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 (WB) - 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 WB, 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. WB, 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."

WB 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." WB 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. WB 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 WB. 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 WB had sat down next to me and was leering at me. At us. Phil gave WB an enormous grin. There was all kinds of significant telegraphing going on in their eyes.

Phil said, "WB, this is Sheila. We are talking about LA."
WB said, "I hate California."
I said, "I hate it too."
Then WB 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 WB, Phil and I would launch into a vigorous discussion of LA freeways. I think Phil really was trying to say to WB, "Get lost." Finally, Phil looked straight at me, shutting WB out, and said, "And the 10 West goes straight into that Santa Monica sunset!" WB 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 WB would cringe and cower like the Wicked Witch of the West and wince away, laughing. Phil and I would sit in expectant silence as WB 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: WB 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 ...

WB is now known here on this blog as Window-Boy. (Hence: "WB".) And THAT is how we met, which always just cracks me up. 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". (These were Window-Boy's exact words - when we talked about this first night many many many moons later.)

If anyone able to see the future had whispered to me in that moment: "Window-Boy - who you don't even KNOW as Window-Boy yet ... because he hasn't started climbing through your window yet at all hours of the night ...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 Window-Boy'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 Window-Boy, 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. Window-Boy and I. In a funny way, I think Window-Boy 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 Window-Boy 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 Window-Boy 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 Window-Boy, 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?

Window-Boy 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!"
Window-Boy, 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.
Window-Boy 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 Window-Boy: "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. Window-Boy 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."

Window-Boy, 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, Window Boy 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 WB, 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? Window-Boy.

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 Window-Boy'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