the Broadway production of Streetcar - black and white - Marlon, in his sweat-stained T shirt, holding onto Kim Hunter's arms, and yelling at her. It was a still: And my God. It was so damn real - Humphrey Bogart always said that, in acting, "Truth should be 6 feet back in your eyes." That photograph of Marlon Brando is exactly what he was talking about.

Kim Hunter said something really interesting. She said, "Brando made bad choices onstage. Brando made mistakes, and he made wrong choices. But one thing he never was - was a phony."

And that, my friends, is an acting genius.

They interviewed Jerry Orbach quite a bit. I miss that man, I really do. What a career.

Basically, the whole time I was watching last night - I yearned for a time machine. I would literally kill to be able to see Brando as Stanley, or Gena Rowlands in Middle of the Night, Ben Gazzara in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Lansbury as Mame, Gwen Verdon in pretty much anything ... these giants. Giants of the American theatre.

I am certainly hoping that there is a repeat of Broadway: The Golden Age - I missed the beginning of it. And I look forward to the next 2 installments which apparently take us up to the present day. Through the revolutionary theatrical moment that was Hair ... up to now.

Oh, and Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson joined the telethon host in the studio - to talk about their experiences in the New York theatre throughout the years. They have seen it all. They were THERE. It was great - Strange. Seeing the two of them is somehow like seeing an old friend. Their work, and not just their work, but their LIVES - have been such an inspiration to me personally.

It's funny: I admire these people SO MUCH for performances I have never seen. I think it was John Gielgud who said that acting in the theatre was like "sculpting in snow" and it is very true. We have eyewitness accounts. And for the more recent shows, we have video of it. But there is nothing like seeing it live. Nothing. It's sacred to me - live theatre - and so seeing these people - like Wallach - who gave performances on Broadway during the 50s and 60s that people STILL talk about - hell, look at me, I'M talking about them and I didn't even see them - is very moving to me. Their work means so much to me.

I grew up on public television (zoom-ah-zoom-ah-zoom-ah-zoom ... hahahaha And, of course, Masterpiece Theater. COME ON!!). Supporting public television is kinda engrained in me. Last night was a gorgeous moment when I remembered why! Money well spent.

Beautiful documentary!!!

The Books: "A Secret History of the IRA" (Ed Moloney)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney. If I recall correctly, Emily got so angry reading this book that she threw it across the room! Good times!! Ed Moloney has been Northern editor of The Irish Times and the Sunday Tribune - and has written this book with unprecedented access to - well - the "secret history" of the IRA. It's the story of the IRA but more than that it's the story of the rise of Gerry Adams. The pretty much Machiavellian rise of Gerry Adams. Having stayed in Ballymurphy when I was in Belfast, and having - uhm - seen Gerry Adams' car outside the Sinn Fein head office - I really feel like an insider. There is nothing like seeing Gerry Adams' car parked at the curb to really make you feel close to the HEART of something important. heh heh This book is DENSE, man - I found it tough-going at times to keep on reading it.

When my family went to Ireland when we were all kids - we went to visit my "Auntie Bridgie" in Killarney. An 83 year old woman who lived in a 2-room dark house with cows right outside the door. Her husband had been dead for ... 30 years? 40 years? Anyway, on the dark stained wall over the stove were three things: A picture of JFK. A picture of Pope John Paul II. And a pin in a small dusty glass case - the pin had a red ribboned thing hanging off it. I am unable to describe it, because I am a loser. It wasn't a medallion - but a ribboned thing, almost like an epaulet - Anyway, that was her husband's IRA pin. Of course this would have been the IRA back in the 20s and 30s, a very different organization from the one we see now. But those three items were the only wall decorations. Kinda says it all, don't it??

I'll post an excerpt about the Provisional IRA.

From A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney.

The first Provisional leaders were sure of the rightness of their cause and the reasons for breaking with the Officials. The initial statement from O Bradaigh's breakaway Sinn Fein in January 1970 listed five reasons for splitting with Goulding: his recognition of the Irish and British parliaments; the move to embrace extreme socialism; illegal internal disciplinary methods; the failure to defend Belfast; and the policy of defending the Northern parliament at Stormont. The list demonstrated that the Provisionals were essentially a coalition of differing grievances; for some Marxism was the major problem with Goulding, and for others the military rundown of the IRA. One characteristic of the new IRA above all others that united the coalition - the glue that held it together - was a distrust of politics, parliamentary politics in particular, and an unshakable belief in the correctness of armed struggle.

The early Provisional leaders were determined that they would not stray down the path of parliamentary reformism trod by other nationalist and republican leaders. Each previous generation of freedom fighters had been betrayed, they believed, by leaders seduced by the siren call of parliamentary politics. They would be the exception. For this reason they defined the relationship between Sinn Fein and the IRA in simple and traditional terms. The military wing, the IRA, was in charge, and Sinn Fein would obey and be subservient to the Army Council. That was the case in the South and also in the North, where, according to one veteran party activist, Sinn Fein was secondary to the IRA from the outset: "Sinn Fein was the poor relation. It wasn't worth bothering about. Sinn Fein in the 1970s was an organization without clout; it supported the 'campaign' and held lofty ideas of a united Ireland but nothing else. The IRA was boss."

As the war intensified and more and more Northerners joined up, the antipolitical nature of the Provisionals intensified, as one of the Provisionals' founding members recalled:

When the resistance began, Northerners came in droves, and they were reacting to events for a number of years. The Northern guys were quite slow to be politicized. They looked down on Sinn Fein and dismissed it, saying, 'We're Army men.' I shared a cell with them in Mountjoy, and that was their view. They were quite happy sitting in their cells reading the Sun or the Mirror boasting about operations. They were purely militaristic - hit, hit, keep on hitting.

Whereas the first IRA commanders were Southerners, the foot soldiers in the war, the Volunteers, came overwhelmingly from the North and at first mostly from Belfast, where the attempted loyalist pogroms of August 1969 had taken place. Many IRA units elsewhere in North, in republican heartlands like Tyrone, Armagh, and Derry, were slower to take sides in the republican split; in some cases months went by before they decided whether to follow Goulding or MacStiofain. The Provisionals were born in Belfast and sustained by the city's bitter sectarian politics.

Some of those outside Belfast were repelled by the Provisionals' simplistic politics. Typical of this category was the Derry republican Mitchel McLaughlin, who stayed with the Officials for several months before joining the Provisionals, later rising to become a key Adams aide and advocate of his peace strategy. "At the time of the split," he once told an interviewere, "I actually stayed with the Official Republican Movement. Mainly because of their politics which undoubtedly were more progressive than the more, kind of nationalistic rhetoric that I was hearing [from the early Provisional leaders]." Gerry Adams and the Ballymurphy unit were not the only IRA members to hesitate before taking sides in the split. Not surprisingly, many were waiting to see who came out on top, and so what happened in Belfast was crucial. When Belfast republicanism went over to the Provos, as it did during the crucial year of 1970, many of the rural units followed, and soon if angry young Northern Catholics wanted to hit back at either the loyalists or the British army, they knew they would find a warm welcome in the Provisionals.

The IRA before August 1969 was an organization kept going by family tradition. Membership was passed from father to son, mother to daughter, but the recruits who flocked to the ranks of the Provisionals were a new breed, motivated by an atavistic fear of loyalist violence and an overwhelming need to strike back. Known as Sixty-niners, they joined the IRA literally to defend their own streets, were resolved that the near-pogroms of August 1969 would never again be repeated, and were ready, if the opportunity arose, to retaliate. They joined the Provos because the Officials had failed to defend their communities in the way that was expected, and they automatically associated the Officals' obsession with politics with military weakness and betrayal. From the outset abhorrence of politics and the requirement for defense and armed struggle were just different sides of the same coin.

Typical of the new Provisional IRA Volunteer was Bernard Fox, an apprentice coach builder from the Falls Road who joined the IRA in 1969, when he was just eighteen years old. He is now a senior figure in the leadership and was named in 2001 in the British media as a senior figure in the Provisional IRA's GHQ staff. He spent nineteen years in prison, either jailed or interned, for IRA activitiy. His motive for signing up was straightforward, as he once explained in a newspaper interview after the peace process reforms had secured his release fromk prison: "I was almost shot in a gun attack at Norfolk Street. I came away wanting a gun. It was survival. You wanted to protect your own people ... my family and myself. When the barricades went up I wanted a gun so I approached this fella who was in the IRA and asked for gun and he said: could I shoot a British soldier? At that time I hadn't the idea that it was the British government's fault ..."

Brendan Hughes from the Lower Falls Road district, a figure who later became an IRA legend, was similarly affected by the violence of August 1969. "At that time it was simply 'Here we are being attacked by Loyalists, by B Specials, by the RUC, by the British army,' and there was a need to hit back," recalled the former Belfast commander. "I mean I was in Bombay Street the morning after it was burned out, helping people out, and I went to the bottom of the Falls Road and seen all the burnt-out homes. I had relatives in Bombay Street who were burnt out, and I felt the desire to get back at these people who were doing it." Micky McMullen, a former long-term IRA prisoner, came under similar pressure but managed to resist it: "Up to 1969 there was nothing, but August 1969 was the turning point. I became involved in community defence you know and stuff like that, helping families to move after they had been burned out. At that time a lot of my friends would have been trying to join the IRA and the rationale would be just to get stuck into the 'Orangies' you know. It was a defence thing but something stopped me from getting into that."

Fox, Hughes, and McMullen and the many hundreds who followed them into the Provisional IRA in the first years of its existence were part of a Northern Catholic tradition that went back nearly two hundred years, when another armed uprising had very nearly ended British rule in Ireland. The United Irishmen's rebellion of 1798 is celebrated as the moment when modern, secular Irish republicanism was born, but it but it also coincided with the birth of sectarian politics in Ireland and left a scar that marked Northern socidety for centuries to come.

American Idol thoughts

Ace: STINKS.

Kelly: STINKS.

Elliot: I love how much he loves Stevie. He's got some great pipes that guy. What I like about him is his sincerity. He's got a good voice, and I never feel like he's up there trying to sell me a line of BULL SHIT, like some of the others. He seems sincere. But unexciting performance.

Bucky: Wow. The hair. Hmmm. Bad. I actually thought he picked the perfect song for his voice. Smart choice.

Kevin: Uhm. Wow. Embarrassing. The makeup job was atrocious. And I felt plain old UNCOMFORTABLE listening to him singing about being a "part-time lover". Randy and Paula just blew smoke up his ass. This is why I love Simon. I know I can count on him to tell the truth - AND when he says "Good job" it actually MEANS something. Kevin's a cute kid, it doesn't mean he's a bad PERSON - but send him home, please.

Katharine McPhee: In my opinion, she has the best voice on the show. Just in terms of a naturally good singing voice. But there's something missing ... I don't know.

Melissa: She sucked.

Lisa: She made no impression on me - although I loooooooove that song. Simon said it was the best performance of the night - but that was before Chris performed.

Paris: This is sacreligious to some but I honestly don't know what the big deal about Paris is. She's cute, whatever. But I don't find her voice pleasing to listen to at ALL. It's screechy, she's not at ALL in control of it - she goes for effects and CONSTANTLY goes sharp or flat ... she's young, fine, but plenty of young people have kick-ass voices. She does not. I like her PERSONALITY but that's not what we're judging here. I would NEVER buy a Paris album. I also just don't like that type of singing, in general. The kind of singers who can't hold a damn note simply but have to constantly go up and down the scales. Just not my taste.

Mandisa: Love Mandisa, I love her whole THING - who she is onstage, who she is off - beautiful - but she needs to work on her lower register - the beginning of her song BLEW. Once she gets up high in her voice, she's great and exciting - but the first couple minutes sounded like unprofessional karaoke to me. Horrible. I wish they had called her on it.

Taylor: Someone needs to tell Taylor that "Livin' for the City" is not a song of CELEBRATION - it is a song of rage. I love Taylor, and that was a perfect song choice for him, but his "interpretation" made me mad last night. It was too self-serving, he was smiling and dancing around - Dude. That's wrong. Listen to the damn lyrics you're singing. My two cents.

Chris: Far and away the best performance all night - and, in my opinion, all season. Go, Chris! I so want to own his version of that song - Simon's right - I'd buy it. He, to me, looked like a PROFESSIONAL. Taylor did, too - I just thought his performance was stupid - but Chris looked like he already IS a star. He's "got it". He made everyone else look like amateurs.

More Idol posts

Sarah K - I always check in with her Idol posts - they're awesome, totally stream-of-conscious - but also very perceptive

Cullen weighs in

Ann Althouse (validating to see that some of her commenters agreed with me about Taylor's poor interpretation of that angry song)

And Tracey!!

The Books: "Chechnya: To the heart of a conflict" (Andrew Meier)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Chechnya: To the heart of a conflict by Andrew Meier. I didn't really like this book. Interesteing topic - but Meier was too pleased with himself for all the things HE went through in Chechnya. It's a travelogue/political history of the place and the conflict - a la Robert Kaplan and others ... but somehow, the tone of this book made me think it should be called: Look, Ma! I'm in Chechnya! Also, here's another thing: The book is literally 106 pages long. It's tiny. Uhm - can you get "to the heart" of that conflict in 106 pages?? You dare to say you've gotten "to the heart" of it in a book no bigger than a pamphlet? Seems a little un-ambitious to me. I'm thinkin' there's quite a lot going on in Chechnya and to get "to the heart" of it, you have to write about more than your terrifying experience at some chaotic checkpoint.

Here's an excerpt about North Ossetia.

From Chechnya: To the heart of a conflict by Andrew Meier.

Vladikavkaz, christened as a garrison town in 1818, means "To rule the Caucasus." The North Ossetians have yet to live up to the bravado, but they have long served as the proxies of tsars and general secretaries in helping tame the unruly tribes of the south. In August 1942 Hitler's troops planted a Nazi flag atop Elbrus. Hitler wanted the Grozny oil fields and dreamed of taking Baku, with its vast reserves of Caspian oil. Not surprisingly, in some Caucasian circles, the Germans found support. How many sided with the Nazis is a matter of historical debate. No one will ever know. To some, the Germans doubtless offered a chance to oppose Soviet power. The Ossetians, however, stood loyal. The Nazi forces got no further than Vladikavkaz, then called Ordzhonikidze after a Georgian aide-de-camp to Stalin.

In recent years North Ossetia had distinguished itself as a singular outpost of fidelity. Things, however, could have gone very differently. In the last years of the old empire, as minor satraps across the south raised the sword of religion and the shield of sovereignty to revive "ancient hatreds" remembered by few, North Ossetia was the first Soviet tinderbox to explode. In the late 1980s, tensions boiled between the North Ossetians and the Ingush, the ethnic minority in the east -- and the Chechens' next of kin. Both sides claimed the pastoral land east of Vladikavkaz known as Prigorodny, just on the North Ossetian side of the border with Ingushetia.

The roots of the trouble, like much of the present turmoil, began with Stalin, who in 1944 ordered the Ingush and the Chechens deported en masse to Central Asia. On February 23, 1944, Red Army Day, and the twenty-sixth anniversary of the founding of the workers' and peasants' army, Stalin tricked the Ingush and the Chechens into coming out to their town squares. They were rounded up and packed off in lend-lease Studebaker trucks. For the next thirteen years, until the liberalizing thaw that followed Khrushchev's secret speech of 1956, when they started to return to the lands, the Chechens and the Ingush disappeared from the pages of officialdom. The Soviet Union had established a tradition, as Robert Conquest notes in his seminal book on the deportations, The Nation Killers, of erasing the existence of intellectuals who had earned the wrath of the state. "Unpersons," George Orwell had famously called the writers and poets who were erased from Soviet society, if not killed. But as Conquest points out in regard to Stalin's rounding up of the Chechens and Ingush, among other minorities, "the 'unnation' was a new phenomenon."

Before the deportation Prigorodny was Ingush. In the last years of the USSR the Ingush began to exhibit their intention of reclaiming it. In 1992, their Soviet bonds loosened, the Ingush and the North Ossetians went to war over the scrap of land. The fighting cost hundreds of lives on both sides, but the North Ossetians, backed by Moscow, kept their hold on the dry pastures of Prigorodny.

There had been another small war, across the mountains in Georgia, beyond the famed Darial Pass, among the Ossetians trapped in another contrivance of Soviet mapmaking called South Ossetia. In 1989 the South Ossetians, with a population of some ninety thousand, had risen up, seeking to break free of Georgia and reunite with their brethren to the north. No nation on earth, however, recognized their sovereignty. The North Ossetians meanwhile remained loyal to Moscow. Fealty had its rewards. The tiny republic of fewer than a half million now led the Russian Federation in vodka production. "Ours is a special relationship," President Dzasokhov said of the coziness with the Russians. "We have a history of understanding."

Hey

Not ready to talk about last night - it was a private night of intense joy - intense - wonderful - but just want to thank Jess for her words. Sorry about the heartbreak, Jess ... but I guess if you felt heartbreak then that means the piece works.

Thanks for being there, everybody. You all know who you are.

Thank you.

The creator of Loadstone O'Toole

It's Max Shulman's birthday. Who the hell is Max Shulman, you may ask? Or some of you may ask? Hahaha He was one of the most popular humorists of his day - who reached his peak of popularity in the 1950s. He's the dude who created the Dobie Gillis character. He was VERY successful - and is now kind of a forgotten artist. Strange. He also was a screenwriter.

Now I somehow tripped over his book I Was a Teenage Dwarf when I was a teenager myself. This is the chronicle of Dobie Gillis' crazy "woman"izing when he was in high school (the shortest boy in town. Hence - the title.)

It was in the library where I worked as a page (my first job). I have no idea why I would have picked it up - it's kind of an old-fashioned looking book - It LOOKS older than the more recent titles -but also, let's remember - this was at the height of the whole Happy Days craze - so maybe something in the 1950s-ish cover appealed to me.

Also, I DO know that my parents both LOVED Max Shulman. So when I brought the book home they recognized his name immediately, and told me: "You HAVE to read Rally Round the Flag, Boys!"

I remember vividly my mother TRYING to tell me what the name of one of the lead characters in Rally round the flag was - and completely not being able to get the name out because she started guffawing with laughter. The character's name was: Loadstone O'Toole. Even now - just typing that - I started laughing.

Max Shulman is one of the funniest writers I have ever read in my life. In fact, I was asked to leave my high school library because it was study period, and I was reading that book, and I started laughing so loudly that I could not control myself. Basically, I was GUFFAWING into the studious silence. Tears literally streamed down my face, despite the fact that I was being "Sh"ed left and right. I finally had to just gather up my book bag and stagger out into the hall, where I stood, and literally HOWLED with laughter, by myself, for a good 5 minutes.

Uhm - I can count the writers on one hand who are that feckin' funny.

Over the last couple years, it became my mission in life to find all of his old books again - so I could own them. Many of them are long out of print, and really hard to find. So strange. It's not that long ago - the 1950s and 60s - but his reputation has not survived. It's a shame. I have rarely come across such fanTAStically funny books. Member the famous Christmas pageant scene in Owen Meany? Max Shulman's books are that funny all the way through. The Strand sometimes had copies of his books - I always checked whenever I was there. I got some of his lesser known titles - but the holy grail eluded me. (I Was a Teenage Dwarf) I was dying to know if the book would be as funny to me as an adult as it was when I was a kid. I let my dad know, librarian that he is, what I was looking for - so he could keep his eyes open if he came across copies.

Eventually - a box arrived on my doorstep. I opened it. And took out two books: Rally Round the Flag, Boys starring the marvelously named Loadstone O'Toole (LOADSTONE O'TOOLE???? hahahahahaha) - and oh. my. God: I Was a Teenage Dwarf. Yay!!!!

I immediately took Teenage Dwarf up to my roof, with a thermos of coffee, and sat there in the autumn sun - tearing through my old childhood favorite. I finished it in a couple of hours.

And for the record? It was even funnier than I remembered. It's MEANER than I remembered. It's more biting, bitchy, merciless ... But I sat up there on my roof, the memories were just flooding back (Dobie Gillis at one point has a girlfriend who is a tomboy - and she is constantly playing stickball and climbing trees - and always falling down - so she always has cuts on her knees - her nickname is Red Knees. I was like: "Oh my God! I remember Red Knees!!") - but the sheer ridiculousness of it all was JUST as delightful, JUST as absurd. Like ... Dobie Gillis has a girlfriend whose accepted nickname is RED KNEES. Like, he's having a romantic makeout session with her, and he calls her "Red Knees" as he leans in to kiss her. "Oh, Red Knees ..." I mean - I just snort with laughter reading this stuff.

Writers who make me cry are great. I love them. But writers who make me laugh have my heart forever.

Max Shulman: a witty madcap man with a ridiculous and yet somehow very HUMAN sense of humor ... hugely successful in his day ... now mostly forgotten. If you ever come across his books in a used bookstore, I highly recommend you give them a read. They are laugh-out-loud funny.

Happy birthday, Mr. Shulman!!

One of the many good things about Alex ...

... is that she never disappoints. I knew she would put up a great tribute to Maureen Stapleton and she did. I particularly love the comment Maureen made after winning her Oscar. hahahahahahaha Beautiful post, Alex - thank you!!

The Books: "Nicholas and Alexandra" (Nicholas Massie)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. The story of the final Tsar and his wife. Great book. I've read a couple other books about the Romanovs but none so detailed, none so well-written. It's kind of horrible to read it at times, because you already know the ending. And it just - I hate the thought of those children in that basement, with their jewels sewn into their corsets, trapped, being shot to death, the smoke filling the room. ANYHOO. It's also kind of creepy to read it because you just get the sense that history is marching towards these people - and it is about to march right on by them ... WE know that, because we know the end, but Nicholas and Alexandra don't. They behave in ways that seem almost willfully ignorant ... like they are covering their eyes and shouting LALALALALA at reality. The whole Rasputin thing ...

I'm going to excerpt a bit from one of the chapters on Rasputin. I have a hard time believing that the dude actually EXISTED. What a strange man. What a ... he's kind of an Elron Hubman type. I have no idea - there's so much mystery about him. Alexandra got it into her head that Rasputin had, by sending a telegram at the perfect moment, put a mystical stop to her son's hemophiliac attack. And for her? That was it. Rasputin was IN. He was a holy man, a healer, and he was somehow able to keep Alexis' disease at bay. Alexandra didn't CARE about the rumors, she didn't care that many people thought Rasputin was a fraud, and a user. He was IN.

From Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie.

Gregory Rasputin was one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic men to appear on earth. He was an overwhelming personality and a superbly convincing actor. He had prodigious physical strength and caroused night and day at a pace that would kill a normal man. His physical presence projected enormous magnetism: prime ministers, princes, bishops, and grand dukes as well as society women and peasant girls had felt his powerful attraction and, when the relationship soured, had been as powerfully repelled.

Now, all of the terrible power of this remarkable personality was concentrated on a single objective: convincing the Empress that he was as she saw him, the pure, devoted Man of God, sprung from its soil of peasant Russia. Because of his painstaking care, Alexandra never saw him as anything else. His superb performance was strongly enhanced by the miracles she had seen take place at the bedsides of Alexis and Anna. Whenever he felt himself threatened, Rasputin skillfully played on the Empress' fears and her religious nature. "Remember that I need neither the Emperor or yourself," he would say. "If you abandon me to my enemies, it will not worry me. I am quite able to cope with them. But neither the Emperor nor you can do without me. If I am not there to protect you, you will lose your son and your crown within six months." Alexandra -- having been through Spala and the nosebleed on the train -- was not willing to take risks. Rasputin must be what he said he was and he must stay with her or her world would collapse.

Shrewdly, Rasputin secured his position and enhanced his hold by meeting the Empress's more prosaic need for constant reassurance and encouragement. His conversation and telegrams were an artful blend of religion and prophecy, often sounding like the gloriously meaningless forecasts which fall from penny machines at county fairs: "Be crowned with earthly happiness, the heavenly wreaths will follow ... Do not fear our present embarrassments, the protection of the Holy Mother is over you -- go to the hospitals though the enemies are menacing -- have faith ... Don't fear, it will not be worse than it was, faith and the banner will favor us." Blurred though these messages were, the Empress, weary and harassed, found them comforting.

Politically, Rasputin's advice was usually confined to carefully endorsing policies which the Empress already believed in, making certain that the idea was rephrased in his own language so that it would seem freshly inspired. Where his ideas were in fact original and specific, they accurately and realistically represented peasant Russia. Throughout the war, he warned of the bloodletting. "It is getting empty in the villages," he told the Tsar. Yet, when challenged by Paleologue that he had been urging the Tsar to end the war, Rasputin retorted, "Those who told you that are just idiots. I am always telling the Tsar that he must fight until complete victory is won. But I am also telling him that the war has brought unbearable suffering to the Russian people. I know of villages where there is no one left but the blind and the wounded, the widows and the orphans."

Another great one gone

Maureen Stapleton has died. Some great background there on her extraordinary body of work. She was one of my childhood acting idols. Her breakout performance in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo on Broadway with Eli Wallach is the stuff of legends ... what I wouldn't give for a time machine to see her play that part!!!

A real actor's actor - she had a career most people only dream of.

I love this quote from Maureen about being an unattractive person (she knew she was, she had no illusions about herself - especially not with people like Marilyn Monroe as her best friend):

"People looked at me on stage and said, 'Jesus, that broad better be able to act.'"

And dammit, she could.

Rest in peace, Maureen.

Meme Monday

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18 and find line 4.

cigarette and still another, until the Kraut across the way,

[That's from A Very Long Engagement]

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can, what do you find?

Empty air

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

The Big Love premiere last night. Yawn.

4. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

Ah. My iTunes. On Shuffle. Glory. I am now participating in the technological revolution.

Last 10 songs on the shuffle were:

Peacherine Rag - Scott Joplin
Go Away - Lorrie Morgan
Forgiveness - Patty Griffin
City of Blinding Lights - U2
Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz
You Can't Hurry Love - Stray Cats
Lucky - Radiohead
Hercules Unchained - Pat McCurdy
World of Two - Cake
About a Girl - Nirvana
One Day I'll Fly Away - Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge soundtrack)

5. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

Uhm - walking. Whatever. I was outside. Dumb question.

6. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

I looked deep within my soul.

7. What are you wearing?

Brown skirt with little beaded embroidered flowers on it. A camisole-y top of a deep plum color. A brown jacket.

8. Did you dream last night?

Yeah.

9. When did you last laugh?

Last night, watching Dave Chappelle's HBO comedy special. I was howling.

10. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

A huge map of Ireland (an old map - it has sea monsters on the side of the map, stuff like that). Also my shadow box thing I bought at a flea market. I put all my knick knacks in there. Also the painting my mom did of maple-syrup buckets on the side of a tree. Also my two framed things from Trinity College in Dublin: the 1916 Proclamation and a page from the Book of Kells. Also the photograph by Sam Shaw of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Oh, and also a world map above my desk.

11. Seen anything weird lately?

I tried on a top yesterday that looked really good on the hanger and looked absolutely heinous on me. That was pretty weird.

12. What do you think of this quiz?

Not too wacky about it, to be honest with you.

13. What is the last film you saw?

Hustle and Flow. I need to talk about Terrence Howard. I'll get to it someday.

14. If you turned a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?

A house. A car. A DVD player.

15. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.

I am very freckled - and apparently the freckles on my left cheek look like the constellation for Libra. Or so I've been told.

16. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do?

Are we talking magical powers here? Like wave a magic wand? I'd make my friend Beth's MS disappear.

17. Do you like to Dance?

Yeah.

18. George Bush.

He seems a little dehydrated these days. Drink 8 glasses of water a day, dude. Very important.

19. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

Moira.

20. Imagine your first child is a boy, what would you call him?

I like Ciarán.

21. Would you ever consider living abroad?

In a heartbeat.

22. What would you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?

"Yes. There are aliens living on other planets. You've always wanted to know, and I am now confirming it."

23. 4 people who must also do this theme in their journal.

I just don't do that. Sorry.

From Beth

Weekend snapshots

-- I got most of my hair chopped off. I love it. It looks great.

-- My new bookcase was delivered. I put it up in my main room - which now means that I have four bookcases in that one room. My kitchen has three bookcases. And my foyer has 2 bookcases. WHOO-HOO. But the book situation, even with all the bookshelves, was getting out of control. So I had a glorious time rearranging EVERYTHING. I moved all my fiction into the new bookcase - it just looks wonderful. All of my titles, all of my books - six whole shelves of them - lined up - ducks in a row and all that. I moved other stuff around, too. I put all of the first-person memoirs I have (except for the ones by actors - those I keep in a separate section) on their own shelf - I moved all of my science and religion books to another bookcase - so that I could then have more room for my theatre books. I am very happy with the new arrangement.

-- I picked up a painting I had dropped off at he framing store ... It's this old stained drawing of Sarah Bernhardt - my dad gave it to me years ago - it's black and white, she is sitting in profile - It's an old and fragile work. It's been sitting in a big thick cardboard envelope for a couple of years and I finally went and got it framed. I chose a big thick old-fashioned frame - with a kind of silvery sheen to it - which totally brings out the starkness of the black and white drawing ... It is GORGEOUS. I am really happy with it. Now I just have to decide where to put it. Running out of wall space.

-- I am now at the point where I am bummed if I can't exercise every day. Breakthrough!! Today it's rainy so ... argh. It means I have to go to the GYM as opposed to running outside, which is my preferred brand of exercise. But I have to go. I can't tell you how huge this is. I used to be that way - addicted to exercise - Like, I didn't feel like MYSELF if I didn't take my 8 mile run every day. I would get ... antsy and itchy. So the fact that I woke up early this morning, and heard the rain hitting my window right beside my head, and my first thought was: "Shit. No outdoor running today" is a huge breakthrough. Whoo-hoo!!!

-- Yesterday was great. A gorgeous sunny breezy day - like something straight out of heaven.

-- And during my haircut yesterday - while she was shampooing my hair - I felt a bolt of something very very familiar. I'm doing my one-woman show tomorrow night - I've been working on it, and having - shall we say - a very WEIRD week with it. I won't go into it. Let's just say that I've had a helluva time even working on this damn thing for various reasons. And so my main feeling about performing tomorrow has been one of nervous-ness. And not the good kind of nervousness. More of a: Oh shit. Fuck. I have to do this. Dammit. I'm not ready. Argh. This is the kind of nervous-ness that can make you choke!! Anyway, I was leaned back with my head in the sink, being shampooed - and out of nowhere - I felt a huge burst of adrenaline - like a cherry tomato exploding in my stomach - hahahaha - and it was the GOOD kind of nervousness. It was adrenaline, feeling pumped, and thinking: "I can't WAIT to do this. I can't WAIT to get up there." Funny: I know my own process well enough now to know that I have a week or so of the bad nervous-ness before the good nervous-ness takes over. It's always just a matter of time before the cherry tomato explodes. I just have to keep doing my work, and keep in the process.

-- I rehearsed on my roof for a couple of hours. A sweeping and windy view of the entire gleaming island of Manhattan ... the sounds of kids playing basketball a week away - the hovering traffic helicopters, the buildings across the Hudson catching the gleam - I love my roof because nobody else seems to utilize it. I'm up there all the time. So I rehearsed. If anyone had been watching me, they would have thought I was crazy. A chick with SHORT SHORT HAIR (heh heh) in sweatpants, on the roof, standing and gesturing and making little marks on a huge invisible pad of paper (part of the show). But it was good. I had about 10 run-thrus of the thing.

-- Took a run along yesterday at sunset time. The beauty was beyond belief. Everybody was out - families, kids, people walking, running .... The sunset blurring the sky - the tall buildings of Manhattan catching the dying gleams of the sun - and bursting out into gold - the purples, and blues - and the high white moon. This is my new routine, and I am BEYOND attached to it.

The Books: "The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein" (Sandra Mackey)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next book on the shelf is The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein by Sandra Mackey. Another book by Mackey. Again, like her book on Saudi Arabia, there's probably nothing here that is new to any of us - especially now, when we are getting to know Iraq as well as our own country!! But still: it's worth a read. I like the sections about the ancient world - Mesopotamia, and the Assyrians - and the Middle Ages, and all that. But the book, as a whole, gives really good background to the conflicts we see there now.

I'm going to post a bit about the first modern king of Iraq - King Faisal. The monarchy only lasted four decades. I did a lot of research about King Faisal a couple of years back because I was in a play where I played Gertrude Bell, a really interesting woman - often called "the female Lawrence of Arabia" - who was really one of the ones responsible for setting up Iraq as we know it now. A "sand-mad Brit" - an unconventional woman (obviously!!) - who was buried in Baghdad, so revered was she by the people at that time. She was considered one of them. Anyway - she was a big supporter of Faisal - really one of his greatest champions - so playing her was one of the reasons I did a boat-load of research