January 31, 2009
For all of you Hope lovers out there
I was gone for most of the morning. Returned home at about 1:30. Hope either greets me at the door or I walk into my room and she is crashed on my bed. She is never anywhere else. It is like she is in only one of two states at all times:
1. WAITING FOR THAT LADY TO COME BACK
or
2. OBLIVION.
But today was different. She didn't greet me at the door and she wasn't on the bed. I even pulled back the covers to see if she was buried under them. Nope. Well, this cannot stand.
I said, "Hope?"
Glanced around and then saw that she had set up shop in my duffel bag lying in a spot of sunlight on the floor.
I think it's perhaps the cutest thing I have ever seen. She was looking up at me (let me anthropomorphize) as though thinking, "Is it okay that I'm here? I know it's a change, I know I'm switching it up a bit ... is it okay?"
Clouds and gleam
Buildings in gleam and shadow on the east side of Manhattan, near the UN.
My favorite kind of day in New York.
Mary's in the basement, chillin'
There is a joke connected to these pictures but I can't remember what it is. Jean probably remembers and I am sure Mum does. The jist of it goes: someone (a friend of my parents) had a statue of the Virgin Mary. We live in the southern half of Rhode Island - where religious statuary in the yard is not as prevalent as in the northern half of the state, which is mainly Italian. (Mitchell, Sandi and I used to, for fun, drive through rich estates in Cranston and Warwick, going on "statue tours". It was hysterical). So someone had a statue of Mary and it became a joke - this friend would leave Mary on our steps, ring the doorbell and then run away. Mum or Dad would open the door, look out, see nobody, then glance down and see THAT. It was then up to them to return the favor, and surreptitiously place Mary somewhere where the neighbor would see her. Mary turned up everywhere. Girl got around.
I came home one weekend, went down into the cellar to get something ... and there she was at the foot of the stairs. Waiting for her next placement.
Feeding the horses
I love when Ree (Pioneer Woman) writes about the herds of horses they have living on their land. And I especially love it when she writes about the whole feeding-process in the middle of the winter. I think this is my second year reading her - so only my second winter - but I was looking forward to the icy photos - and especially the horses with the wind in their manes, and the sprinkling of snow on their tails, lining up to be fed in the icy grass.
Gorgeous creatures.
So stark and beautiful.
January 30, 2009
Mum, this is for you.
Oh, and Tracey, too, because you asked!
And for anyone else who cares and who isn't on Facebook:
A glimpse of the new digs.
New York scenes
Some things I saw in New York City today.
An unlocked bike, waiting for its rider.
I like to think of this as a spitoon, even though I know it's not.
Pretty and stark contrast.
Old school steak house
Lumber yard
Antique shop
A brave tree
Birds in flight
Behind the scenes at a bakery
Piles of oranges and grapefruit on a frigid day
Myself
Beth in the waves
I love this picture. The beach was pretty crowded that day, strangely enough, but I managed to get a shot of Beth (very pregnant, she would give birth a week later) standing in the surf, holding her daughter Ceileidh - and it gives the impression that they are the only two people at the beach. I like it a lot.
Picasso in Daley Plaza
I have many many photographs of the huge Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza in Chicago. It's quite a sight. It's also great because the stand for the sculpture is slanted, so kids slide down it, and frolic through the sculpture itself - we don't need to stand on ceremony around art - it's just there, for all to see, enjoy, ignore, play on.
Gargoyles in Chicago
More Chicago pics - since I know so many of you out there are from there, or have lived there.
Photographs of the fantastical library downtown with the huge green gargoyles.
My dad had a long correspondence with a book collector in Ireland (well, he had many long correspondences with many book collectors in Ireland) - and this one guy had said that he had a collection of postcards of libraries in America. You can't say something like that to my dad without him running with it. This book collector said that to my father in 1981, and there was never a town that my father went to, after that time, that he didn't try to procure a postcard of the local library to send to this guy. We would laugh about this poor man in County Kerry, being like, "Jesus Mary and Joseph, enough with the postcards!" But I'm sure he loved them.
I never did get a postcard of the Chicago library - and just personal photographs would not do for the collector - they had to be postcards ... but I did give my dad these pictures nonetheless.
An amazing building.
Dressing room
This is the dressing room at the Shattered Globe Theatre in Chicago. That place STANK. We all felt that there must be a rat decaying behind the walls or something. But oh, the hilarity in that co-ed dressing room. Hard to even describe, but we all remember it well.
"Even his walk made him different from everyone else."
I'm reading Nureyev: The Life
Additionally, any author who approvingly quotes from Robert Conquest's book to support her themes and to create the appropriate atmosphere is okay in my book. Conquest is one of my all-time idols and I felt a weird proprietary thrill when I saw her quoting from The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine
I also appreciate Kavanagh's honesty about Nureyev's personality, which was notoriously difficult. One of the impressions I am getting from the book, so far, and it is really moving - is that Nureyev was one of those people who was aware, very early on, that life is short, we do not have a lot of time, and you have to take your chances when you can find them. You also must make your own destiny. You want to dance for Balanchine? Make it happen. He was ruthless, relentless, and he always always always had his eye on the ball. This made him a nightmare, even for other geniuses in the field, who perhaps had more of a balanced response to life ... but Nureyev was not balanced. It was dance, and dance only. This was a man with a destiny. You can sense it. And he could too. Such creatures are rare.
I am loving the book. Highly recommended.
Here's a picture of Nureyev, age 14 or 15, in a ballet studio in Ufa, where he grew up. This was before he moved to Leningrad, and joined the Kirov.
January 29, 2009
Sheila, telephone call! It's Skyward Christmas on the line.
You might recall my story of going to see The Wrestler at Keith and Dan's house - and how Suzy Gilstrap, paraplegic actress, hijacked our evening. You'll have to read that to understand what's going on here. No desire to re-cap.
Something rather extraordinary has happened.
A gentleman named Glenn left a comment on that post - saying that he is a pilot, loves aviation - and so, years ago, he taped not only Skyward but ALSO the mythical Skyward Christmas that Dan was so obsessed by. What??? Tapes exist?
I emailed Glenn and basically said, "Dude, can you send me copies, bro?"
Glenn is a very nice man, friendly and humorous, and also encyclopedic on the planes used in the TV movies - which was his "way in", and why he taped the damn things in the first place. So anyway, the most amazing thing has happened in the middle of this, a surreal and awful month.
Glenn has made copies of the movies for me, and is sending them on.
Naturally, I emailed Keith and Dan immediately with this amazing news. It is hard to explain how much I am looking forward to getting together and watching Skyward AND Skyward Christmas with these fine gentlemen.
But the best thing is: Glenn sent me some publicity shots (look like), of the films in question - and there's good ol' Bette Davis in her red lipstick and mechanics' overalls, and Howard Hesseman being all crotchety and full of tough love with the paraplegic pilot-in-training ... and words can't express how excited I am to see these two movies.
Dan, Keith and I dreamt of this moment, but we considered it a dim possibility. The glory of the internet is: it only took little over a month for this bizarre dream to come true.
It's been a real gift this month. People are good. Thank you, Glenn.
Images from Glenn below.
Scanning Thursday
The Civic Opera Building in Chicago - quite a spectacular building. I worked in a huge gleaming office building on the other side of the river - there was a bridge right there - and I took this photo from the walkway on my side of the river. The front of the Opera building is all columns and statues, very classical and grand - but the back is a sheer stone wall that goes right down into the water (at least that's how I remember it), like something in Venice. I just loved the look of it. I almost preferred the back of the building, architecturally, to the front.
Scanning Thursday
Here is Michael, lecturing me about something or other, as he chows down on his stack of French toast. We had done our show the night before, then probably hung out at his place or my place, watching movies (Johnny Handsome??) and kissing like lovesick teenagers in American Grafitti, and then met up for breakfast the next morning, to nurse endless cups of coffee and read our books. I loved it when he got vaguely annoyed with me and felt compelled to lecture me. I tried to make it happen as much as possible, and then would take pictures of the moment.
Scanning Thursday
I'm not sure - because I like a lot of the photos I've taken - but this might be my favorite one. My dad and my brother.
Scanning Thursday
A couple of shots from the St. Patrick's Day parade in Chicago. As I am sure most people know, Chicago dyes their river kelly-green on that day. It's kind of gross.
January 28, 2009
Scanning Wednesday: Places I have lived
Here are some places I have lived.
The house on Wayne Street in Chicago. I lived there with Ken, Mitchell - and, briefly, Jim. Poor Jim slept in an airless pantry on the floor for a couple of months and then I moved out to come to New York and he took my room. We were a big happy family. There were two cats in the house - Sammy and Duffy. We all gathered at night to watch 30something on Lifetime, having raucous in-depth conversations about the show. On occasion, M. would crawl through my bedroom window to attack me in the dead of night. On occasion, I would forget my keys and crawl through the front window of the apartment until Mitchell scolded me: "Sheila, you are advertising to burglars how easy it is to break into this place." We had a front stoop where we would sit and have coffee on the weekends. There were green velvet couches in the front room. I loved that place. The apartment itself was no great shakes, but I loved the vibe there.
Here is the door to the apartment I lived in in Beacon Hill, Boston, for one weird surreal summer. I had graduated from college, and my boyfriend was interning at a bigwig law firm in Boston and convinced me to live with him for the summer. This went so against the grain of my family that I was shunned by my grandmother at a family party (she got over it, but still). The funny thing is: everyone lives with each other now, but I was the first to openly be sinful in my family - on EITHER side - and I remember at that one family party, I was kind of upset because everyone was just abuzz with judgment about me - but all of my cousins kept pulling me aside and saying, "Thank you ... You are paving the way for us .... it'll be easier for US now." And it was. Because I took the fall for all of us. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't lived with him that summer. It was a stupid-ass summer. I worked in a gourmet deli, my boss was satanic, my boyfriend worked 90 hours a week, and I felt lost lost lost. I didn't know what to do with myself. We also had gotten an apartment based on what my boyfriend could pay - meanwhile, I was making minimum wage, and ended up BROKE. It was a nightmare. Dumb summer. Let's erase it.
This was the first house my parents bought. They moved there when I was 5 years old. We stayed in that house until I was 11. It was in a big neighborhood, with tons of kids - all of whom were my friends but my main buds were Jen and Katy - and my main memory of that neighborhood is being outside all the time and ignoring our mothers calling us in to dinner. Playing baseball, tag, having mud wars in the woods, skating on the pond in the woods, and generally living in a world of make-believe. It was a classic childhood neighborhood - with trick-or-treating (there was one weird guy whose house we wouldn't go to), and one house with a scary Doberman, and we all took piano lessons from one lady in the neighborhood, and we all stole raspberries off the one bush in that one lady's backyard, and etc. etc. It was a tiny house with a massive yard surrounded by forsythia bushes. Billy Hodge ran through the forsythia bushes one day and upset a beehive and chaos ensued. I will never forget that day.
This is the absolute DUMP in Hoboken where my dear friend Jen and I lived for, oh, six years? It was on Monroe, a couple streets north from Frank Sinatra's birthplace - on the less-fashionable side of Hoboken, full of bitter Italians who have no idea what has happened to their town. Such a person was our landlord. Now, he was very good to us (in a weird way), and the rent was outrageously cheap - small wonder, the place was FALLING APART. We had to bungee-cord the cupboard handles on and crap like that. But let me not paint too bleak a picture. The place was enormous and it actually had a lot of character. We were on the top floor. We had a huge strangely-shaped foyer - big enough for a couch, a table, a coat rack, a bookshelf - there was a big living room - a small room off the living room that we used as an office - there were two bedrooms, and my room had a closet the size of a small Manhattan studio. It was HUGE. I had a chair in there. Mkay? There was a kitchen and out of the kitchen windows was a fire escape where Jen and I would sit, watching the sunset. Our windows faced West - so we could see the tip of the Empire State Building as well as the World Trade Center from our kitchen. It was a kickass apartment. But the landlord was a bitter man - and he didn't like what we represented - he liked US, but he hated who we were ... and he eventually ran us out. Great apartment. You'd never know from looking at that dumpy exterior, huh? Included a link of the view from our kitchen window as well.
I don't mean to try to sound like Jewel - because, ew, who would want to do that ... but my boyfriend and I lived out of our van for two months. It was a true unmooring - we weren't on a vacation - we were on a break from LIFE - my possessions were stored in my parents' attic, we had no apartment to go home to even if we had wanted to, and we had no forwarding address. As far as he and I were concerned, we were both moving to San Francisco. But then, somewhere along the way, I realized what a dreadful idea that was - and decided I would move to Los Angeles instead. Having no place to stay once I got there. And no furniture, no clothes, no nothing. Crazy. I can't say it was cool to live out of a van. You start to appreciate things like warm water and laundry that doesn't freeze on the line. But there were moments - like this one - we kept running into this guy in the photo across the country. We'd be at some truck-stop and there he'd be. Three states later, we'd go to some county fair, and there he'd be again. Guess we had the same itinerary. It was pretty funny. He was really nice. He "came over for dinner" one night, and we cooked quesadillas on our little stove, and then drank whiskey as the coyotes howled around us. That's what's going on here. I know it sounds like a total cliche, but whatevs, that's how it happened.
Okay, so this is a weird photo but it's really the only one I have of this apartment that really shows the dysfunction. Mitchell and I moved there after living in "the box" on Melrose Street, a one-room studio. This was a two-bedroom apartment on Ashland and Berteau, a classic Chicago apartment, with a wooden staircase in the back - and ... what can I say, it was a lovely apartment - but we NEVER. MOVED. IN. Mitchell said we "belligerently refused" to move in. And the funny thing is, I don't think he and I ever discussed it. We never said, "Should we maybe unpack a little bit? Should we maybe put some stuff up on the walls? Should we maybe ADMIT that we live here?" There was no reason to be ashamed. It was a nice apartment. But we were insane then, our lives were a whirlwind of bacchanalian adventures involving insane Lebanese cousins, various wrecks of boys from improv clubs, and happy hours at gay bars. We could not have cared less about putting up posters or maybe getting a plant or two. Who gives a shit about that. Let's dress up in each other's clothes and take pictures. This photo - I assume we're getting ready to go out - but let me point out that we have been living in the apartment for MONTHS at the time this photo was taken, and you can see that things are still in boxes. We only lived there a year before we moved to Wayne Street (see above) - in one of the most infamous moves of all time (a story in and of itself) and it's funny: Ann Marie helped us move (and got so hyped up on the whole MOVING thing that she promptly moved herself) ... and she noticed how at the last moment, with the last box going out the door, Mitchell and I had nary a response. We didn't turn to glance back, we didn't "have a moment" - we were already halfway down the damn stairs, chattering about going to some stupid improv jam and fucking with people's minds. We laughed about that later. Ann had more of a response than we did. "Ohhh, you guys ... you're moving! What a great time we've all had in this apartment, haven't we? Uhm ... where are you guys? Oh, you're already down the stairs ... Pardon me."
I have more photos of my various abodes. Just need to find them and organize them.
Goodbye 30 Rock
I knew ye well.
It was really important for me - working there ... it was the harbinger of a lot of change, good and bad - but mostly good. By saying "yes" to that job, there was a shift - a huge shift - in how I thought about my life, and who I was, and what I was capable of. And because of that - all kinds of OTHER things started happening in my life, writing things, and personal growth - that I truly believe would not have been possible if I hadn't said "yes" to that job. It was leaping into the unknown, learning how to do things, learning a whole new culture, doing things I'd never done before, and succeeding - I might add - and also making two new awesome friends - Caitlin and Patrick. The three of us even invented our own language.
But now it is time to move on.
30 Rock montage below.
Photo Wednesday
I took this last week, the day before the plane went down into the Hudson. The Hudson was frozen, and I felt like I was in St. Petersburg, staring at the Neva, and getting ready to throw Rasputin into the chunks of ice. This was after I had already poisoned him and then shot him and then set fire to his stinky beard and then stabbed him and then gouged out his gleaming fanatical eyeball ... and yet the bastard still wouldn't die. He had to go into that ice. It was the only way.
These are the things I think about when I look at frozen rivers.
January 27, 2009
Scanning Tuesday
This is not a very good photograph, but it brings up an entire world and a time for me. I was living on Wayne Street, in Chicago - off of Southport - and M., the man in my life, lived four blocks away. He was the one who would crawl through my window at three o'clock in the morning (or, once, by accident, through Mitchell's window), scaring me half out of my mind - until I got used to it because he did it so often. I'd wake up from a deep slumber, see a man crawling through my window in the dead of night, and be like, "Hey there, what's up ..." Insane. He lived in one of those classic Chicago apartments - with a wooden back staircase, with little porches on each floor (porches that, on occasion, collapse under partygoers - causing much catastrophe) ... and when I would go over there, and I was always over there, I never buzzed the buzzer. Ever. Maybe the first time I buzzed the buzzer but after that - I would just go around to the back alley, climb up the staircase, and let myself in through his kitchen door, which was always unlocked.
We had been seeing each other for three years at this point - but we had always had to make dates, and make plans ... but for that last year all of that kind of stopped. And we were constantly just letting ourselves into each other's apartments on a moment's notice. Or, as the case may be, crawling through the window.
Here is the back staircase on a snowy night. It's hard to photograph snow so that it really looks right. The photo is dark and dreary ... but I do like how the snow looks. And I do like remembering that time in my life, when ... I didn't need to ask permission to enter, I didn't need to even call first ... I could just walk four blocks, and there I would be, five minutes after leaving my own apartment, lying on his couch watching some ridiculous kung fu movie and eating takeout.
Scanning Tuesday
I love this photo. It is Mitchell and Alec - my boyfriend for a semester in college - at a Halloween party (before we dropped the characterizations required of our costumes). Alec went as a nerd and Mitchell went as Jackie's grandfather Chester. Look at Mitchell's face here! Well, look at both of their faces. But not for too long. You might find yourself turned to stone.
Scanning Tuesday
Down at Shedd Aqarium, in Chicago, with my friends. It's quite a spectacular spot. You can look north to the city, and Navy Pier - with water sloshing in between. It was July or August, and David and Maria were moving back to New York. We were all very sad ... I love these pictures because it really evokes that weird in-between time: when they were still there, with us, but time was running out ...
Scanning Tuesday
Here I am, in some huge red rock canyon in Utah - I've been living in my van for two months at this point, so please forgive my ridiculous outfit - and I remember we were sitting there, and bats were swooping over our head. The sky was black with bats. It was totally and unbelievably awesome.
Photo Tuesday
I took this in November, on a rainy day, and I was hanging out at the insane Apple store across from the Plaza Hotel. I think it came out pretty cool.
Scanning Tuesday
Here I am in 5th grade (I believe) making challah bread (I still remember that day vividly for some reason) ... I am standing next to one of my friends through childhood, but I eventually had to dump her because she was so bossy that she would make her friends TIE HER SHOELACES. She was a mini despot. We were all afraid of her. I remember one day I was walking through our neighborhood with her and my REAL best friend J., and the girl stopped, with the weary air of a monarch, put her foot out, and said, "My shoelace is untied. J., could you tie it for me?" And J. suddenly found her inner strength, her soul, her spirit ... her SPIRIT WAS FREE ... and she said, quivering with fear, "No."
Our whole world collapsed. Or, no, OUR world didn't collapse. But it collapsed for shoelace-girl's in that moment. She blinked once or twice, staring at J., and said, ominously, "What?"
J., standing tall now, on FIRE with her own courage, said, "I don't want to tie your shoelaces. I won't tie your shoelaces again."
I wanted to cheer.
My memory of that moment ends there ... I don't know if J. and I ran off to her house, screaming in excitement, or if we had a big fight with shoelace-girl ... but I do know that things were never the same with that shoelace-girl again. She had lost her power source. The spell was broken.
But that's a side note. Here we are making bread. I do like the glimpses of our faces here, we are concentrating so hard - so in the moment!
Scanning Tuesday
Uhm ... Cashel?
Is that you????? You big boy with glasses and books and a great vocabulary and a Boy Scout uniform?? Is that really you?
January 26, 2009
Today in history: January 26, 1907
Until I get my words back for real, blogging will continue to be photo-oriented, a Facebook version of my blog. I cannot write right now. I am not myself.
But today is an important anniversary and one that has family-connections for me -a story I heard as a child, one that seemed so real that I felt like I must have been there myself - and so I must commemorate it. This is something I post every year on this day, because it's such a great story, so here it is again.
On this day in history, John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World
Playboy is now in the history books, not only for being a wonderful play, and part of the theatrical revolution going on in Ireland at the time (the creation of the Abbey Theatre, etc.) - but also because of the riots that broke out when it opened on this day in history (they are now known as "The Playboy Riots"). Things got so out of hand that a police squad had to stand along the edge of the stage during the performance, so that the actors wouldn't get hurt or mobbed. If I had a time machine, I would LOVE to go back and be there on the opening night of that play. It's on my top 5 theatrical events I would like to see.
Synge wrote:
Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.
The formidable Lady Gregory, dear friend of Yeats, and his partner in creating the Abbey Theatre sent Yeats two telegrams during the premiere of Playboy of the Western World.
The first one, sent at the close of the first act, read:
Play a great success.
At the end of the third act, she sent a second telegram:
Play broke up in disorder at the word 'shift'.
"Shift" as in "underwear". There is some controversy as to what Synge meant by the word "shift". Did he mean "chemise"? Or was it the more controversial meaning - as in "underwear"?? The audience thought it was the latter, and they went ballistic.
Oh, for a time machine.
Some background.
Synge's time out on the Aran Islands, off the wild west coast of Ireland, gave him the nuggets of inspiration for many of his plays. Out there the "native language" was still spoken, out there he could encounter the real Ireland.
Synge had spent a lot of time in Europe, taking courses in French literature, immersing himself in different cultures, reading Baudelaire, writing poems, chasing girls. He remained interested in his own country, but there wasn't really a place for him there. (it's hard to imagine Ireland without Synge, but he had to TAKE that ground, he had to claim it - it didn't exist before he came along.) Yeats' nationalistic literary (and theatrical) movement (in broader terms - the Irish literary revival) drew Synge back to his home country - the Abbey Theatre was formed - things were HAPPENING in Ireland. In retrospect, it all seems inevitable. Of course Synge would not only come back to be part of that movement, but he would end up defining that movement.
Yeats gave Synge a piece of now legendary advice:
Give up Paris, you will never create anything by reading Racine, and Arthur Symons will always be a better critic of French literature. Go to the Arran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.
In the middle of what was, essentially, an Irish cultural revival, Yeats (having been out to the Aran Islands) recognized that there was something untouched out there, a primitive life, Irish language still spoken, the culture not corrupted. Yet. It was a race against time. A sentimental attitude, yes, but my God, the art that came out of it. Not just people who subscribed to the Irish revival (Yeats, Synge, O'Casey) - but those who rebelled against it (a little-known author named James Joyce). Without the Irish cultural explosion of the early 20th century, Joyce would not have been possible. He had to define himself against something, contrarian that he was.
The leaders of the cultural movement in Ireland at that time all had the same idea: Inspiration lay in the West of Ireland. Go west. Go west to find the real Ireland. (Interesting, to think of the final paragraphs of Joyce's The Dead (excerpt here ... even with his European inclinations, his desire to get OUT of Ireland - he finished that story with a spiritual journey westwards).
So Synge took Yeats' advice and went west.
The story of his four trips out to the Islands make up his book The Aran Islands
Not surprising, then, that Playboy of the Western World would cause such an uproar.
Here is an excerpt from Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh's marvelous book The Splendid Years: Recollections of Máire Shiubhlaigh as told to Edwa
Máire was an actress, highly involved with the cultural revival of the time, and a member of the Abbey Theatre. Her memories of Synge (and also her memories of the "Playboy riots") are fascinating. Here she speaks of Synge:
John M. Synge who came to us with his play direct from the Aran Islands, where the material for most of his later works was gathered, was born near Dublin in 1871, graduated at Trinity College, and shortly afterwards left Ireland for the Continent, living alternately in Germany and France, where he made a rather precarious livelihood as a violinist and contributor to literary magazines. Yeats had discovered him in Paris in about 1897 and, recognizing the quality of his writings, had brought him back to Ireland, where he introduced him to Aran, prophesying that in the beautiful lyrical prose of the western peasant he would find an original vehicle for dramatic composition. He was right. Synge went to Aran for a month, and stayed there, on and off, for a matter of years. He drew his inspiration from the hearths of the tiny whitewashed cabins and the harsh rocks of the western seaboard, gathering tales and expressions from the old and the young of the most picturesque portion of Ireland. In a short life -- he died at the early age of 38 -- he wove them into sombre dramatic tapestries, embroidered with the rhythmic language of the Irish peasant. His prose, highly musical and enriched with flashes of the most beautiful poetry, he devised simply by transcribing direct from the Gaelic of the islands. It is most difficult for an actor to master; most effective if delivered correctly.
She's got that right. I did a scene from Playboy in a class in graduate school, and while my scene partner and I had a hell of a lot of fun working on it, it was damn difficult to get that language right. Not just the language, but the rhythm, the tone. It doesn't matter if you get the words all correct, and remember all your lines, if you say them in the wrong rhythm. Rhythm is everything. It was a great challenge.
Máire wrote of Synge himself:
He was a gentle fellow, shy, with that deep sense of humour that is sometimes found in the quietest people. His bulky figure and heavy black moustache gave him a rather austere appearance -- an impression quickly dispelled when he spoke. His voice was mellow, low; he seldom raised it. But for his quiet personality he might have passed unnoticed at any gathering. During rehearsals of his play, he would sit quietly in the background, endlessly rolling cigarettes. This was a typical gesture, born more of habit than of any desire for tobacco -- he gave away more cigarettes than he smoked. At the first opportunity, he would lever his huge frame out of a chair and come up on to the stage, a half-rolled cigarette in eaach hand. Then he would look enquiringly round and thrust the little paper cylinders forward towards whoever was going to smoke them. In later years he became the terror of fire-conscious Abbey stage-managers. He used to sit timidly in the wings during plays, rolling cigarettes and handing them to the players as they made their exits.
He didn't set out to revolutionize Irish theatre. He just wrote down what he knew, with humor, wit and anger. That was the only way this guy could write. It turned everything upside down.
Here is Máire's description of some of the objections to Shadow, just to give you an idea of what was going on, and to also set the stage for the "Playboy riots". Synge was, indeed, ahead of his time. The world is rarely kind to those born ahead of their time.
The piece was "un-Irish" wrote some reviewers, an "insult" in fact to the peasant women of Ireland whom Nora Burke was taken to typify. There was an immense verbal furore about it. A number of writers claiming that Synge was slyly attacking the institution known as the "made marriage", and attributing it solely to Ireland, raised all sorts of objections. Others wrote of the character of Nora Burke: "Nora Burke is a lie". Of the play they said: "It is no more Irish than the Decameron. It is a staging of the old-world libel on womankind -- the Widow of Ephesus."Now, I do not propose to analyse the extraordinary attitude adopted towards the play. Indeed, the attacks were launched so suddenly that few of us were even able to gather what they were all about. Perhaps it was that the Irish play-going public of that time was so used to the "genteel" comedy of the established theatre which I mentioned earlier -- the entertaining but not very realistic stuff that was time and again put before it -- that it couldn't swallow a credible satire. In those days if an actress played an unpleasant part, then it followed that she was an unpleasant person. Similarly, if a dramatist wrote a nasty play he was a nasty fellow. Then, of course, there was the fact that Ireland was on the threshold of a renaissance. Everybody, writer, politician, artist, was at pains to eulogise over the beauty of the Irish character. The advent of a comparatively unknown writer who painted an unpleasant if realistic picture of the peasantry at such a time was, to say the least, unwelcome. The Dubliners who raised the loudest objections could not accept In the Shadow of the Glen as a play. They refused to be entertained.
In 1907, the Abbey Theatre produced Playboy of the Western World. Máire, who was there, writes:
The "Playboy Riots", as they came to be known, indicate very clearly some of the difficulties that the Abbey was called upon to face during its first years -- and they show how the theatre, under Yeats, managed to surmount them. When this play is produced in Dublin now it is recognised and enjoyed as a work of art. In 1907 it drove a number of people into such a frenzy that they nearly wrecked the Abbey. I am in rather a good position to describe the riots because I was in the audience during some of them. Curiosity had taken me into the theatre, as it had taken many another person that week.It was about the end of 1906 that Synge finished the Playboy ... Yeats later mentioned that Synge took considerable trouble over the piece and scrapped a number of earlier versions before he fixed on the one which was eventually produced...Yeats never tired of recounting the care which Synge lavished on the piece. This, indeed, may have been indirectly responsible for the reception accorded the play by some sections of the public, whose main argument against it was that it was "a slander on the peasantry of Ireland". As in the case of The Shadow of the Glen, its realism gave offence. The only differnce between it and any other play that did not take was that the public, instead of showing its lack of interest in the accepted way -- by its non-attendance -- displayed its disapproval by rioting in the theatre throughout the play's run. The most unusual feature of the affair was that although the players appeared on the stage and acted their parts for a whole week, the uproar caused by the audience was so great that the play was never really heard on any night but the first, and those who took part in the demonstrations on subsequent occasions were dependent on opinions of the firstnight audience and a few rather hysterical newspaper reports. As the week progressed, the trouble instead of lessening, increased, and before the run of the play was half over, the management felt compelled to call for the assistance of the police to preserve order.
The explanations put forward by the rioters during the week were many and varied and it is worth remarking that no two people appeared to base their objections on exactly the same thing. Some objected to the piece because "it made a hero out of a murderer" (the play deals in part with the welcome accorded by a West of Ireland village to a weak-willed boy who believes he has just killed his father); others claimed that the language used was too strong; more contented themselves by saying that the play was "vicious, untrue, and uncalled for" -- a "hideous caricature" in fact; while a considerable number based their objections on the assumption that the piece was a deliberate attack by Synge on Ireland in retaliation for the manner in which The Shadow of the Glen and The Well of the Saints had been received.
(All of this makes me think of what Joyce said, when it became apparent that no Irish publisher would go near The Dubliners and he would have to look outside his own country for a publisher: "It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass." )
Máire describes what it was like in the theatre, on the opening night of Playboy of the Western World, January 26, 1907.
The first act went well. There was laughter at the right places and the correct degree of solemnity was maintained when it was demanded. But during the second act I began to feel a tenseness in the air around me -- I was sitting in the pit -- and there were murmurs from the stalls and parts of the gallery. Before the curtain fell it was obvious that there was going to be some sort of trouble. Faint calls and ejaculations like "Oh, no! Take it off!" came from various parts of the house and the atmosphere gradually grew taut. In the third act things really came to a head and those around began to stamp the floor and shout towards the stage, the noise gradually increasing until the voices of the players were drowned. People stood up in their seats and demanded the withdrawal of the play, and when it became clear that the cast was determined to see the thing out to the end, tempers began to fray. The auditorium became a mass of people pulling and pushing in all directions. By the time the curtain fell on the last act, the crowd was arguing and fighting with itself. People in front leaned over the back of seats and demanded quiet -- a lot of people seemed to be doing this -- and those at the back responded by shouting and hissing loudly. The crowd which eventually emerged into the street was in an ugly mood.
Despite vicious and hysterical reviews the play went on. One of the objections was that the word "shift" appeared in the play: Christy - the lead character in the play - says - in what is now acknowledged to be a fine piece of dramatic literature, and one of the classic monologues of the stage:
"It's Pegeen I'm seeking only, and what'd I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the eastern world?"
This was seen as a shock and an outrage.
The Press and the public called for the play to be closed, the hysteria mounted, but the Abbey refused to capitulate. Obviously, Synge had struck a nerve. But things were getting out of hand, it was a violent atmosphere in the audience ... and so Yeats tried to quell this fire. Máire describes:
On the third night Yeats addressed the audience before the curtain rose. If anyone had anything to say against the piece they would be welcomed at a debate which he would be glad to arrange in the theatre at some other time. He was interrupted several times. He asked the interrupters to at least listen to the play so that they would know what it was they were objecting to.
It is just like those idiots who protested Scorsese's Last Temptation without even seeing it.
Such people have always existed. Their complaints are always the same. As a matter of fact, without the idiots, there would have been no such thing as "The Playboy Riots" - which catapulted Irish theatre onto an international stage. So I suppose we should be grateful in a way! Nothing like someone screaming, "NO ONE SHOULD SEE THIS" to make something into a giant hit.
Back to the Playboy Riots:
As on the first night, the opening passages were listened to quietly, and even evoked a little laughter. Halfway through the second act, however, a murmur arose in the pit and a man a few rows away stood up and, without any apparent reason, hit the person beside him. A gasp ran around the whole house and the lights went up. All around him the crowd was breaking into disorder.Within minutes, the audience in the pit and stalls was completely disorganised, and the crowd in thte back and side galleries was almost as bad. Almost everyone was standing. The noise was deafening. Yeats appeared on the stage and pleaded with the sensible members of the audience to remain quiet. His voice was drowned by catcalls, cheers, much stamping of feet, and from somewhere at the back ,the notes of a toy trumpet which came from the centre of a group of young men who looked like university students. He continued to speak, but his words were apparently objected to by those in front, for a howl of protest went up from the stalls and parts of the side gallery, which increased in volume as those behind joined in or tried to cheer the protest down. On the stage the players stood in little knots, discussing the occurrences amongst themselves.
As the noise increased and several arguments broke out around the theatre, Yeats left his place on the stage. A few minutes later the doors into the auditorium opened and to the horror and surprise of most of those present, a body of police entered. At the same time the curtain came down and a semblance of order was restored -- partly due to the sight of the uniforms ...
After a brief speech by Yeats, and the ejection of the more truculent members of the audience, peace was partially restored, and everyone sat down again. At this stage it would have been impossible for anyone to get out. After everyone had been quietened and the greater part of the audience reseated, it would have been dangerous for anyone to stand up. Those who did so were immediately surrounded by hefty policement and shepherded, not too gently, in the direction of the vestibule.
Meanwhile, the orchestra, a recent addition to the theatre, began to play. The music seemed to help matters somewhat, and things almost returned to what they were before the play began. There was much discussion and gesticulation going on however. The affair was still far from settled.
After some time the orchestra retired, the lights were lowered and the curtain went up. Almost immediately the audience reverted to what it had been before the arrival of the police. Not a word of the play could be heard. The cast eventually gave up speaking altogether and went through the piece in pantomime. As the play progressed the noise increased. Men and women stamped the floor, banged the backs of their seats with their fists, shouted and sang alternately. On the stairs from the stalls a man stood, dramatically addressing no one in particular.
The players courageously went through the whole piece. During this time several arrests were made and the police were kept busy operating between the doors and the hall. Just before the play ended I saw an opportunity to escape and took it. Almost everyone in the row where I had been sitting had vanished. I was able to make a dash for the door at the rear of the pit while the police were busy in the front of the house. My last impression of the scene was the sight of a figure standing on a seat somewhere about the centre of the stalls and the sound of a few bars of God Save the King, which were quickly stifled as someone pulled the singer down.
The play continued to be performed, and continued to generate riots and protests, garnering the attention of the world.
Synge died an early death, in 1909, but he left an indelible mark - not only on Ireland, but on theatre as a whole.
I'll end this post now, with a quote from Synge's beautiful book The Aran Islands (and I will post a photo, too, of Synge staring out into the Atlantic, from one of the Islands).
In the following excerpt, he describes leaving the Arans after a couple months' stay ... and returning to the bustle of Galway:
I have come out of an hotel full of tourists and commercial travellers, to stroll along the edge of Galway Bay, and look out in the direction of the islands. The sort of yearning I feel towards those lonely rocks is indescribably acute. This town, that is usually so full of wild human interest, seems in my present mood a tawdry medley of all that is crudest in modern life. The nullity of the rich and the squalor of the poor give me the same pang of wondering disgust; yet the islands are fading already and I can hardly realize that the smell of the seaweed and the drone of the Atlantic are still moving round them.
Happy birthday to Playboy of the Western World. This was bittersweet for me. I post stuff like this for one person in particular. And I do so still.
Scanning Monday
When Mitchell first moved to Chicago, he lived with me, in my rickety one-room studio on Melrose Street. I had a SINGLE BED which was a mattress on the floor. We slept in the same bed all that time. Mitchell, how on earth ...???? We are good friends, that's all.
And of course, there was the Sammy factor. Mitchell is not really a cat person, but that didn't matter to Sammy. Not one bit.
Scanning photo
This photo from over 20 years ago captures my friendship with David then. And it also captures my friendship with David now.
Scanning Monday
When I lived in Chicago, my cat was Sammy, the aforementioned best cat in the world. At some point, when I lived with Mitchell and Ken - we got another cat - a small demon kitten named Duffy, who was TRULY satanic. You were NEVER safe in that house as long as Duffy was there. He would leap out from corners, from the tops of doors - ambushing you, pouncing, he was faster than the wind, and he wanted nothing more than to claw your head to bloody bits.
Sammy, as you can imagine, was NOT happy about this evil interloper and watching their interactions were so hilarious. Sammy was a grown cat, about 8 or 9 years old by this point, so he would stroll past Duffy and casually just bat him across the face, on his way somewhere else. But Duffy couldn't let it go. Duffy wanted to be friends, foes, mortal enemies, whatever ... he just wanted CONTACT.
Here is a photo I took of Duffy.
He looks so cute, right?
Do not be fooled. His cuteness was merely a camouflage for his bloodthirsty warrior-like nature.
Scanning monday
I've probably put this one up before because it makes me laugh. Seesawing - as an adult - with the boy you are dating - but most important: seesawing with a total lack of irony.
Michael is one of the many friends who has helped keep me sane this past couple of months.
In this photo, we have known each other for all of four weeks. We began dating almost immediately upon meeting one another, skipping all of the preliminary steps - because seriously, why bother - and at the time that this photo was taken we had settled into the rhythm of an old married couple. He even said to me, around this time, "I think we're in a rut. We need to shake things up." A rut. After four weeks. It made no sense, but whatever, he's still in my life today. Not too shabby, not too shabby. Important to see the gift in such things.
Good friend.
Photo from Meredith
My group of friends in high school loved fondue - when we would go to New York on our yearly drama club trip, we always went to this fondue joint (is it still there??) before going to see whatever Broadway show was on the bill. We have continued our "fondue party" tradition - as a matter of fact, I think we had fondue at Beth's last year, am I right?
But here is a photo of my friend Betsy and myself ... and I hope to GOD it is a birthday party as well, because otherwise our hats make no sense ... and I am trying to figure out our ages here. Sixteen?
I realize I am holding a regular old fork but I think I saw a fondue pot in one of the other photos.
It is so funny and interesting (and mortifying) to see the photos that other people have in their old photo albums. I know the ones I have by heart ... but I honestly don't believe I've ever seen this photo.
I also honestly don't believe my cheeks could possibly get any redder without me having a stroke.
I love you, Betsy! I love all you wonderful women - and let's get together for fondue real soon.
Scanning Monday
My sister Jean married Pat on September 20 of this year. It was one of the most emotional days I have ever known. My uncle Tom (my dad's brother) is a photographer and took a ton of pictures of that day, all of them marvelous. He seemed to be everywhere, yet you never noticed him snapping. He took a picture of all of the O'Malleys sitting at the wedding - well, not all of them - but most of them. Uncles, aunts, cousins, spouses, children ... all waiting for the wedding to begin. It was a reunion, but more than that, it was an affirmation of family. Everyone knew it was a special day, besides the amazing fact that Jean and Pat were getting married.
I love the picture of the O'Malleys below. First of all, everyone looks like movie stars. There are two actual stars in the photo - of television, screen and stage - but everyone looks like stars to me. And I look at all of those faces and just think: My God, I love those people. I could not have gotten through it all without them. None of us could. Even now, when we are all scattered, I feel them all with me.
January 24, 2009
Photo
My dad in his office at the library. When I was in college, I would stop by in between classes, to talk with him and tell him about my day. He always wanted to hear everything.
Union poster on the wall from the time they went on strike (there was a classic picture of my dad in the paper at the time, with a bunch of other strikers, and they're walking somewhere, and my dad is talking, and it looks like they're about to storm the barricade - it's a great photo - also, my dad was quoted in the paper, and he called a group of people "bastards" - or maybe it was "sons-of-bitches" - can't remember - but I was a kid at the time, and I remember being so in awe that 1. My dad was in the paper and 2. My dad was in the paper SWEARING) and also a poster for The Rivals, a show Brendan had done. He had posters for all of our shows on the walls.
January 23, 2009
Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people
A couple years ago, my father told me to read this poem. It was one of his favorites.
Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, The Old People
by John Montague
Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people.
Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself,
A broken song without tune, without words;
He tipped me a penny every pension day,
Fed kindly crusts to winter birds.
When he died his cottage was robbed,
Mattress and money box torn and searched.
Only the corpse they didn't disturb.
Maggie Owens was surrounded by animals,
A mongrel bitch and shivering pups,
Even in her bedroom a she-goat cried.
She was a well of gossip defiled,
Fanged chronicler of a whole countryside:
Reputed a witch, all I could find
Was her lonely need to deride.
The Nialls lived along a mountain lane
Where heather bells bloomed, clumps of foxglove.
All were blind, with Blind Pension and Wireless,
Dead eyes serpent-flicked as one entered
To shelter from a downpour of mountain rain.
Crickets chirped under the rocking hearthstone
Until the muddy sun shone out again.
Mary Moore lived in a crumbling gatehouse,
Famous as Pisa for its leaning gable.
Bag-apron and boots, she tramped the fields
Driving lean cattle from a miry stable.
A by-word for fierceness, she fell asleep
Over love stories, Red Star and Red Circle,
Dreamed of gypsy love rites, by firelight sealed.
Wild Billy Eagleson married a Catholic servant girl
When all his Loyal family passed on:
We danced round him shouting "To Hell with King Billy,"
And dodged from the arc of his flailing blackthorn.
Forsaken by both creeds, he showed little concern
Until the Orange drums banged past in the summer
And bowler and sash aggressively shone.
Curate and doctor trudged to attend them,
Through knee-deep snow, through summer heat,
From main road to lane to broken path,
Gulping the mountain air with painful breath.
Sometimes they were found by neighbours,
Silent keepers of a smokeless hearth,
Suddenly cast in the mould of death.
Scanning Friday
I took this photo years and years ago - and it remains one of my favorites I have ever taken. It is of my cousin Olivia, who is now, dammit, in her 20s! But here she is, in all her cute seriousness at a cousin gathering at my Aunt Geddy's. She has informed me that she was VERY excited to wear those earrings - big Christmas presents dangling from her ears.
I just love this picture.
Scanning Friday
I can't remember exactly where this is - but it was either Wisconsin, Minnesota or North Dakota. The storm skies were INCREDIBLE, but there was no rain yet - just an ominous quiet, like the wind had been snuffed out by a giant hand. You could feel the HUGEness approaching. I found myself wandering through a deserted lumber yard, with massive trunks lying in piles two stories high - I know I took a ton of pictures, but this is the only one I can find.
It was a haunting day. Beautiful and eerie. Eventually the storm broke, but it took forever. The whole day sort of trembled in that pre-storm tension, with clouds growing thicker and blacker, and the trees going still and quiet in the windless anticipation.
Scanning Friday
All I wanna do is
BICYCLE
BICYCLE
BICYCLE
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like
Bicycle races are coming your way ...
January 22, 2009
Scanning Thursday
Ann Marie, once again, this is for you.
I can't believe I'm posting a picture of a soda machine on my blog, but I honestly can't think of a better use of my time at this moment.
Look at the LINE of sodas along the top of the cigarette machine. You can see my reflection there - and I believe that the BLUR beside me is you, feverishly taking all the free sodas.
Scanning Thursday
This is a really cool photo. I took it at Theodore Roosevelt National Park - a glorious muddy Middle Earth kind of landscape. And at first glance, that's all the photo is: a sweeping panorama of what that place looks like. But if you look closer - you can see a small figure - standing on a ledge, in the middle of all of that glorious muddy wasteland. That's my boyfriend at the time. It was raining that day, so we were wearing huge billowing ponchos, and the poncho is kind of billowing around him, like a cape,
It looks like it could be a still from The Dark Knight, a lonely superhero contemplating the problems of the earth, all by himself.
Scanning Thursday
I know I've posted this before, but I love it.
Michael and I and two friends went on a crazy jaunt through the wine country of upper-state New York. Michael was not then and is not now a big drinker. So three sips of wine made him go a little bit insane. It was the equivalent of an entire bottle to someone else.
It was coming up to Halloween time which is Michael's favorite holiday. In one of the big wineries, we were wandering around the huge drafty barn, filled with wine, and quiet nicely dressed people sipping the goods and making comments about the "smoky aftertaste" and the "woodsy fruitiness" or whatever ... Meanwhile, Michael had discovered that a ghost was hanging from the ceiling, as decoration. And when you pulled on the ghost it made this horribly loud moaning "WOO-OOO-OOOO-OOOO" sound, that slowly trailed off into silence. Once Michael pulled the thing once, he could not stop pulling it. The people who were there to, you know, taste the wine, kept glancing over annoyed, but Michael could not stop pulling on the ghost, which kept shrieking and moaning repeatedly. I felt like I was the moron who had taken my mildly retarded or vaguely autistic brother on a field trip to an inappropriate location. I was in tears of laughter. In the middle of one of the ghost's many many MANY screams, Michael turned and yelled over his shoulder in the general direction of the wine-counter, "HOW MUCH FOR THE GHOST?"
I am laughing out loud as I type this. He is surrounded by hundreds of dollars of fine wine and he is asking "HOW MUCH FOR THE GHOST?"
Scanning Thursday
This is from an infamous Halloween party where all the guests had to dress up as actually dead people. No people who were alive, no abstract concepts or objects or animals or Buzz Lightyear-esque costumes ... we had to be the walking dead.
And so here is a lovely shot from the party of Jesus Christ chatting amicably with a zombie, as Indira Gandhi looks on in the background.
Scanning Thursday
Dad holding Cashel who is about one month old here. A proud and happy grandfather (or "Gampa" as Cashel ended up calling him).
Scanning Thursday (oops. don't even know what day it is)
I was a Girl Scout for about one stupid day before I quit ... and there is a picture of me in my uniform, suffering through some craft project I was forced to do.
Scanning Thursday
Graduating from grad school - my roommate and dear friend Jen and myself, in our kitchen. My dad took this photo. Or no ... my mother did. I think that's my dad over to the right.
Scanning Thursday
I have stacks of photo-booth pictures. Nothing like a good old-fashioned photo booth. Mitchell and I obviously have never seen a photo booth we could say No to ... and we make it a game, calling out emotional directions before each flash. "RAGE!" "DOMESTIC ANGST!" "SEXUAL HIJINX!" It's also fun if you happen to have four people to make it so that each person gets one picture, which involves leaping into the booth, posing, leaping out, so you can make way for the next person.
Mitchell, me, Sandi
Me, Mitchell
Ann Marie, Pat, Me
Bren
Bren, Jackie, Me, Mitchell
I can't remember this boy's name but I hung out with him a couple of times with Mitchell and he was so sweet and funny - This picture makes him look terrifying, but he was a pussycat
Me, Mitchell - I have no idea what we are acting out, but it is clear that we are acting out SOMETHING
Kenny, Phil, Me, Ann Marie
Mitchell, Me
Jim, jet-lagged and shell-shocked
Me, Dolores, Mere and Jayne
Me and Jackie in front - David and Maria hidden in back - this was from one of our many trips to Six Flags
Me and Mitchell
Me, Mitchell, Sandi
Me
Mitchell
Me, Michael, Laurie
Me, Jackie
Kenny, Phil, Me, Ann Marie
Mitchell, Me
January 21, 2009
Scanning Wednesday
Ann Marie, here is, without a doubt, one of the craziest pictures I have ever taken.
You, also, are insane ... because you ironed those T-shirts.
And for some reason we have upended the table and put it on the bed. I imagine so we could run through the "Rich, Young, Pretty & Tan" jitterbug with the boys in the motel room. Where Phil would remind us repeatedly to "do the jazz hands" in between bouts of "bag stress".
Like I said. I love this photo because insanity just FLICKERS off the edge of it.
Scanning Wednesday
When I was 11 years old, my parents put me on the Amtrak train by myself (at least this is how I remember it?) and sent me off for a weekend in New York, to stay with my aunt Regina (my dad's sister). Regina was an actress and I admired her tremendously. Idolized her, more like it. It is so so strange for me to think now that Regina was only 22 years old during that weekend. She seemed SO grown-up to me! I think of myself at 22 and am just amazed ... I stayed with Regina in her small dark cute Greenwich Village apartment, and she took me on a whirlwind tour. We went to the Metropolitan Museum, we went to the oldest house in New York (one of the photos of me is taken in front of that house) - and, big finish, Regina took me to see Annie on Broadway, a musical which had filled me with a burning passion that took YEARS to go out ... Sarah Jessica Parker was playing "Annie", so weird to imagine, and she was absolutely wonderful. The whole thing was wonderful. It actually was kind of painful because up there - on that Broadway stage - were GIRLS MY AGE. Why were they THERE and I was up in a box seat?? I loved Annie but it really awakened something in me - something that I would now call ambition.
But I have very fond memories of Regina taking me around New York. It was a hot weekend, and Regina still laughs about how all the crazy people seemed drawn specifically to me (David would not be surprised ... that is STILL going on) ... Every single drunk lunatic in a 12-mile radius honed in on me, talked to me, and one filthy rambling lunatic even showed me his penis. Just walked right up to me and whipped it out. I was 11 years old, douchebag. Regina was constantly dragging me away from whatever crazy homeless person was trying to have a deep conversation with her 11 year old niece. "Okay, let's go THIS way now ..."
My initial impression of New York was one of glamour and excitement ... and also that there were crazy people EVERYWHERE.
My outfit here makes me laugh. I remember we were all, in my 6th grade class, very into those sweat-band things you wear around your wrist. I HOPE I had the presence of mind to take it off for the Broadway show, at least!!
Regina was 22 years old, and I look back on it and think she did a really great job showing me around, and taking care of me. It's a great memory for me.
Scanning Wednesday
I got Sammy from the pound in Chicago in 1992 and he died in 2003. We were BUDS, man. I still miss him. We moved all over the place together. He lived in three apartments with me in Chicago, and then when I picked up and moved to New York, he traveled - via car - with me (an experience in and of itself, we stayed in a motel together somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania) - and then lived in about 5 or 6 apartments with me in New York and Hoboken.
He was truly unique - almost like a mentally disturbed DOG rather than a cat. He had a worried look in his eyes at all times, bless his heart. At any moment, I was about to disappear. He would follow me around. I got to know him and his personality intimately. I could predict his moves.
Sammy adored draping himself around my neck as though he was a fur stole ... and would stay up there as I did chores. I would vacuum my living room, with Sammy draped around my neck.
Sammy never got into playing. I think it meant too much separation from me. I would toss a bizzy ball off into the distance and he would stare up at me worried, like, "Do you want me to go that far away from you?? Just to retrieve a bizzy ball? Are you out of your mind?? I want to stay RIGHT HERE draped around your neck, thankyouverymuch."
Sammy would sleep on my head. He could never ever get close enough. I would wake up in the dark of night and Sammy would be staring straight at me, eyes glimmering through the black. He only slept when he knew I was WATCHING. Because that made him feel safe. I have no idea. All I know is, whenever I opened my eyes from sleep, Sammy was right there, staring at me. I wished he could have learned to chillax but by the time I got him it was too late. Best I could do would be to give him as much love as possible so that maybe - maybe - he would learn to trust again.
Sammy was not a lick-er, as Hope is, Hope loves to groom me. Sammy might have licked my hand once or twice - but that was only out of a sense of obligation and vague worry. He felt he had to, so that I wouldn't disappear into the swirling eternal ether forever ... not because he wanted to.
Sammy would howl with despair when I would leave the apartment. I would walk down the stairs to leave, and hear him yowling as I left. It was awful.
In my last apartment in Chicago, on Wayne Street, Sammy figured out a way to squeeze out of one of the windows - the screen was loose. So I would leave for work or rehearsal and Sammy would be sitting in the window, yowling at me, and I'd come home, hours later, and he would come bounding to greet me across the yards of the neighbors. He had lived the life of a free and wild animal for the whole day and now, purring so loudly it was almost embarrassing, he was ready to come inside and sit on my head.
I used to trip over Sammy all the time, because he would place himself right under my feet. He'd squeal and I'd be like, "Dude, that's what happens when you place yourself directly under my torso. Will you never learn??"
Sammy will always have the softest of spots in my heart, because of who he was, and how much time we had together. I often refer to him as the "best cat in the world". I love Hope, but I still feel that way about Sammy. There are certain animals you just click with ... and Sammy was one-of-a-kind. (I love you, Hope!)
Here are some shots of Sammy and me, and Sammy alone. The one of him sitting on the mattress is hysterical to me, because that was in Chicago, and I was packing up my room to move to New York. I had dismantled the bed and Sammy - who, naturally, hovered amongst the whole proceedings, getting in the way - it all made him SO NERVOUS - had to then perch on top of the mattress, staring around him. Let me anthropomorphize, just because it pisses some people off and I adore pissing those off who get angry about stupid things. It seems like he is thinking, "I have no idea what is going on here, and why this thing is out in the hall, and I am afraid that it all might mean change for ME, so as long as I sit DIRECTLY ON THIS THING, my entire world will not collapse." He looks vaguely anxious to me, and it's still just so cute to me. His eyes are HUGE, like, "Now ... what??? WHAT is happening here???"
Photo Wednesday
Sunrise on the Jersey shore. It was freezing, too, with wind so hard it nearly knocked me over.
January 20, 2009
"Having Confessed"
Having Confessed
by Patrick Kavanagh
Having confessed he feels
That he should go down on his knees and pray
For forgiveness for his pride, for having
Dared to view his soul from the outside.
Lie at the heart of the emotion, time
Has its own work to do. We must not anticipate
Or awaken for a moment. God cannot catch us
Unless we stay in the unconscious room
Of our hearts. We must be nothing,
Nothing that God may make us something.
We must not touch the immortal material
We must not daydream to-morrow's judgment—
God must be allowed to surprise us.
We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer
By this anticipation. Let us lie down again
Deep in anonymous humility and God
May find us worthy material for His hand.
Scanning Tuesday
In high school we had a hugely anticipated day called Character Day, where you can dress up as anyone you like, fictional, non-fictional, whatevs. We would plan for it for weeks.
I just came across this photo of (to my mind) two of the coolest guys in our school who also happened to be best friends. Their names are Matt and Trav - Matt was this hot really talented dude who already seemed like a grown man - even though he is, what, 17 years old here?, who was already making feature-length films at this point - he was kind of a phenom - and here, you can see that Raiders mania has swept the nation ... Trav eventually became my first real boyfriend (not to mention, many years later, a successful author
Him being Gandhi and all.
Scanning Tuesday
The big night of my performance in After the Fall - a big night for me, in general. My parents were there, my sister Jean, my brother Brendan, Brendan's friend Justin, my dear friends Brett and Liz, my aunt Regina and uncle Tom ... the production was at Circle in the Square Downtown and it was just one of those magical nights, when you feel proud, happy, successful, and you are surrounded by people who love you and want to celebrate you. It was a night that glittered.
There's one here of my dad looking at me in a proud and tender way. I think my uncle Tom took this picture, and I am very grateful.
Scanning Tuesday
I guess it is only fitting that I have reached my panoramic tour of the United States on this day of major American activity. We went north at first, up through New York to Niagara - then through Canada, down to Chicago, the back up north, heading northwest - and then down through all the huge gorgeous Western states - then thru the Southwest and out thru Nevada to California.
Here I am, on a pouring rainy day, when we did a 10 mile hike through Theodore Roosevelt National Park in South Dakota. That day was all about mud.
I do remember coming into a muddy canyon with all kinds of weird sand-castle drips here and there - and we heard this strange mournful lowing sound - unlike anything I had ever heard before - and a blazing white cow had somehow trapped herself on a little ledge in one of the canyons. Lord knows how she got herself there, but once perched on that ledge she could not get off of it - and she was NOT happy about it.
Weird what you remember. I still think about that cow from time to time and wonder what happened to her.
Scanning Tuesday
I took this photo maybe 3 years ago at the Tile Memorial to 9/11 here in New York, and just came across it and thought I would post it today. I think it's kinda perfect.
Scanning Tuesday
My boyfriend and I went to Arches National Park and took some great shots. The photo of the arch is NOT the one that collapsed last year, although we saw that one, too - but the one in the photo below certainly looks like it could go any minute!
It's a John Ford kind of landscape.
Scanning Tuesday
Utah. Red rocks.
Flash floods can fill these canyons up at a moment's notice, so you have to be wary. We loved the canyons. We camped out in the middle of nowhere, a landscape that looks like he planet Mars. We went mountain biking in Moab on slick red rock similar to this, and it was terrifying and FUN.
Scanning Tuesday
On Easter Sunday, it is extremely important to keep in mind what the day is all about.
It is extremely important that you celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is extremely important that you go to Easter Sunday mass.
It is extremely important that you turn your eyes heavenward, and focus on the real reason for the day.
Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.
It is also extremely important ...
... that you put plastic Easter eggs in your eyeballs with your cousins and your brother and wander around the chilly front yard like zombies, taking pictures.
January 19, 2009
Scanning Monday
One hot weekend in July, many years ago, I traveled with a group of friends into the wilds of Wisconsin - to stay at "Kenny's farm" - which was basically a house and a farm that was in his family. About 15 of us convened ... tents were erected in the yard, we crashed all over the house, and it was one of those weekends that none of us will ever forget. I only knew three of the guys there - everyone else was new to me - but we all just clicked as a group. Many of us were actors, of course, but there were plenty who were not - but everyone shared a sense of whimsy and fun that made the entire weekend a nonstop laugh-riot. Not to mention the fact that while driving a bunch of drunken yahoos (ie. my dear friends) into the town in search of food (I was designated driver, since I wasn't drinking that weekend) I was pulled over by a cop for going 55 in a 25 mile-an-hour zone - which wouldn't have been that big a deal but the fact that I had five wasted men, all of whom HAD BEERS IN THEIR HANDS, in the car made it a very big deal indeed. The cop gave us a hard time (naturally), but it was all softened since Kenny grew up in the town, and knew the cop, and the cop knew his Aunt Sally, or whatever. But still, they made me drive to the station where I had to take a breathalizer test. It was so funny because we had been DESPERATE for food, having eaten all the food in the house - and the cops in the station treated our predicament with some bemusement, giving us suggestions on good places to eat (as I blew into the breathalizer machine). "Have you tried the bowling alley? They have great burgers." "There's a fireman's picnic down the road aways ... might find some food there." My friends Phil and Kenny stood on either side of me, rubbing my back soothingly as I nervously blew into the breathalyzer - I hadn't had alcohol in weeks, but I do have a guilty conscience so I was sure that SOME of that would show up in my results ... There they were, actually wasted, rubbing my back, saying, "You're doing so good, Sheila ..." Anyway, the whole thing ended up being fine - I got a speeding ticket, that's all - and then we went to meet up with the rest of our friends, who were at the bowling alley, eating.
But the photos below are not of that experience. They are of something else.
Kenny's family has a yearly ritual, whenever they go to that farm. They buy a rocket - one that you can launch - they go to the dollar store and buy paints and brushes - they spend a leisurely day painting the rocket together - and then, at sunset, they all put on funny hats (there was a box of them in the closet) - and walk down the dirt road to the nearest field to launch the rocket off. Then they wander through the field looking for it.
There we all were, strangers to one another, strangers to Kenny's family, but we fully embraced his family ritual. We were all kids in our mid-20s, but we spent hours huddled over that rocket, detailing it, painting slogans on it ... and then, at happy hour time, someone made a vat of cocktails, we all got drinks (mine was virgin!), we all put on funny hats and we trooped down the road to launch our rocket off.
I don't know why that night stays so vivid in my memory. I wonder if it is because I took so many pictures of it. Memory is a funny thing that way. But the night was beautiful, real country - with crickets screaming and the scent of hay and cut grass in the air ... the company was good, the mood rather hilarious and ribald ... I had a huge girl-crush on one of the girls, take a wild guess which one, and I have to say I still really like the pictures I took. They seem to capture the feel of the weekend, not just the look of it, or the main characters.
Here I will take you, via photo, through the entire rocket-launch process.
Scanning Monday: "Give names. Check in."
Ann Marie will immediately remember this, since we laughed about it.
We were going to be performing at Milwaukee Summer Fest with Pat McCurdy, a local star. He put us up (and our two other friends who would also be performing), in a motel in Milwaukee. He also gave me the following sheet of paper with directions on it. Why I still have this I will leave you to guess.
So it's pretty standard, right - but what made Ann and I laugh so hard is that he included "Give names, check in" in the directions. As though we would have reached the motel, and been totally BAFFLED as to what to do next, since HE HADN'T TOLD US TO GIVE NAMES, CHECK IN ... We were laughing about the four of us standing in the lobby, wandering around like lost lambs, calling him in desperation because we weren't sure of our instructions at that point.
We busted him mercilessly about this.
"So, I'm not sure ... when we arrive, what's the protocol ... should we 'give names, check in' or would that be totally inappropriate?"
Scanning Monday
This crazy-good photo I took of the sunset off of Key West. I can't take any credit for this one - the sunset (and either the Nina, Pinta or the Santa Maria) did all the work for me.
Scanning Monday
A day at the beach many moons ago. I am posting this because it makes me laugh. My friend Beth, in the glorious hot-pink bathing suit, is holding her daughter Ceileigh, and the next week after this photo was taken she gave birth to her son Conor. She just reminded me that there were some nice waves that day and we were body surfing, and the poor lifeguard was freaking out because of how hugely pregnant she was. But Beth was bobbing and rolling in the water in her hot-pink pregnant glory. And the son she eventually gave birth to is now a toweringly tall teenager who has a penchant for Queen and all things classic rock.
January 18, 2009
Photo Sunday
40th Street in between 10th and 7th is pretty grimy. It's unrelenting, really. You have Port Authority on one side, you have giant almost block-long construction sites on the other side, with blocked-off sidewalks, and dirt-encrusted coffee shops, and hole-in-the-wall delis that only have room for one person, and the cashier is enclosed behind a glass wall like a teller. Recently, I saw a man defecate on 40th Street in the middle of the day. Cranes tower overhead and everything seems to be in a state of flux. It is the cacophony of the city condensed into one three-block radius.
But if you remind yourself to look UP every once in a while as you walk on 40th Street, you'll start to catch glimpses of beauty. Quiet soft beauty.
Scanning Sunday
At the top of Niagara Falls on a chilly September dusk. Pretty spectacular. Pretty LOUD.
Scanning Sunday
Shots from a ridiculously fun show I did about 10 years ago - it was a new play, a spoofy crime noir, with dialogue like Reservoir Dogs, and a mysterious character named "Gertrude" who is never seen, but is omnipresent, frightening. When Gertrude commands, you jump off the bridge. A mix of Pinter and Tarantino - a cast of five women (all awesome funny people) - and their characters all dressed either like floozies or glamour-girls - while I wore an old-fashioned navy blue man's suit, a fedora, a tie, and I also chain-smoked Lucky Strikes. Everyone was afraid of me. I was completely humorless. It might be the most fun I have ever had on stage. It was never explained in the script why my character - a woman - dressed like Humphrey Bogart in a film noir in the 1940s, but I made up a whole story for myself about the whys and wherefores of the whole thing, and loved my costume, almost more than the play itself.
The whole thing was a blast. The script won a couple of nice awards, and that made me happy. It had a lot of wit.
Scanning Sunday
I love this photo: Jackie sitting on the wall near the Chicago Aquarium. Lake Michigan coming right up to the edge ... and the skyline and Navy Pier is across the way. Beautiful day.
Photo Sunday
This is a more recent photo. As in 20 minutes ago.
Hope is settling in nicely after her nearly a month away at my cousin Kerry's.
Scanning Sunday
I love this picture of Michael, standing on the seesaw. Captures his personality.
Speaking of Michael, big news ... Things start moving fast when you're on the "black list". Hotshot. Punk.
January 17, 2009
Scanning Saturday
Many years ago now, when I was living in Chicago, my core group of friends (we had all been friends since college, and all ended up in Chicago) went to go see James Taylor. It was a hot beautiful summer night. We took no less than 40 pictures of each other in the parking lot - with all of our cameras. It was a paparazzi frenzy.
In retrospect, it is funny and odd that we would have suddenly took pictures of ourselves, in every grouping possible, because our time together in Chicago would soon be coming to an end. Although we didn't know that yet.
David and Maria, married for almost two years at this point, would be gone to New York in two months. But they didn't know that at the time the pictures were taken. They also didn't know that in over a year's time they would have their first child, and then, a second one a couple of years later. The oldest is in middle school now. Unimaginable at the time.
Everything was about to change.
I was about to get my heart broken in the biggest way possible. At the time the photos were taken, there was still some hope. In just a month, I would be devastated, bereft, and then, willy-nilly, get cast in a show that would take me to Ithaca immediately - where I met and dated Michael. I can't believe now that there is a time when I did not know him. But at the time, I was all caught up in this other man (Michael referred to him contemptuously as "The Baby Boomer" and a couple years ago when Michael stayed with me, he said, "So ... what, is the Baby Boomer, like, 80 now?" Still contemptuous! I love continuity!), he was my entire WORLD. Life became a howling wilderness when he left, and in some ways, I never really got over it. You find ways to compensate, and I did, but it was devastating. In some people's stories, the narrative goes: "After losing this man and losing her mind ... she found the right man and they've been together for 15 years." That did not happen for me, so I found ways to adjust. I also would be gone in a year's time - moved to New York - but I had no inkling of that at the time the photos were taken. Chicago was my whole life. My home.
Jackie was single and dating, not happy with any of them, not really. In less than a year's time, she would meet (or re-meet, since she had known him for a couple of years) her now-husband, a wonderful warm man who loves her to death. They now have two awesome children, and Jackie has made a beautiful life for herself. But at the time these photos were taken, of course, none of that could be seen. It couldn't even be imagined. If you had said to her in that parking lot of the James Taylor concert, "Jackie, someday you will marry Stuart - you know Stuart, right?" she would have been like: WHAT???? Amazing how life works out.
Mitchell, the last of us to arrive in Chicago, is the only one of our core group who is still there. He was abandoned by all of us, and I am not sure he really forgives us, to this day. He was struggling to make an acting career at the time, doing good work, but it was job to job. He now is a known actor in Chicago, with a following. He does regular gigs - circuses, one-man shows, movies and straight plays ... and it's a wonderful career. At the time, that could not be seen. It was the "substance of things hoped for" and it has now come to pass.
But still - there the five of us are ... on the brink of major change ... unseeing, unknowing ... but still vibrantly in the moment.
I think somehow we all sensed it. I don't know how we sensed it, but there is the fact of the spontaneous photo shoot in the parking lot. And also how beautiful the photos came out, and how they really seem to capture our vibe together as friends. Something was in the air that day.
An inkling of the future, perhaps. Just a glimpse. Maybe we all saw it, sensed it, and that is why we raced around, posing, laughing, snapping ...
This time will pass. Don't forget to enjoy it. And always remember.
Things I bought online in a fugue state on December 29
They are all arriving now, and it feels, already, like visitations from a ghost of the long-distant past.
-- The letters of Maud Gonne and WB Yeats
-- Maud Gonne's autobiography
-- Shane Leslie's memoirs
-- Conor Cruise O'Brien's memoirs
-- a collection of John Montague's poetry
-- the letters of James Joyce - an old copy from BEFORE the revelation of the "dirty letters". The preface seems cheerfully and unbelievably naive. There's almost a defensive quality to the writing, because you know the "dirty letters" were already known about, so the tone of the editor reeks of the man doth protesting too much. It was published right after Joyce's death.
-- Black List Section 8 by Francis Stuart
January 16, 2009
Scanning Friday
My boyfriend and I saw this as we drove through the Black Hills of South Dakota at dusk. We always regretted that we didn't stop in for a drink or a sandwich, but we were nervous about finding our campsite in those hills once we lost the light of day.
Seeing something like that in the middle of nowhere reminds me of the funny story Frank McCourt tells in 'Tis, his followup to Angela's Ashes. He is just off the boat, Irish, a young man in New York City ... and he wanders the streets ... looking for shamrocks. Of course they are everywhere, because Irish pubs are everywhere ... but any time he saw a shamrock, he knew he could enter and feel welcome. I do not have that immigrant experience but it's in my blood somehow, because even though I'm not into that whole kitschy Irish shamrock thing (I never wear green on St. Patrick's Day - my father drummed that rule into our collective skulls) - I do have an emotional response to it. It's welcoming. I know what it means.
I still love this picture. Glad we captured it. What a random joint. And NOTHING was around it. Just hills and trees and winding treacherous roads. I'd love to try and find it again. (And please. Don't ruin the magic by Googling and giving me the address or informing me that it has been demolished or that there's a Starbucks now, or whatever the case may be. That would ruin it. Only exception: If you actually live in the Black Hills and can tell me a personal story about that place, I would LOVE to hear it!)
But I think it would be best to just trip over it again ... randomly ... find it again, as if by accident, and you can bet that this time, whatever the hour of day, I would not pass on by. I would pull up my car, and stop in to have a cup of coffee and chat up the locals.
In any case, I like to imagine it is still there.
Scanning Friday
Now, Sheila, here's a question for you. And I only ask because I'm not quite clear, due to your very ambiguous body language:
... are you proud of your bathing cap??
2 things to adore about this photo:
1. Brendan flexing his muscles
2. Jean imitating Brendan
Scanning Friday
Member Jen and Katy, my childhood BFFs?
Here are some shots of them (and also Jennifer, Katy's little sister - a kindred spirit of my sister Jean - and also Jen, pulling Jean around on a sled) during the blizzard of '78 which basically shut down Rhode Island for over a week. We were out of school for a week solid. The snow was above the sills of our windows. It was Little House in the Prairie, bigtime. Nightmare for the parents, I'm sure, having all these ankle-biters running around ... but a BLAST for us.
Scanning Friday
I post this for Mark.
I post this for Ann Marie.
They will understand.
For those of you unfortunately not in the know, all I can say is that this is "Guy With Monkey In His Mouth".
Scanning Friday
I think it's about time that I come to terms with the fact that Mitchell is actually ...
.... the Unabomber.
Scanning Friday
A couple of things about the photos below:
1. I was in a play (a couple different versions of it over the years) and it told the story of a couple, already on the rocks obviously - who are up late at night, with the rain pouring down (neat effect on the window)... and over the course of the play, some things come out about the past of my character (or, more specifically, something her grandmother did during the Holocaust) that pretty much destroys the relationship between the couple. It was meaty, juicy stuff - and I loved doing it.
2. I did not, however, love the haircut that I got a day before we opened the first production (photos below). I was so upset about the hair (the uneven badly-done layers, the strange swoop of bang in the front) that I actually cried in the chair at the salon. I wouldn't have cared so much but I knew that the haircut would now live on forever in the photos of the production. And so it has.
3. I love these photos because the photographer took them during a production, first of all - not staged scenes during a special photo call with no audience, which sometimes can have an artificial posed look to them. Here, we are actually in the process of doing the show, and it certainly makes a difference in what the photos look like. Also, the dude was in the damn back row, so as to be unobtrusive to the rest of the audience- but look how close he got in his zoom. Love that. I like that closeup one of us on the couch - because it looks (to me) as though we are having a private conversation, but we're in front of a live audience. That's the way it should be. But kudos to photographer-man for capturing the moment.
The theatre was not huge, by the way, but neither was it small. He managed to be everywhere, nowhere, unobtrusive, and also competent - all at the same time. I want a zoom lens like that.
Scanning Friday
Another violent series of images Betsy and I did for our after-school photography class.
And once again, I am cast as the attacker, Betsy as the victim. How did we work that out?
Again, I know these are silly, and we were 11 years old, but I really like these pictures. I think the closeup of Betsy's face looks like one of Tenniel's drawings of Alice.
Scanning Friday
Me and my two best buds in grad school. We're at an end-of-year party in a huge warehouse loft. I had recently shaved my head for various and sundry reasons. Believe it or not, it was my favorite haircut ever.
Scanning Friday
The beach close to where I grew up. It is dawn here. I remember that that was the morning that Princess Di died. I had set my alarm to go take pictures of the dawn, and then got back in my car at the beach parking lot, turned on the radio and heard the news. The whole morning was strangely surreal.
Scanning Friday
My brother and me in college - we're off to a picnic slash baseball game at Godard Park in Rhode Island with all our college buddies.
You know, I look at this picture and compare it to the pictures us of as little tater tots and I don't see much difference.
January 15, 2009
Scanning Thursday
A shot of my favorite movie theatre in the world - the Music Box, on Southport Ave. in Chicago.
Well. I haven't been to them all, of course, so I can't say for sure, but the Music Box is one of my favorite places to see movies. Gorgeous building, great movies ... it's a treasure. For one year, I lived right behind the Music Box and I was in heaven. I was there all the time.
This particular shot was taken on a freezing sunny day and Michael and I had just had a long conversation about getting married (he had proposed to me), and our conversation had ended in a stalemate. A friendly stalemate but a stalemate, nonetheless.
When we met, one of the things that had connected us (intellectually, I mean) was discovering that we both loved the movies of Cassavetes. We had freaked, and spent many happy hours talking about Cassavetes and his movies.
Blah blah. Fast forward to our silent walk down cold sunny Southport.
He and I, filled with thoughts of wedded bliss or horror, depending on your perspective, approached the Music Box - and I glanced up at the marquee and couldn't believe my eyes. I started laughing out loud, and then Michael saw the marquee and he started laughing (believe it or not, Cassavetes' name had come up during the proposal conversation) ... and I had to take a picture. Michael was standing beside me as I took the picture, saying worried vaguely grumpy things out loud like, "Holy crap. What the hell are we doing...."
Scanning Thursday
Mitchell at Jackie and Stuart's rehearsal dinner.
Warning: What you are about to see may be shocking.
Scanning Thursday
Siblings: Bren, Jean and myself on the side yard at Paul Ave.
The expression on Jean's face KILLS ME.
Scanning Thursday
Oh, the glamour of filming a low-budget movie.
Some shots from the filming of The Darkling Plain, a short.
We had no permits. We did our scenes out in the middle of Soho and the meat packing district surrounded by passersby who had no idea what was going on. There was a scene where two characters (played by myself and another actress) had to chase a woman down the street and take her purse and then run. The woman was wearing a long black cloak, like a witch out of a fairy tale. We were nervous that someone would think this was ACTUALLY a crime being committed, so we called the NYPD and had a cop detailed to our freakin' movie, so that he could make sure nothing went wrong. The cop was great. Chillin' out with us and our tiny crew. We asked favors of building owners to let us go on the roof. We filmed our movie in three days.
The thing about the film was - it had Canada Council money behind it, and they are a powerhouse - and so that attracted really good people. We had a world-class documentary filmmaker as our director of photography - he did the job for free. He had many friends, professionals, who filled out our tiny crew - these were all top-notch people who have careers, who did this as a favor for their friend, but also because it seemed like a cool project. It was a modern noir with a creepy fairy-tale aspect. It was filmed in black and white. There were challenges for a filmmaker that seemed compelling - so it was fun for them as well. We were very lucky to have all of those guys. The film looks great.
The film is 25 minutes long but the thing is the little engine that could. It premiered at the Montreal Film Festival in 2002, in a huge theatre - as though it was a full-length blockbuster - (that's what the Canada Council can do!) - and we sat in the seats in the audience, eating popcorn, watching our giant talking heads up on the screen. Since then that film has gone everywhere. Italy, Berlin, London - it just won't end. Jen and I joke that when the thing finally finds distribution, we will be 123 years old and have to be pushed down the red carpet in wheelchairs.
Our crew. That was pretty much it.
Here is "our" cop. Shelagh, the director, is talking to him. She loves cops.
Our cameraman on the roof in Soho.
Getting our makeup done on the streets in Soho. A person came up to me around that time and said, in the thickest New York accent possible, "Didn't I see youze in Fiyah stahtah?" Uhm ... that would be Firestarter? So I suppose that means you think I am Drew Barrymore, age 10?
Lying in wait for our prey in the meat packing district. I do remember that this was a crucial moment because the light was creeping towards us in a line on the sidewalk. We had to get our 5 shots in that area in something like 20 minutes. We all kept looking at the line of light and shadow on the sidewalk, anxiously, like it was a creeping enemy.
I love this one. This is Cheryl, our old lady in the black cloak, coming down the sidewalk. See that scary line of light and shadow?? Get the shot, get the shot! I don't know who took this because I am hidden from view ready to leap out and attack the poor old lady.
We shot for two days in a huge warehouse loft which was supposed to be where we, the two main characters, who were squatters, lived. With the lights on in that small space, it soon became dangerously hot. We were drenched in sweat, all of us. Drinking gallons of water to stay hydrated. It was nuts. But so much fun. There was a moment when Jen and I were having a tearful scene on one of the mattresses on the floor. And I looked up at one point during a tiny break, and we were SURROUNDED. I became aware of the hilarity of it. Huge men just HOVERED over us, quiet, with light meters and booms and powder puffs to dab our sweat off, and cameras ... it was hysterical. Like: who are all these people and what are they doing here??
January 14, 2009
It's good to be reminded ...
... in the midst of trying to stay open even when it's apparent that that makes some people uncomfortable and even angry (Kerry and I just had a good talk about that), and having people misunderstand your response to events, or try to fix it, or try to "help", or tell you why you're wrong, or tell you to buck up even when you have experienced a mortal wound ...
that sometimes there are angels out there ... who can actually see us.
Scanning Wednesday
This one's for you, Tracey.
Just wanted you to know that the children are praying now.
I think it's time to call Child Protective Services,
Scanning Wednesday
In college, I played Anne Shirley in the giant production of Anne of Green Gables, the musical. It was a huge coup for me, getting the part, I had to work my ass off, and the show ended up going on to compete in the regional Kennedy Center ACTF (American College Theatre Festival) which was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. The next year, I played a chorus girl in Edwin Drood (and I had no lines) and I almost had more fun with that, because the pressure of being the STAR was off - but there was nothing quite like being "Anne".
The great thing about our college was that we cast from "outside" as well - local actors who were adults - and these were not Catherine O'Hara and Fred Ward in Waiting for Guffman - many of them had acted at Trinity, or in the well-respected second-tier theatres - fantastic actors - so we rarely had 21 year old students putting on wrinkle makeup and grey hair to play the old person... we had the real deal. So we the students usually played our own ages, and then the cast was filled with authentic people who were right for their parts. Makes a huge difference in the feel of the show.
The guy who played Matthew - Chris Brayton - was just a fantastic man, in his late 40s, probably - with a long Amish-type beard, and a gorgeous baritone voice. You just melted when you heard it. And Matthew is a hard part - he stutters, stammers, has no social graces, yet if you don't believe that he falls in LOVE with that talkative 12 year old orphan - the entire thing won't work. He nailed it.
At the end of the play, Anne has had some triumph - maybe academic, the details escape me - and she is wearing the dress with the puffed sleeves that Matthew went and got for her, against Marilla's wishes. Anne is all hyped up in her excitement, and Matthew is quietly proud of her - and at the end of the scene, she sits at his feet - and he sings the heartbreaking simple song "Words" - basically how he "can't find the words" to say what is in his heart.
Not a dry eye in the house, peeps. I'm just sayin'. Especially if you are already familiar with Anne and know about what happens to Matthew.
Here's a photo of him singing "Words". I just think it's a beautiful photo - look at his face. It looks like Lincoln or something. And the way the light is hitting it ...
I would be sitting there, all happy and proud of my Anne triumph, and I would hear the sniffles start to come from the audience, and - in one case - great heaving sobs.
It was awesome!
Cry, bitches, cry!!
Scanning Wednesday
I'm not sure if you can tell from these photos, the subtext might be way too subtle and nuanced for an outsider to pick up on, but David and Mitchell are best friends.
Scanning Wednesday
Speaking of a New York that is dying ...
Here are some photos of a New York that is now completely dead, and Disney is dancing on its grave. Once upon a time, not too many years ago, if you walked through Times Square, you would see smut and girlie shows and strange old-school burlesque palaces - right on 42nd Street (so hard to believe now - if you've been to Times Square recently you will know what I mean). There was a dingy carnival atmosphere, like Coney Island in March ... working girls (or: girls working their way through college) and peep shows and pimps - a block away from Broadway. Unreal.
When I moved to New York in 1995, that New York was still alive - although quickly dying. I did not take these pictures realizing what would happen to 42nd Street, I didn't see the future - I just know I like dingy urban scenes, I love smut, I love all that Diane Arbus stuff - the underbelly. I love it. It's part of the reason why I moved here.
At the time I took the following photos, the writing was already on the wall. Many of the burlesque houses were boarded up - but nothing had opened in their places - so Times Square looked like a ghost town. Truly eerie. This is the hubbub, the tourist mecca of America - and it's boarded up end to end, with vestiges of that old world (strange murals, peeling signs) still visible.
So strange.
And now I am so so glad I wandered around that freezing day taking pictures, because those days are GONE now. You can't find much of this anymore in New York anywhere. The smut industry has moved on to greener friendlier pastures.
I love these photos. So so strange ... things look jerry-rigged, pasted together - things don't make sense - the huge DKNY sign next to the model of some ancient Greek building stuck into an alcove ... signifying what? It's fabulous whatever it is.
These photos, I must reiterate, are all on 42nd Street proper - they are not creepy little side streets. This is what you saw on the main drag. What a welcome mat.
Scanning Wednesday
A glimpse of a New York City that is rapidly dying. I like to capture it whenever I see it ... just so I can remember. It's from a New York that pre-dates me, obviously, an old old New York ... but it's something I grew up loving, and I love glimpses of the past, of how "they" used to do things. Ghosts, fragments. A message in code.
Scanning Wednesday
I have written ad nauseum about the half-hour Macbeth I was in. I have detailed the journey of the five witches (YES. FIVE. The play was much shorter but there was enough room for FIVE witches) and how we were alllllll about our makeup.
This is my friend Jen. Over the course of the show, she would systematically try to make her hair bigger and bigger, to shield her face.
I'm not sure, I have to check my notes, but this could be the funniest photo ever taken.
Scanning Wednesday
There was a field near our house growing up, and sometimes we would be allowed to walk through it to get to school. We had to dodge cows, and jump over a brook, and it was all very exciting for some reason. A great place to live in a totally make-believe world. Also, this was the heyday of Little House on the Prairie, so you could almost pretend you didn't live in "the Ocean State" when you were on that field, and instead lived out on the high plains.
I am sure this photo of me was taken by either Jen or Katy, my kindred spirits at the time. I'm 11 years old or something like that.
January 13, 2009
Scanning Tuesday
I know it's blurry, and I know it's a cut-out - because I used to like to do that to my photos, Lord knows why ... but I just love the moment that is captured here.
Mitchell and me - in my parents' backyard. My parents threw me a graduation party, and we played volleyball, and it was a wonderful time.
Scanning Tuesday
Speaking of goofy juvenile humor, here is a photo from a family day at the beach. Aunts, uncles, cousins, good times.
But what I would like you to take note of is my mother, sitting front and center.
She is talking to a banana as though it is a phone.
But look closer. She is really TALKING. Like, she is giving that person on the other end of the banana-phone a piece of her mind.
The best part of the entire photo is that the rest of the family is barely paying attention.
Because why would you?
Although you can tell that my dad, lying next to her, is laughing.
Scanning Tuesday
In general, I am not friends with people who aren't funny. That's just the way it is, or the way it has naturally turned out. It's not that I consciously exclude people - or have a checklist of what I think is funny and so-and-so should line up ... nothing like that ... It's really just a natural process. Funny people (and it's a certain brand of funny) are drawn to each other. You recognize each other. You laugh at the same stupid things. You find that in clusters of friends. I've hung out with groups of friends who aren't funny. They may be polite, or warm, or kind ... but not really funny.
Like tends to cluster towards like ...
All of this is to say is that my roommate for my sophomore year in college was someone I had actually gone to high school with, but didn't really know all that well - and as a matter of fact, she intimidated me because she was stunningly gorgeous, had a serious boyfriend, and had a naturally beautiful and awesome singing voice that other people spend years studying to try to achieve. She could be intimidating. She could get very serious and quiet, and you would wonder what was going on behind that beautiful mask.
But we were both in the theatre department at the same college, and without even really knowing each other TOO well, we said, sure, let's be roommates.
On the very first day of school, as we were bustling around our new room, getting our backpacks together, it somehow came out that her eyesight was so bad that she used this huge clear magnifying sheet to read books - she would place it over the page, and suddenly it would be like a large-print book and she could make it through. I had never known that about her.
Did we sit and have a deep conversation about our poor eyesight?
No.
Did we commisserate about how hard it is to see the blackboard?
No.
Did we swap glasses to see each other's vision and then discuss the pros and cons of various contact lenses, like good upstanding on-the-verge-of-being-adult people?
No.
Instead, here is what we did. For about 20 minutes.
That's what I mean. Goofy juvenile stupid humor. Not everyone has it, you know.
And that's when I knew we would be good roommates and friends.
Scanning Tuesday
Okay, so I am outrageously proud of this photograph.
I was in a show my freshman year of college - it was a jolly Victorian murder-mystery - and there were a lot of kids in it. Big crowd scenes.
One of the little girls, who wore a red cape in the show, liked to jump rope backstage. I happened to snap this photograph of her coming down the hall backstage - and she looks truly DEMONIC. The lights are off because it is during a show ... so she appears to be coming at me like some demonic angel of death!
I love this picture so much. Especially because it is not posed - she was truly just having an innocent moment of fun during her long boring stretches backstage - but the photo just happened to come out creepy as hell.
Scanning Tuesday
This is how I REALLY felt the day of my prom when my date wouldn't come pick me up and have his picture taken. It's so sad now when I think of it (and is a harbinger of things to come) - that I had to stand by myself in the living room getting my picture taken in my prom dress. That sucks, man.
Of course then my two friends came over and posed with me (picture below somewhere) - but before that I was by myself.
Here is the attitude my parents were faced with when they tried to take my picture.
Scanning Tuesday
As much as it pains me, I am going to post the following photo without explaining what the hell is going on.
Betsy, please forgive me.
Scanning Tuesday
From the age of about 7 to 11, my best friends were Jen and Katy. We had many adventures. We called ourselves The Three Muskateers. We pretended we were witches. We had witch names. We had more fun than should be legal. The kind of fun where it's a summer dusk and it's time to go in to supper, and our mothers are calling us in (we lived on the same block in the same neighborhood), and we were all literally FRANTIC to not go inside! It seemed literally impossible to stop our games!
I just saw both of them last week. Well, I saw everyone last week. I love them still. We are not in touch, not in an everyday way, but that bond is there. Great women, both of them.
Here the three of us are, at the busstop, on two different first days of school - I am guessing 5th and 6th grade (for me, I mean. The three of us were staggered in age, I was the oldest.)
It's rare that a TRIO of girls will work so well. Usually there's some backstabbing going on. Not with us. We were inseparable.
Cast a cold eye ...
... On life, on death
Horseman pass by
-- WB Yeats's epitaph
When we were small children, our dad made us memorize the epitaph in order to get part of our allowance (which was all of 75 cents). So all of us, ages 12 to 2, would stand there and chant in unison:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman pass by!
You would KNOW this story, by the way, if you had read my essay in Sewanee Review, my first published piece - where I detail the entire allowance ritual set up by my father.
Not even a nuclear blast could knock Yeats's epitaph out of my brain.
This photo below is framed and on my desk.
Scanning Tuesday
I have a friend Cristina who designs hats. In Chicago, she had a sweet little studio, which was like going into Santa's workshop or something. We loved to hang out there and try on her creations. One hot summer day, there was a street fair in Chicago (like there is every other day in Chicago in the summer) - and Cristina, who was trying to launch her business, asked me, Mitchell and Jackie to walk around the street fair with her - each of us wearing one of her hats, so we could pass out fliers and basically be walking billboards.
We had a blast. I do remember that we got some scornful comments from idiots who never went past high school emotionally. One girl sneered as we walked by, "Oh. So I guess they're wearing hats today." I don't understand why four people wearing hats would be so disturbing and threatening.
The funniest part, though, was that my friend Cristina - who said, about herself, "I wake up every morning eager to hyperbolize" - characterized our experience at the street fair as "the day we were almost killed".
hahahahaha
Anyway, here are some shots from that day.
Here is Cristina, in her studio.
Me trying on a hat
Mitchell, Cristina, Jackie
Jackie, Cristina, Mitchell
Mitchell
Cristina in her magical studio
Jackie, trying on a hat
Scanning Tuesday
Betsy won tickets and a limo ride to an Elton John concert off some radio contest. We were sophomores in college. Betsy's father was (is) a priest (in fact, he just married my sister Jean and her now-husband Pat) - and his house and church were on the campus where I went to college. So I walked over there that night, and there was a huge limo waiting for us. A limo parked in front of the church, waiting for the pastor's daughter and her friend.
We had so much fun.
Best of all was that we ran into Mitchell at the Civic Center, and we weren't really friends yet, although we knew OF each other ... and we were so excited to run into each other that I count that moment as really the first moment when I knew we would be friends. Well, that and us laughing at how bad we were at juggling.
Scanning Tuesday
There are a couple of facts you should know to put the following 3 photos in context.
1. In Rhode Island, there was an amusement park called Rocky Point. The rides were rusty and dangerous. The people who ran the rides appeared to be alcoholic halfwits. The entire place was falling apart, a real old-time carnival, and it was a BLAST.
2. One summer day, Mitchell, his sister Sandi, and I went to Rocky Point.
3. There was a ride called The Flume - like a roller coaster which ended with you splashing in the water. We rode it multiple times.
4. Earlier that summer, Mitchell had been cast as one of the show people at Rocky Point. He was going to be "Doc Abbott" - a comedian who stood on his own little stage and did horrible jokes along the lines of, "Oh, just for the halibut" and then pulling out a huge fish. Mitchell was mortified. And also rather frightened. Because the Doc Abbott stage was by itself, out in the middle of nowhere, and the possibility of being run out of Rocky Point by a bunch of heckling drunk halfwits was huge. But the final straw that broke the camel's back was the day at rehearsal when a Rhode Island girl, hired as a dancer, got pissed off because she was being made to do comedic bits and skits. She turned to Mitchell and said, in the thickest Rhode Island accent on the planet, "Allz I wanna do is dyance." Mitchell understood her concerns, but in that moment he had had it. He heard what she had to say, and then strolled up to the director, informed the director he had quit, and walked out of the rehearsal hall. "Allz I wanna do is dyance" is still a refrain amongst my group of friends.
5. Naturally, we had to go find Doc Abbott's stage. Still soaking wet from our Flume rides, we took three photos, one of each of us, "performing" on the stage.
6. I find Mitchell's photo to be truly demonic. He looks like a gleeful dictator.
7. Sandi is, to put it mildly, a fashion guru. Even when she was 16, she would wear gold lame pant suits and stilettoes and still somehow pull it off. She is cutting edge, glamorous, fabulous, and always looks put together. So that is why it is truly confusing to see her here, wearing short white shorts, and white flats. Mitchell and I do not understand what happened.
Scanning Tuesday
Me, age 11. You know who took this photo? Andrew Wright, the boy I loved. The boy who gave me the best Valentine ever.
My only regret is that I was obviously so so shy.
January 12, 2009
Scanning Monday
One sunny day, we convened at my friend Luisa's house. Luisa makes jewelry, and she brought out all of these new beads she had been working with. We sat in the sun on her porch, drinking iced coffee, and looking through these incredible beads.
Jackie ended up becoming a woman we now refer to as "The Bead Lady".
Bead Lady was very obnoxious and she knew everything there was to know about beads and would pontificate endlessly.
Jackie would reach into the bag, pick a random bead, glance at it, and pronounce, "This bead hails from MesopoTAMia ..."
Just making shit up.
And the accent is hard to describe. Her voice was rather adenoidal and snotty (emotionally and literally), and she was truly insufferable. We all love the Bead Lady to this day.
Jackie pulled out one bead, gave it a deadpan glance, and said flatly, to all of us, "This bead pre-dates Christ."
Here is a shot of me and Luisa, laughing. And here is a shot of The Bead Lady in action.
Scanning Monday
Me with the really sad eyes and me with the glam lipstick and shades. Scary thing is, the photos were taken maybe 5 minutes apart. My boyfriend took the pictures. No wonder he was freaked. Because both Sheilas are true.
Sheila, the Wrath of God
This is thanks to Jonathan at Cinema Styles.
He found an eerie similarity between one of my photos below ... and, well, the iconic image of the crazed Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's Aguirre the Wrath of God.
He was nice enough to put them together for a side-by-side comparison.
It's uncanny. And also very funny.
Scanning Monday
You know, when I was in junior high and really struggling socially, trying to hang onto hope through the cunning use of Ralph Macchio, I tormented myself with questions as to WHY I was so unpopular. Was it my bad clothes? My bowl cut? My baby fat? My braces? My glasses? Or was it a combination of all of the above?
In retrospect, however, I think the fact that I thought it was fun to take photos like the one below during our free period in junior high (out in public, where anyone could see) probably goes a long way toward explaining my low status.
Scanning Monday
Mitchell has been my date at more weddings than I can count. Here we are, cracking each other up, at Meredith and Jacques' wedding. It was a blizzard that night. The bridesmaids wore black velvet and we had holly in our hair. I love this picture of the two of us.
Scanning Monday
Member Emily?
My friend Emily who declared, while watching Rudolph, that "Santa is a racist motherfuckah"?
Here are some pictures of her.
Emily dancing with my brother.
Emily
Emily and Mitchell dancing and gossiping
Scanning Monday
Meredith hosted a New Year's Eve party when she was living in Lowell - and wonder of wonders - most of the core group could make it, even though we had scattered - either going to college, or working, whatever: Betsy, Me, Beth, and Kate. Michele was not there but she was the only one missing. High school was over, and adulthood was just starting. It was a magical party for some reason - we all remember it.
At one point someone put on Devo's "Jerkin' Back and Forth" - a favorite of ours when we were in high school. We all went NUTS and someone (Tom??) had the foresight to take a series of photos.
I love how we are all so into it, so into each other - and yes, we are in that moment living in the past, yet we're not holding onto the past - we're celebrating it ... I just love this series of pictures. We are all still dear friends, that's the best part.
I also enjoy the one photo where everyone is clearly "jerkin' up high" and I made a mistake, and proceeded to "jerk down low".
January 11, 2009
Scanning Sunday
Two of my friends in college were bridesmaids in a wedding and were forced to wear puffy royal blue gowns ... and of course the bride said, "You'll wear them again - maybe to a New Year's Eve party!" What kind of person would wear a puffy royal blue gown to New Year's Eve? Maybe Fergie would ... but just a regular Rhode Island girl? She'll spritz her bangs and put on a little black dress with shiny black heels.
Anyway, the dresses were infamous and Jackie, who was one of the unfortunate bridesmaids, would sometimes put the dress on and come down the stairs, singing "Hit the Road, Jack" as though she were a pathetic lounge singer. We'd all be hanging out downstairs, Jackie would be dressed like a normal person, then she would disappear ... and before we realized she was gone, back she would come, singing some cheeseball song, wearing her royal blue bridesmaid gown.
So that Halloween there was a huge bash at an infamous house in Eastward Look (down by Scarborough Beach). Jackie and I decided to go as the Sweeney Sisters (who were huge at the time). We both wore the royal blue bridesmaid gowns and false eyelashes. As much as we could, we tried to stay in character. We burst into the party singing "Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley" and just took it from there.
At the end of the night, the entire party went down the end of the road to the beach and stood on the sand, shivering, holding beers, and singing and laughing. Jackie and I were still in our gowns. We must have looked insane. But it was Halloween we could get away with it.
Jim Simon posted a picture of us as the Sweeney Sisters on Facebook. I was so happy to see it again. Lunacy.
Jackie said, upon seeing the photo again, "I look like the secretary at the Woonsocket DMV" - which, I suppose, is truly LOCAL humor - and all of us Rhode Islanders have been laughing all day about it. There is no Woonsocket DMV, but that doesn't matter. It's the ENERGY she's talking about ... and she is right ON. She looks like the secretary at the Woonsocket DMV.
Scanning Sunday
Some drawings I did. I like to draw. It's more like "copying", but I like it, and find it relaxing.
Jean
Me
Siobhan
Marilyn Monroe
People-watching at the Angelica
Lamp
Self-portrait
Scanning Sunday
The levels of weird in the following photo cannot be made clear without me talking nonstop for 2.3 hours on an almost cellular level about quantum physics, beach glass, pita bread, and artificial fruit.
I'll just say that this is me backstage at the Milwaukee Summer Fest in our dressing room.
Scanning Sunday
The "bridge to nowhere" in Milwaukee.
Pat called it "Sheila's Bridge" because I was so fascinated by it.
Scanning Sunday
This is one of my favorite photos ever.
We were in New Hampshire (I think) and we went to a county fair. It was me, Brendan, Jean, Siobhan, and a very young Cashel. There was this maze sort of place - where you had to climb rope ladders and go across suspended bridges - and kids were having a blast with it. You crawled through tunnels and finally, at the end, you got to slide down a slide, out of the maze. So Cashel bravely begins his journey. We watched him through the gate. We were laughing so hard we were crying. He was so serious as he climbed the rope ladder. He was very concerned about everything. Then he got up to the second level (you could see it through the gate) - and it involved him having to pass through another area to get to the slide - and maybe it was that he could SEE us below - maybe it was that he didn't like heights - maybe it was all just overwhelming - but he started to have a MELTDOWN. Of MAJOR proportions. And the worst part was: we all coudl SEE him melting down, above us on the second level, but we couldn't get to him. In order to get to him, you would have to go through the whole maze. We called up encouragement to him, which just made the situation worse. He was screaming, and the look of terror on his eyes was heart-wrenching. "You're almost there, Cash!" we screamed up at him. "You just have to go thru that tunnel to get to the slide!" But he was in panic mode now. Far far far away from all comfort and care. His aunties were MILES away below him, so was his dad ... he FREAKED.
So Brendan waited no longer and charged into the maze to go rescue Cashel.
Jean, Siobhan and I watched on, laughing until we were in tears, at Brendan struggling up the rope ladder, pushing past all the little pipsqueaks, calling out, "I'M COMING CASHEL, I'M COMING!"
Cashel hadn't seen his dad charge into the maze so he was still wild-eyed with despair and panic, caught and trapped, and we screamed up at him, "DADDY'S COMING, CASH - DADDY'S COMING!"
Brendan finally got up to the platform where Cash was and there was a tearful reunion.
Then, the two of them crawled through the tunnel, to go slide down the slide together.
Jean, Siobhan and I were all crying - and as the two of them slid down together - we all FLIPPED. It was like an Olympic event or something, seeing them emerge. We were screaming and clapping ...
But the best part of this photo is that Cashel is grinning from ear to ear. He's back where he should be, protected by his father. So now he can enjoy the ride.
It's a perfect picture.
Scanning Sunday
Singing with Pat McCurdy at Lounge Ax in Chicago.
There's a long weird story behind this photo, and it involves Michael, Bay Watch, menstruation, black panties, ice cream, and a drowned dwarf.
Seems like rather a benign photo, right, but every time I look at it all I can see is a dwarf floating to the bottom of the ocean.
Scanning Sunday
I have found the photo of my brother and me on Halloween, very early on in our lives. He is a ghost. I am a blonde witch, apparently.
Brendan's face in this photo absolutely kills me. I can't stop looking at it.
Scanning Sunday
In the 4th grade, I played Gretl in a production of Hansel and Gretl.
Here I am, slaving away at my sewing, beside my brother Hansel.
Scanning Sunday
More theatrical exploits! This is me backstage during our wonderful college production of Edwin Drood. I played a music hall floozy. I don't think I've ever had so much fun in a show in my LIFE.
Scanning Sunday
In 6th grade, Betsy and I signed up for an after-school class in photography. One of our assignments was to take pictures of the same scene from multiple angles. I have no idea who the photographer was here (although I think I can guess) and it's weird - this is all rather silly but I still like these photos a lot.
Scanning Sunday
"Consider yourself ... AT HOME ..."
Another example of my earlier acting career. I played Artful Dodger in the school play.
Joe Hurley would be so proud.
Scanning Sunday
A snapshot of me during one of my earliest theatrical productions. I played a grumpy cynical mirror in a local production of Sleeping Beauty. I was absolutely brilliant!!
I was 10.
Scanning Sunday
My senior prom date was 22 years old. He refused to come to the house for the picture-taking ritual beforehand. When I think about that now, I still feel that rejection. And shame, too. Because he had shamed me for even asking. We had been dating, off and on, for months. It's not like we were strangers. But he was like, "No, no, I'm not going to do that whole picture thing. Nope."
I should have said, "You know what? Fuck you. I'll go to my prom by myself, you fucking douchebag."
It was pouring rain that day and my eyes had had a bad reaction to new saline solution for my lenses - so I had to wear my glasses to the prom, which seemed like the ultimate tragedy at the time. The fact that my prom date refused to actually, you know, act like a prom date - paled in comparison to having to wear glasses.
But then - like an angel of mercy - two of my friends (who were in college) called. They were living my prom vicariously. They were so excited for me. They didn't care that I had to wear glasses. They knew my prom date wasn't going to come over - so what did they do? They jumped in their car and raced over to my house, so that I could have pictures taken in the living with THEM. Not with my date. They were like, Fuck HIM.
Look at how Liz is holding onto my white-gloved hand, as though it is a posed prom picture. She was 21 years old, 22, and so into the fact that her young friend was having this experience.
She's good people.
And Joe! Look at my friend Joe, standing there, beaming.
I am still amazed by their kindness and sweetness on that day.
Scanning Sunday
One night I was out with my friend Rich, and the restaurant had paper table cloths with Crayons provided, if you wanted to draw. So I started doodling, and I drew three "ladies". Anyone who reads me knows that I love to draw "ladies". I finished up my three "ladies" and then looked closer and said, "Huh. I think I just drew me and my sisters." Rich started laughing and said, "You didn't realize that until now? I recognized all of you immediately!"
Scanning Sunday
It's not often that you have a photo of yourself at the very moment a dream dies.
I have written of my response to my "flying up" ceremony and how in that moment not only did a dream die - but a bit of my childhood died as well. I would never be so innocent or gullible again. It was also the first moment I felt shame, embarrassment so white-hot that I had to crush it down.
You'd never know from looking at the picture that that is what is going on.
Good game face. Too good.
Scanning Sunday
One year, Jackie hosted Thanksgiving at her basement apartment (with rubber floors) and everyone who couldn't get home to family that year convened. It was a great night. Mitchell cooked the turkey - his first - and although it was placed in the pan upside down it was dee-lish. We had new friends and old - worlds colliding - Tigh and Hubbell were there (I wrote about them here), the aforementioned Ken was there ... Ted was there ... Bobby ... many of them did not know one another, so it was a great night. Watching Tigh shriek at Bobby about why the downfall of the studio system wrecked Hollywood forever is an image I will not forget. Jackie was in training to be an EMT at that point, so she went around the table as we ate and took our blood pressure, for practice.
Ken and Jackie started dancing in the kitchen area, and things got a little bit out of control. As you will see. The whole series ends with one of my favorite pictures of all time.
Scanning Sunday
The snow bunny bored-ex-princess redux. We imagined that she was a Hapsburg, or someone like that - from a now defunct throne. And she parties it up in an Alps resort and Monte Carlo, and she has no throne or castle to go home to, and she is, in general, a terrible person, doing a ton of coke, partying with other ex-royals, and skiing and snowboarding during the day.
There are a couple of photos in this series. Mitchell, thank you for your brilliance with the camera. They are hilarious photos.
Scanning Sunday
Me in Little League. My team was the Newport Creamery sponsored team. My brother is sitting next to me. My heart cracks looking at his face.
I am obviously annoyed (for the first time in my life, perhaps?) that someone is pointing a camera at me.
Scanning Sunday
This was an infamous road trip - we were traveling by car to see our friend Liz in a regional production of Noises Off. We found ourselves in a deserted town, and everyone seemed homeless and frightening, like there might be something in the water. We asked directions from one toothless man, and he had a gun in his hand. We had a blast.
Steven, Brett, Mitchell, Me, and Liz.
Steven, Mitchell, Tonio (with camera), Me, Brett (in front)
Scanning Sunday
Me and Ann Marie, on one of the craziest days of our entire friendship. We had bought gowns. We had traveled to Milwaukee and rented a motel room. We brought more hair products than two women should ever need in one sitting. It was so much fun.
January 10, 2009
Reunion
In 1994, 1995, I lived in Chicago with Mitchell, and our friend Ken. Ken was a great guy who was also in Killer Joe with me, in Ithaca. Just a straight-up wonderful person. Over the years, I lost track of Ken, although I would hear of him through Mitchell and mutual friends - people running into him, he's doing well, he's well-known and well-liked. But I have not seen him or spoke to him since 1995. One of the things that we loved to do as roommates was gather around the TV every night at 11:30 (if I remember correctly) to watch thirtysomething, which Lifetime had purchased and was running in sequence. I taped every one of them (thank God, because the damn series has not been released on DVD, which is insane to me). Ken, who is a big salt-of-the-earth type, who wore backwards baseball caps, made some of the funniest weirdest comments as we watched. He had a whole different outlook. We'd be watching some episode, and he'd make some comment that would have us rolling on the floor with laughter. It was always something like, "You know she has smelly burps." Or "I am betting Ellen has hairy nipples." We'd be like, "WHAT????"
And then I moved to New York and this was before the Internet was in my life, and before Facebook, and I lost touch with a lot of people, Ken included.
Now, though, I am back in touch with him through Facebook. We haven't really spoken, just "friend"-ed each other, and my life has been a whirlwind over the last two months - well, two years, really - but I haven't been in a corresponding mood. No energy to spare. But I always had really fond memories of Ken, so it was nice to see his face again.
And yesterday afternoon, as the snow came down, and I was missing my brother - who had been staying with me - and missing my sisters and my mother and everyone - I sat at my computer and scanned probably 400 photos into my computer. I went into a fugue state. I posted some on Flickr, some on Facebook, I couldn't stop.
Suddenly, a little IM window popped up and it was Ken. No preamble. No "hey how are you?" He had left me a nice note telling me he was thinking of me - but in the IM he dispensed with niceties and got right to the point, picking up where we left off in 1995. I have not spoken to him since 1995. And here is our conversation from yesterday:
4:58 Ken
Why isn't 30something on DVD?
4:58pmSheila
I cant figure it out!!! What the eff???
Is it the music rights or something like that?
Mitchell and I still ROAR about some of your comments about that show. I remember you saying something about Hope along the lines of, "You just know she has pepperoni breath."
4:59pmKen
Frickin crime
4:59pmSheila
Totally!
It needs to come out in a deluxe edition, with special features, and interviews and all that crap.
4:59pmKen
Amen
5:00pmSheila
What was the name of that married douchebag that Ellen was fooling around with? We hated him SO MUCH
5:01pmKen
Have to think
I miss Miles Drentell
5:01pmSheila
JEFFREY
I miss Miles Drentell too. Brilliant.
5:02pmKen
Ugh
5:03pmKen
Ellen was a straight up mess
5:03pmSheila
Totally. I give her and Billy a year, tops.
5:03pmKen
Laughing Hard!!!!
5:04pmSheila
Me too!!!!!
Ahhh, Melissa and Lee. Let's hope they get over their age differences and make a go of it.
5:04pmKen
Poor Ethan....kid had issues
5:05pmSheila
Oh God. That kid should never be allowed near firecrackers and that's all I'm saying.
I feel that Gary was roped into domesticity, that it wasn't really his bag.
5:06pmKen
I agree....wild stallion needs to roam free
5:07pmSheila
Or die in a snowstorm. either one.
It is the small things, like that IM conversation, that keep me grounded, make me remember who I am, and that life is good. I'll keep comments open for now. Not sure.
February Wedding day
On December 28, he offered her a ride home from the record hop even though he had no car.
When she got home that night, she told her older sister Anne that she had met a boy at the record hop. The boy had been telling her jokes all night, making her laugh. The girl told her older sister, "He's so funny, he reminds me of Jerry Lewis."
Eight years later, on a cold February 18, 1967, they were wed.
More O'Malley men
Dad, Bren, and Cashel floating in rafts on Lake Sunapee. They had a good talk that day.
A snowy day
Walking in the woods on a snowy day with my father, who is holding Brendan (who, if you look closely, is talking his head off). My father is wearing a hat of my grandfather's (my mother's father). Nothing I say can prepare you for what the hat looks like. Consider yourself warned.
January 9, 2009
Graduate
When I graduated from college, my father, in resplendent red robes, handed me my diploma.
This is the moment right after that. Dad is in the foreground.
Boondock Saints
(.... to quote my cousin Olivia).
My dad (in a rad outfit sewn by my mother) standing with his brother (and my godfather) Jimmy.
January 2, 2009
The Theory of Electricity and Wanting: Valley Girl
Martha Coolidge, director of Valley Girl:
I wanted that feeling of love at first sight that just hits you. Hard. My goal in this picture was to accomplish the feelings that you have in your first love, the kind of incredible high that first love in high school gives you. There's nothing like it. We all know it ... I felt from old movies that the most important thing that you can do in a movie is play wanting. It isn't actually the getting of the person that is hot on the screen. It's the wanting. It's the electricity, it's the looks, it's the feeling of tension, of sexual tension, the parallel-ing of emotions, that really builds feeling in a picture. The eye contact, the kind of reflecting of each other that people do, and that the old actors from old Hollywood really knew how to do, because they couldn't show nudity then, they couldn't show all the things they could show today, and I wanted very much for Randy [Nic Cage] and Julie [Deborah Foreman] to really have that great desire and electricity together ... This is the theory of electricity and wanting, and I loved the pull between these two. Together they were just great.
The film was shot in 20 days.
The Books: "The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry" - T.S. Eliot
Next book on my poetry shelf:
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Poets like William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane both said that they needed to forcibly divorce themselves from Eliot's influence in order to be able to write in their own way. He was so huge, so dominant - and in his own time - that it became difficult for other poets to find their own voices. Everything sounded like an imitation of Eliot. Interestingly enough, Eliot felt that way about Joyce's Ulysses, published in 1922, of which he said (among many other things), "I wish for my own sake that I hadn't read it." I love that quote.
I went through an Eliot phase in high school, mainly because my drama class had gone to see Cats in New York, and also we had had to read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in English class, and there was something about the descriptions (the yellow fog and I loved the part about the yellow smoke rubbing its back against the window panes - it just sounded so satisfying and real to me, I could SEE it) that I really liked. I was very into ADJECTIVES back then, which maybe one day I will write about - because it took a truly frightening obsessive form (frightening in that I had to break myself of the habit, and it really took some doing) - and I'm not sure what that was all about. And Eliot's work was really good with the adjectives. They transported me into another world. But the meaning of the poems?? Not sure I really grasped it back then!
I like that Eliot had - like many artists - a struggle really committing to be a poet. His parents thought it would be a waste of energy, wanted him to have a "real" job, so for a while, he did keep up the pretense - studying philosophy, going for his dissertation - but all the while, the poetry was growing in him. It began to occur to him that that was what he wanted to do. That and that alone.
So guess who entered the picture around this time?
Take a wild guess.
Ezra Pound. Was the man everywhere at once?
Pound read early drafts of Prufrock and basically browbeat Harriet Monroe (editor of Poetry) to publish it. Monroe didn't want to at first. She said no. Pound tried again. And again. Until finally she caved in 1915.
I don't think I knew that T.S. Eliot was American until, oh, last year or something retarded like that. If I was told the facts, I certainly didn't retain them. Cats seemed really British to me, especially because of the composers being British (not that that has anything to do with anything, just describing my own journey here) - and then "T.S. Eliot" the name sounds oh so British ... but no, dude was from St. Louis. I remember when I found that out, and I had to re-think my entire concept of the guy. "What?? He was American??" Eventually he became a British citizen, and he lived in Europe for most of his life - but he was US-born. Interesting, though: his family was originally from Massachusetts, but T.S. Eliot was raised in St. Louis. Eliot ended up going to Harvard and suddenly felt himself to be a Midwesterner. Although during his time in St. Louis, he felt like a Northeaterner. There was geographical displacement in this man from the beginning, and you can really see that in his poems. It wasn't that he belonged nowhere. It was that he belonged everywhere.
He said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1948:
In the work of every poet there will certainly be much that can only appeal to those who inhabit the same region, or speak the same language, as the poet. But nevertheless there is a meaning to the phrase «the poetry of Europe», and even to the word «poetry» the world over. I think that in poetry people of different countries and different languages - though it be apparently only through a small minority in any one country - acquire an understanding of each other which, however partial, is still essential.
That all sounds very nice and grown-up, doesn't it? But Eliot had witnessed the fracturing of "understanding", in World War I and World War II, and his later poems express the fear, the anxiety, of that desolate time in Europe and elsewhere. Eliot had a troubled first marriage, and lost a dear friend in World War I. There were other events, too, the death of his father ... and these all worked on him and his psyche - a terrible time for him, obviously - and the result was The Waste Land, published in 1922 (completed in 1921). It's one of the most important poems of the 20th century, obviously - and, like Yeats's Second Coming, describes the overwhelming sense of doom and fear, evil stalking the land, slaughter, carnage, chaos. Eliot was, of course, in England at the time, which I think also made a huge difference. Americans were greatly affected by the two world wars, obviously - we made enormous sacrifices, and raced in (to quote Eddie Izzard) like "the cavalry in the last reel" - and those who fought witnessed the carnage - but it wasn't on their own soil. Huge difference in psychology. Imagine the trenches and air raids sweeping across our own continent and how that would have affected us differently as a people. Eliot's The Waste Land is a giant poem, and was immediately famous, and immediately placed him not just in the canon, but at the top of it.
In order to understand the 20th century, The Waste Land is essential.
Interestingly enough, the form of The Waste Land represented a break with Pound. The poets Pound promoted found themselves eventually having to 'break' with him, because his influence was huge as well, and he was pushing them all towards a certain kind of expression, what he felt poetry was. He was responsible for many of their breakthroughs. Pound was instrumental in helping Eliot put The Waste Land together, which had existed in fragments. I love that the fragmentary nature of the poem remained intact, though - because that is what war does. That is what great cataclysmic events can do. Psychologies and cultures fragment. Eliot had suffered a nervous breakdown too, and needed help with the poem. Pound stepped in. Pound took all of the different drafts and acted as an editor, piecing it together. It says a lot about Pound that he saw what Eliot was working towards, and although his goals differed from Pound's, Pound put that aside. Perhaps Eliot would have leaned towards a more streamlined approach, perhaps Pound sensed that the poem needs its fractured format ... The form the poem takes expresses the experience of the poet (and also of the world at that time). Brilliant.
Eliot said later, about The Waste Land:
In The Waste Land I wasn't even bothering whether I understand what I was saying.
The poem is the stronger for it, for that lack of control.
My Norton book says, in its introduction to Eliot:
When the poem itself was first published, in 1922, it gave Eliot his central position in modern poetry. No one has been able to encompass so much material with so much dexterity, or to express the alienation and horror of so many aspects of the modern world. Though the poem is made of fragments, they are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that might be joined if certain spiritual conditions were met. In this way, Eliot's attitude toward fragmentation was different from Pound's - Eliot wanted to recompose the world, whereas Pound thought it could remain in fragments and still have a paradisal aspect that the poet could elicit. In other words, Pound accepted discontinuity as the only way in which the world could be regarded, while Eliot rejected it and looked for a seamless world. He began to find it in Christianity.
Eliot was quick to diss his own importance (you can see it in his Nobel speech), and he said, at one point, that The Waste Land wasn't so much a treatise on the alienation and fragmentation of the modern man - but just a piece of "rhythmical grumbling". Regardless, it is a huge accomplishment.
Here is the poem that started it all (for him and for me). Lots of things that I fell in love with when I was 14 I outgrew. Like colored legwarmers and Rick Springfield. But "Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" remains.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
January 1, 2009
Thanks
... to Harry, for his energy, support, and for just being there every day.
... to all of my cousins, for keeping in touch through IMs and Facebook, and letting us know we are all cared about
... to Shaka, for taking care of the crick in my neck and my overall body problems, for giving me a space where I can forget for a while
... to Brendan, for your strength, your humor, your sensitivity, your way with Cashel, your way with all of us, and for enriching my life in almost every conversation we have. Oh, and thanks for giving me Valley Girl for Christmas. I watched it last night and it is as fabulous as I remembered.
... to the Chinese man at the gift shop who sells me my rose oil and always greets me with a nice smile and friendly banter ... I look forward to going in there
... to Barry. Just because.
... to Allison, for our friendship that just gets deeper and better with every passing day. I miss you!
... to Bob O'Neill, for caring about the books
... to Mum. I can't even speak.
... to Pat, for making my sister Jean happy
... to Maria, for just being there, for reading my book in one sitting, for comparing it to the Waltons, for bringing Cashel into the world, and for her general energy over Christmas
... to Michael, for being understanding about my freakout of tween proportions over the last week. "Woah, slow down" he wrote. I need understanding. I need safety. Sometimes I freak out. I need someone who can understand, talk me out of the clock tower, tell me to chillax in a loving manner, and not abandon me just because I'm difficult. Thank you.
... to David Maslin for his applesauce
... to Dad. For everything.
... to the Quinns. I have known them my whole life. I love them.
... to Father Creedon. Words cannot express.
... to Kerry, for her humor, her Red Sox Kleenex box, and for taking care of Hope while I am away
... speaking of Hope, thank you Hope for coming into my life
... to Keith at House Next Door, for giving me a space to write giant pieces about my current obsessions - and for also editing me so well to save me from my own excesses.
... to Mitchell. For being my date at Jean and Pat's wedding, for making sure his tie matched my bridesmaid dress, for not letting that bitchy actress appropriate my cousin Kerry's career, for listening, laughing, loving, and for everything else you have given me.
... to Jackie, who for some reason is banned from commenting on my blog, and I can't figure out how to change it. I have felt you out there, dear friend.
... to all the gorgeous women in my Girl Group - I cherish each and every one of you
... to Alex, whose humor, intelligence, anger, creativity, and passion are a constant reminder of how I want to live my life
... to David, for talking, listening, caring, and making me laugh
... to Cashel, for just who you are, my dear nephew - you are such a good person and I am proud to know you.
... to Ben, for coming into Siobhan's life, and for being such a nice person, such a part of our family already. Thanks for the hot dogs!
... to Mickey Rourke, for coming back from obscurity and thrilling me to no end
... to Melody: for how you love my brother, for how you love Cashel, and for how you have been like a third sister these years ... It means so much to me to have you be a part of my life.
... to Pat McCurdy, for your caring funny text messages, and for still, after everything, being there for me
... to Beth, for letting me in on what you are going through right now, and being such a good friend
... to Siobhan, for being a continuous surprise, someone I cherish more and more each day
... to Ann Marie, for the fact that she and I, early in our friendship, realized that we wanted to have a "prom-like experience" again, so we went out and bought, basically GOWNS to drive up to Milwaukee and see a Pat McCurdy show. We showed up in this dingy bar in GOWNS. I am laughing out loud.
... to Joe Hurley, for emerging out of the damn blue in the way you did, remembering me as that girl in the eyepatch from years ago singing "Where is love" on the sidewalk in lower Manhattan, for tracking me down like a bloodhound - that took some doing and I am so impressed with your effort - and also for your amusing emails which really have lightened my days recently. Without even knowing it (and that is the best part of it), you have reminded me of who I am.
... to Ted, for all the wine, the conversation, and our years-long friendship ... I am so grateful for it
... to Betsy, for the Tangy Taffy and for being my best friend before I even knew who I was
... to Mere - first of all for crocheting those mittens last year when I asked you to ... you didn't hesitate, you just STARTED and you created the weird thing that I asked you to - bless you! ... and for being a wonderful friend. Even though you are missing a toe.
... to Beyonce, for her "Single Ladies" song and video. I can't get enough and when I've felt blue and broken, as I often feel, I'll watch it. It works.
... to Barbara, for believing in me
... to the neighbors who came over the morning of the snowstorm and - without being asked - shoveled out our driveway and shoveled out all of our cars
... to Kate, one of my dearest and most treasured friends. I'm sorry I haven't been there for you recently, as you go through all these huge changes! I miss you so much!
... to Michele, for getting so enraged about a recent article in the Pro Jo that she considered calling up the editor to give her own version of events. A sort of Rhode Island expose. Brilliant! Also, for her kind emails and support
... to Patrick Sandora, for making me LAUGH!! You're awesome!
... to Stephenie Meyer, for her Twilight books. They have been such a welcome escape from the intensity of this December, and I have been transported by them. I so needed it.
... to Jean ... for saying the word "Benny's" in almost every conversation, and for just who you are. I'm so proud of you.
... to my new niece/nephew, whoever you will be ... I love you already.
To prove I've still got "it"
... just like Clara Bow had "it":
Thanks Caitlin (or should I say Mary Kate / Ashley?)
The Books: "The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry" - Marianne Moore
Next book on my poetry shelf:
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
T.S. Eliot wrote in 1923, early in Moore's career:
"I can only think of five contemporary poets - English, Irish, French and German - whose works excite me as much or more than Miss Moore's."
He felt that her poetry was probably the "most durable" of all the greats writing at that time.
Sadly, I have no idea how to recreate what Moore's poems LOOK like on my own site - does anyone have any tips? Movable Type irons out her jagged beginning lines - and half of the fun of Moore is what her poems look like. The start of each line is staggered, like little steps (or, in a lot of poems they are) - and so the reading of the poem becomes something almost experiential, as opposed to passive, or intellectual. Her poems really look like something.
Moore was great friends with people like H.D. (more on her here) and Ezra Pound (more on him here) and she had many admirers. Her work as a critic was unfortunately cut short, due to the collapse of the main journal she wrote for - but you can see her critical mind at work in her poems. She was one of those poets who wrote a lot about poetry itself. She had many ideas, she wanted to let images talk to one another through the verse - and perhaps the connecting links were opaque to us, the reader - but that just adds to the power of her stuff. Her poems have been compared to Cubist paintings. They are not literal. She goes into a dreamspace, and the words tumble out (at least that is the impression - not only from the sounds, but from, again, the LOOK of the words on the page) - almost like things happen in dreams. The unconscious is paramount. Poetry is not meant to reveal all. What you leave out is almost as valuable as what you include. She wrote: "Omissions are not accidents."
My view of Marianne Moore was, for a while, tainted by her rather snotty response to an overly fawning Sylvia Plath. Plath was ga-ga, a young woman at the time, not famous yet - and they met in 1955. Plath had sent Moore some of her poems, and she feared she made some gaffe by sending her carbon copies. Moore sent her a pointed letter that hurt Plath's feelings. Anne Stevenson writes in Bitter Fame:
In July, to Sylvia's surprise and keen distress, Miss Moore sent her in reply what Sylvia saw as "a queerly ambiguous spiteful letter... 'Don't be so grisly,'" she commented; "you are too unrelenting.'" And she added "certain pointed remarks about 'typing being a bugbear.'" Sylvia concluded that Miss Moore was annoyed because she had sent carbon copies instead of fresh top sheets. That seems unlikely. While Marianne Moore usually admired Ted's work, she never warmed to Sylvia's, disliking the early traces of the very elements that later were to carry her to fame: macabre doom-laden themes, heavy with disturbing colors and totemlike images of stones, skulls, drownings, snakes, and bottled fetuses -- hallmarks of Sylvia's gift.
Marianne Moore very much admired the poetry of Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath's husband for a time, but Hughes never forgave her for her slighting of Plath, and wrote a poem about it in his collection Birthday Letters.
A Literary Life, by Ted Hughes
We climbed Marianne Moore's narrow stair
To her bower-bird bric-a-brac nest, in Brooklyn.
Daintiest curio relic of Americana.
Her talk, a needle
Unresting - darning incessantly
Chain-mail with crewel-work flowers.
Birds and fish of the reef
In phosphor-bronze wire.
Her face, tiny American treen bobbin
On a spindle,
Her voice the flickering hum of the old wheel.
Then the coin, compulsory,
For the subway
Back to our quotidian scramble.
Why shouldn't we cherish her?
You sent her carbon copies of some of your poems.
Everything about them -
The ghost gloom, the constriction,
The bell-jar air-conditioning - made her gasp
For oxygen and cheer. She sent them back.
(Whoever has her letter has her exact words.)
'Since these seem to be valuable carbon copies
(Somewhat smudged) I shall not engross them.'
I took the point of that 'engross'
Precisely, like a bristle of glass,
Snapped off deep in my thumb.
You wept
And hurled yourself down a floor or two
Further from the Empyrean.
I carried you back up.
And she, Marianne, tight, brisk,
Neat and hard as an ant,
Slid into the second or third circle
Of my Inferno.
A decade later, on her last visit to England,
Holding court at a party, she was sitting
Bowed over her knees, her face,
Under her great hat-brim's floppy petal,
Dainty and bright as a piece of confetti -
She wanted me to know, she insisted
(It was all she wanted to say)
With that Missouri needle, drawing each stitch
Tight in my ear,
That your little near-posthumous memoir
'OCEAN 1212'
Was 'so wonderful, so lit, so wonderful' -
She bowed so low I had to kneel. I kneeled and
Bowed my face close to her upturned face
That seemed tinier than ever,
And studied, as through a grille,
Her lips that put me in mind of a child's purse
Made of the skin of a dormouse,
Her cheek, as if she had powdered the crumpled silk
Of a bat's wing,
And I listened, heavy as a graveyard
While she searched for the grave
Where she could lay down her little wreath.
It is not Moore's fault that a casual comment about carbon copies would send an overly-sensitive young woman into such a tailspin - but it is such tiny moments that make up art (for the artists, I mean) - moments where misconnections or loss are clearly revealed. Hughes had the sense of Plath's sensitivity, he knew it back then, and tried to protect Plath from her own excesses (not an easy job). And now, decades and decades later, he still has some words for Moore.
Such is life.
Moore was a GIANT, by the time Plath and Hughes met her - the "grande dame" of American poetry. She was an eccentric (Moore was), although the outer aspect of her life was always quiet and narrow. She lived with her mother. She did needlepoint. She worked at a library. She wore hats with little veils and fur stoles. She never married.
But her poetry - with its breathless rhythms and counterintuitive images - its fascination with exotic animals - its SCOPE - shows that the enormity of life is not just represented by the events of our lives, but what is going on inside us, how we see. Plenty of people have had phenomenally interesting lives, with scandals and sex and drugs and months living in a tent in Tunisia - but that doesn't necessarily mean that the poetry is going to be good.
Marianne Moore walked a straight and narrow life, and her poems are HUGE.
Also, I have to say: I love that she was an enormous baseball fan. Actually, she was a huge sports fan, in general - but baseball was her passion. She wrote poems about baseball and I treasure them.
Marianne Moore and Langston Hughes
Here is a piece Ted wrote about Marianne Moore.
Here is one of my favorites of her poems. Again, I can't replicate what it looks like - but the beginning lines are all staggered, so the poem looks almost fragmented, breathless. I love her imagery. Nothing about her is expected. Nothing is traditional. Only she could put these lines and these words together. I find her to be a rigorous poet to read. I can't relax. She doesn't let me. The images are too unexpected, I have to pay attention. Like: " its rock crystal and its imperturbability, / all of museum quality..." To me, not only is that line perfect and evocative ... but a surprise, a little gift.
ENGLAND
with its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its cathedral;
with voices - one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept - the
criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy
with its equal shores - contriving an epicureanism
from which the grossness has been extracted,
and Greece with its goat and its gourds,
the nest of modified illusions: and France,
the "chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly,"
in whose products, mystery of construction
diverts one from what was originally one's object -
substance at the core: and the East with its snails, its emotional
shorthand and jade cockroaches, its rock crystal and its imperturbability,
all of museum quality: and America where there
is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south,
where cigars are smoked on the street in the north;
where there are no proofreaders, no silk-worms, no digressions;
the wild man's land; grass-less, linksless, languageless country in which letters are written
not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand,
but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!
The letter a in psalm and calm when
pronounced with the sound of "a" in candle, is very noticeable, but
why should continents of misapprehension
have to be accounted for by the fact?
Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous?
Of mettlesomeness which may be mistaken for appetite,
of heat which may appear to be haste,
no conclusions may be drawn.
To have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed that one has not looked far enough.
The sublimated wisdom of China, Egyptian discernment,
the cataclysmic torrent of emotion
compressed in the verbs of the Hebrew language,
the books of the man who is able to say,
"I envy nobody but him, and him only,
who catches more fish than
I do" - the flower and fruit of all that noted superiority
if not stumbled upon in America,
must one imagine that it is not there?
It has never been confined to one locality.
Today in history: January 1, 1892
The Irish potato famine of 1847, with its millions of people pouring into America in a neverending stream, had been the first sign that the country would need some sort of system to register these people, make sure they weren't bringing in diseases, whatever. Immigrants had always come to America, but it was usually in more of a trickle - rather than a flood, like in "black '47".
And so today in history, January 1, 1892, Ellis Island officially opened for business as the primary immigration-registration center for entry into the United States.
The first immigrant of millions to pass through on this day in history was a 14-year-old Irish girl from County Cork named Annie Moore. Three large ships waited to land on that day, and eventually 700 immigrants entered the country on January 1 alone.
Annie Moore was given a 10 dollar gold piece, and welcomed to America.
From American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920, a memory from an immigrant, 1914:
"At seven o'clock our boat lifted anchor and we glided up the still waters of the harbour. The whole prow was a black mass of passengers staring at the ferry-boats, the distant factories, and sky-scrapers. Every point of vantage was seized, and some scores of emigrants were clinging to the rigging. At length we came into sight of the green-grey statue of Liberty, far away and diminutive at first, but later on, a celestial figure in a blaze of sunlight. An American waved a starry flag in greeting, and some emigrants were disposed to cheer, some shed silent tears. Many, however, did not know what the statue was. I heard one Russian telling another that it was the tombstone of Columbus.We carried our luggage out at eight, and in a pushing crowd prepared to disembark…. At a quarter to ten we steamed for Ellis Island. We were then marched to another ferry-boat, and expected to be transported somewhere else, but this second vessel was simply a floating waiting-room. We were crushed and almost suffocated upon it. A hot sun beat upon its wooden roof; the windows in the sides were fixed; we could not move an inch from the places where we were awkwardly standing, for the boxes and baskets were so thick about our feet; babies kept crying sadly, and irritated emigrants swore at the sound of them. All were thinking--"Shall I get through?"
The "tombstone of Columbus"! Ha!!
To those of you who ever visit New York - I highly recommend taking a trip over to Ellis Island. It's strangely emotional - you just can feel the ghosts of the millions of people who passed through. They are all still there. The museum does a great job of displaying information, there's a film to watch, tours to take - it is well worth it.
Here's an image of the Inspection Room - where each immigrant would be screened by doctors for any signs of illness, physical ailments, disease. This was also where their documents would be checked and double-checked. If they were healthy, and if their papers were correct - they would then be allowed to enter the United States.
And so today, let's take a second to remember Annie Moore, the 14 year old Irish girl, the first name on the long long rolls of immigrant records at Ellis Island. There's a statue of Annie Moore at Ellis Island - a bronze statue - which was unveiled by Ireland's president Mary Robinson in 1993.
Here's some more information about Annie Moore. My favorite excerpt from that piece comes at the end:
So what's really important about Annie Moore is not so much that she was born in Ireland, but that she came to America. Someone had to be the first immigrant to land at Ellis Island and as fate would have it she was the one. It might just as easily been someone named Rebecca Schimkowitz or Maria Parmasano. In somewhat the same spirit of commemorating an Unknown Soldier as a symbol of patriotic sacrifice, the story and statues of Annie Moore are intended to remind people of this and future generations of the courageous journey made by countless millions of nameless, faceless immigrants who set out to make a new life for themselves in a strange and distant place called America.
Some images below, including the Inspection Certificate from January 1, 1892, showing Annie Moore's name (the last image below the jump).
Happy birthday, Ellis Island.
