The Sheila Variations

Wolf-Man and The Whisperer

I had my bout with Match.com a couple years ago - a bout that lasted 3 dates (which, I realize, is very half-assed). I am not a big date-r, it's never been my thing. But New York City felt like a howling wilderness at the time, I missed my wacko busy social life in the Windy City, I wasn't meeting anyone, and my co-worker had recently gotten engaged to someone she met on an online-date site. She was very big on giving online dating a shot and she overcame my objections forcefully.

"I hate going on dates. I would rather read a book." I stated.

"Come on, Sheila, you're not looking to get married - if it doesn't work out, who cares? It's just one night! You try people on, if you don't like it, you don't go out with them again."

"I hate small talk." was my intelligent reply.

"Look at it this way: A couple nights a month you'll get a free dinner, and maybe you'll meet somebody nice."

So whatever, I signed up.

I went on 3 dates before I threw in the towel. Maybe I'm too rigid. (It is highly possible.) My friend who ended up getting married had gone on ... 70 dates or something like that ... before she finally met a guy she clicked with.

70 dates??

Here is a brief description of each one of my Match.com dates:

1. Date #1 - Jazz Physics Man
The morning of my date, I woke up with a summer flu. I am sure it was psychosomatic. I didn't want to go. I was meeting the guy at the Central Park boathouse for brunch or something like that. I felt like it was a CHORE. My nose was red. I wanted to stay in bed.

But I got it together, powdered the red nose, and went to meet him. He was pretty normal, he had responded to my profile cause I said something about Einstein ... which was kind of a mistake because he proceeded to talk about physics the entire time, as we ate our eggs benedict. He talked about physics and asked my opinion, and it went way over my head. I had nothing to contribute.

He also loved jazz. Sorry, folks, but in my book, that is a very bad sign. Not in terms of their music taste, but in terms of their abilities to be good boyfriends. (I'll get a lot of flack for that one, I know. It's not jazz I have a problem with so much - Not at all ... it's the obsessive jazz FANS.) Anyway - there was no spark. He never called me, I never called him, no big deal, buh-bye. I was glad I got it over with - no biggie.

2. Date #2 was with someone I ended up calling "Wolf-Man" in my head, AS the date was occurring.

He met me outside of work and we walked to a nearby bar for a drink. I towered over him. He had not put his height in his profile. I am only 5'5", so that gives you some idea of his short-ness. Please understand that wanting a tall man is just a personal taste of mine - not an indictment of an entire body-type. I like big tall strappy jocky guys. Can't help it.

We had a drink. He talked a LOT. A bit too much - but it was okay. He was funny. He was a tough guy. With a crotchety sense of humor. Kind of self-deprecating.

I enjoyed him, until: He had wolf tattoes up and down his arms. I commented on them, and he said, "I love wolves. I love wolves mainly because they are monogamous and they mate for life." I almost burst out laughing in his face. (I'm not saying I am a particularly easy woman to date ... as a matter of fact, I am a nightmare.) It was just so ... so ... hilarious - like he had read it in a book somewhere: Tell her that you love swans because they choose one mate. Who knows, maybe he really does love wolves because they mate for life. I love wolves, too, but not because they are monogamous, for God's sake. I love wolves because they are fierce and gorgeous with unbelievable eyes. So - I held back the laughter and nodded seriously. Trying to keep my face impassive. I am sure he was looking for SOME kind of a girlie response from me, which is usually a mistake when you are dealing with me. I may be afraid of "s"s, but I'm not really "girlie".

We left the bar - it had begun to rain. We ran for the train. I didn't care that I had no umbrella, I was laughing up into the downpour, and he was completely blown away by this. He couldn't believe it. He must date nightmare high-maintenance women or something. "Wow! You don't care that you just got rained on!!" gushed Wolf-Man. I almost scorned his enthusiasm but again - I restrained myself. He was obviously a freakin' SWEETheart, to tell you the truth.

Unfortunately, during my date with Wolf-Man, I had one of those weird "flashbacks" (no, not drug-induced) - but one of those moments when the past rushes up from out of the past, and overwhelms the present. Like when you hear a random song, and are suddenly catapulted back 25 years in time. Or you get a whiff of ginger cookies, and you feel like you are 5 years old again. Well, I had one of those moments on this date with Wolf-Man, and ... it was pretty terrible, actually. If anything, you want to stay in the Present Moment on any date. I was waiting in line for the bathroom, (basically to get a moment's PEACE AND QUIET from my date's constant chatter) and suddenly I looked over at the waitress station. There was a coffee pot, I could see the gleaming orange light on the top, the light that tells you it is "on", I could suddenly smell the fresh coffee dripping down into the pot ... and suddenly, out of nowhere, I got this huge sense of overwhelming melancholy. Tears welled up in my eyes. For whatever reason, the sight of the waitress station made me feel lonely for a guy I once loved - I yearned for him - I remembered how he and I had laughed so hard we cried ...

And a big crack opened, and grief came up out of me like lava.

WHILE I WAS ON A DATE.

This is not good. You do not want to be having a nice beer with somebody and suddenly be filled up with hot lava. I got myself together and went out to join Wolf-Man, but I already knew that I wasn't gonna be his wolf-mate. He didn't stand a chance.

3. And now we come to The Whisperer. Or: The Last Match.com Date I Went On, Thank the Good Lord

I had written something about TS Eliot in my profile (I'm so pretentious). He and I were meeting up at the Atrium in the World Trade Center ... so strange, to remember that space now. Anyway, we were gonna have dinner. I had very much liked his emails. He was Irish. He had a way with words. All was well. As long as it was completely digital.

I approached a bench in the Atrium with a single man sitting on it, holding a book up, reading. He was the only man alone, so I assumed it must be him. As I got closer, I saw what book he was holding up - The Collected Works of TS Eliot.

I almost turned around and walked away then and there.

If you want me to explain to you why - I will. Some women might have swooned and thought this was so sensitive, so sweet, so great. But I immediately felt warning signals go off inside - "freak! freak! freak!" Should have listened to those signs.

We went out to dinner. He was extremely nervous. He was awkward, fumbling ... and very much in love with me already. He had never met me so this was my clue that he was a little bit insane. He spoke to himself, IN MY PRESENCE, "Okay, calm down, calm down, everything doesn't need to be settled tonight..."

Uh ... no shit, Sherlock.

But the single most annoying thing about the whole night was that he never spoke above a whisper. It was like that Seinfeld episode, with the "low talker".

I was trying to be polite, really I was, even though I did not want to be on a date with him, the second I saw him reading TS Eliot. The whispering made it worse, but I tried to stay nice. I kept saying, leaning across the table, "I'm sorry ... what did you say?"

"And so you were saying ... what was that again?"

Or more bluntly, "Huh?"

Finally, at the end of the dinner, I had had it. I said, "I am no longer going to ask you to speak up. I cannot hear a word you are saying."

He laughed - nervously - but I saw a flicker of panic and despair in his eyes.

Oh God. Get me out of here. If he starts to weep, I do not know what I will do.

I asked him if he went to college, and he had this entire freaked-out response ... He shrugged, he blushed, he rolled his eyes, obviously there was a HUGE story attached to the answer to my simple question ... and I had asked the question in all innocence ... When I saw his flustery rolling eyes I said, putting on the brakes, "It's okay. Don't tell me the story. Please." He did anyway. (Although I had to strain across the table to hear it.) Turns out, he had had a nervous breakdown and had to withdraw from school so that he could be hospitalized.

Again - no judgment on that! But ... on a first date?? It was ... sorry to be so juvenile, but ... it was ikky.

Basically - he was head over heels with ... the idea of me. And there is nothing that annoys me more than someone being head over heels with the IDEA of me. It happens to me a lot, I suppose. What - the REAL me ain't good enough for you? You've got to go reaching for the IDEA?

So we strolled back to the subway together, him talking, and me saying, "What did you just say?", and him repeating what he had whispered, in a just slightly higher voice, and me nodding like I gave a shit.

At the subway, he whispered, fluttery, "I suppose it's too early for a kiss."

I said, bluntly, "I'm very shy."

He nodded and whispered, "Okay."

You know who he reminded me of? Laura in The Glass Menagerie. So sensitive that you could shatter him if you looked at him wrong. Afterwards, when I thought it all over, I found compassion in my heart for him. It took a while though, because the date had been so annoying - but I did find it. GOOD for him for trying Match.com, and being brave enough to put up a profile - because obviously the man is too shy to speak at a normal volume.

One small note:
I am FAR from perfect and I do not post these stories under the category of "Sheila's Proudest Moments". I am sure those 3 guys left me and said stuff about me too. "She looked like she was about to burst into laughter when I told her about what wolves mean to me, and then she came back from the bathroom and she obviously had been crying. What a FREAK."

A long insane monologue about my adventures this morning and the conclusion I came to

This post should be read in the ironic and self-mocking tone in which I wrote it. I am fully aware of how self-pitying and how pathetic I sound, and that is the point.

This morning has already been a comedy of errors, although I admit that I don't think I laughed once at my compounding predicaments.

Here are the facts:

-- Yesterday as I got onto the bus going home, the strap to my over-the-shoulder bag snapped off (no doubt because of the weight of the entire Ring trilogy within). There are two drawstrings which keep the purse closed, and so I used those, in the interim, to drape over my wrist. But I have to get a new bag.

-- I have 3 large paper bags filled with presents to bring home to the family. Some of the presents are rather large and of an awkward size.

-- My duffel bag, which I used to pack my clothes in, does not have an over-the-shoulder strap either ... It has two small straps, which can be grasped together in one hand, but the attachable long strap, to go over the shoulder for more convenience, was lost long ago.

So - needless to say - trying to get my act together this morning for my commute was a chore. I am here at work now - in the empty office - waiting for my bus, which leaves at 2.

I have not planned this well. I had to haul all of my strap-less booty from my apartment to my office ... hang out here ... and then haul it all again down the 6 blocks to Port Authority. But 6 blocks can be an eternity when you have FAR TOO MANY BAGS, TWO OF WHICH HAVE NO SHOULDER STRAPS.

Finally, I thought I had it all handled.

I would put my purse over my wrist and slide it halfway up my arm. I would put my duffel bag straps over the same wrist (which nearly ripped my arm out of its socket). Then I would carry one of my large bags of presents with my feeble stretched-out hand. The other two bags of presents (heavy, mind you) I would manage to clasp in the other hand.

Once I got myself into this configuration, I became about 6 feet wide.

But no matter.

I struggled out of the door to my apartment. I was too wide to get through with all the bags, so I had to take them all off, open the door, move all the bags out into the hallway, step outside, close the door, lock the door, and then rearrange myself (purse, duffel, one bag of presents on left-hand side, 2 paper bags of presents on right-hand side.) Then I had to struggle down the 7 steps into the mailbox area, where there is a door leading into the foyer. Again, because I had no hands free, I had to take all the bags off, open the door, slide each bag through, step through myself, and then re-arrange all the bags up and down my torso. Unfortunately, I was still only in the foyer by this point ... and there was one more door leading to the outside world. So again: off with all the bags, open the door, slide each bag out, step out, put all bags on again.

By this point, I was drenched in sweat. I had on a nice velvety top which was a mistake. It had become a sweatshirt.

Let us not even mention the HEAVINESS of the bags. I thought I was going to die.

I took 10 steps across my little concrete front yard, stepped outside the gate, and already had to put all the bags down for a little breather.

It was then that it really hit me: How the hell am I going to pull this off?

It seemed impossible.

My shoulders ached. My arms felt elongated. Like an El Greco. My nicely arranged hair was a complete mess. The day was beautiful, it was 8:30 am, but it seemed as though it would take an act of God to get me the hell across the river, to my job, and then down to Port Authority.

Taking a deep breath, I thought of Bilbo. I thought of all that he endured. I thought about how he stepped outside his comfort zone, and went through things that were very unpleasant. I will get through this. I will somehow (SOMEHOW) climb up the steps onto the bus - I had no idea how I would, though, due to my increased width. I would somehow (SOMEHOW) store all of my presents all about the bus - which, unfortunatley, I knew would be jam-packed with other people (how dare they??) - and then somehow (SOMEHOW) gather it all up again ... in the enclosed confines of the bus ... and somehow (SOMEHOW) get off the bus ... and then DAMMIT I still had a 3 block walk to get to my job ... which, under the circumstances, might as well have been 10 miles.

But Bilbo was on my mind. So I went to pick up my bags and then noticed a nice long rip along the bottom of one of them. I could see the presents within. This stumped me. I looked at one of the other paper bags and saw another rip at the corner ... one which, I was SURE, seeing how the day was already turning out, would widen as my commute went on.

Having those bags rip was not an option.

I had no other way to carry everything. I would ... I literally could not imagine what would happen to me if those bags ripped on my way into Manhattan. All I could see was me taking all of my carefully chosen presents, now strewn about the sidewalk, dumping them all into a trash can on the corner, and stalking off to work in a fury. With a lighter load but with no Christmas.

I came up with a less-than-perfect solution. What if I took a large garbage bag, and put all of the presents into it? Yes, it wouldn't have a handle - but it would be a temporary solution until I got to work - I could go buy a cheap duffel bag on the corner and then I would be all set.

Okay. So that was the plan.

I left everything on the sidewalk, raced back inside, into the kitchen, reached under the cupboard for the large box of garbage bags I knew was there. The second I touched it - I knew it was empty. There were no more bags.

I am like my own worst nightmare. You know how women complain about men who put empty cereal boxes back into the cupboard? Well ... in that moment this morning ... I was a woman complaining about myself. "DAMMIT, Sheila. DAMMIT."

Okay. So no garbage bags. I was just going to have to trust to the gods above that the bags would not rip ... and make my way down to the bus stop.

I hated every second of my life. I also hated Christmas, presents, sunshine, happy faces, and traveling to see my family. I hated all that was good on this planet.

I went back out to my hated bags, arranged myself in my lunatic fashion, and started off down the street. I was in pain. My biceps burned, my hands lost all feeling, and with every step it was like I could feel the rips opening up in the bags. Basically, I was fucked. Not to mention the fact that I still had no freakin' clue about how I was going to get all of this shit onto the teeny little shuttle busses which take us into Manhattan - busses which are cramped when I only have my bookbag. I had no idea how this would turn out. I dreaded it.

I got half a block, before I had to stop and take a rest.

There were a couple of other issues:

-- the shoelaces on EACH of my sneakers came wildly undone. I could hear them slapping themselves against the pavement as I limped along crazily

-- after about 3 steps I realized that I had a terrible wedgie, which continued to get more and more and more severe, with every step. It was a hurtful wedgie. A wedgie that cannot be ignored. I felt like eventually it would cut me into two halves, and I would then be split apart and go perambulating off onto opposite street corners.

I must have looked insane. Trying not to trip on my flipping-about shoelaces, trying to un-do the wedgie by kicking my legs out randomly to each side (you know, wedgie behavior), all the while carrying 5 bags with my own 2 hands. I was wearing my big sheepskin coat, a long white knit scarf, and a small red knit hat. My face was sweaty and flushed. You see these people in NYC who walk around carrying all their possessions (and possibly other people's as well). I looked like one of those people. I could not consolidate any further. There was nowhere else to put stuff.

Additionally: just in case you are trying to think of options for me: I live in a residential neighborhood which has no commerce - There is a deli across the street, which would have garbage bags, but it doesn't open until 10. Also, I only had 3 dollars on me. I needed 2 of that for my commute.

So during my breather, I considered my options.

I realized that this was impossible and I was not going to be able to make it. Something terrible was going to happen.

I should just call a cab and splurge on the trip into the city. But there was the 3 dollars problem and I didn't think they took credit cards.

To be honest with you all: I was BESIDE MYSELF with frustration. I felt like I was going crazy. I was DETERMINED to figure this out ... but there seemed too many obstacles. Also, my arms hurt.

Finally, reason broke in.

"This is bull shit. I cannot do this. I am going to take all of this stuff home, stash it in my apartment, then go walk to the nearest ATM, take out a bunch of cash, walk home again, and call a car service. It sucks, and it's inconvenient, but that's all there is to it. This is ridiculous. If any of these bags break open, I am completely DONE for."

So that's what I did.

By this point, I was talking out loud, my voice reverberating through the empty streets.

"This is ridiculous."

"I cannot beLIEVE this."

"I am RIPSHIT, I tell ya, RIPSHIT."

Ah ... merry Christmas.

It was a 15 minute walk to the nearest ATM, because basically I live in a neighborhood of people who are, at all times, on the fringes of legality. Lovely folks, all with Christmas wreaths and American flags and yellow ribbons and everything, but let's just say this: any time I approach any of them to ask a question, no matter how benign ("Where's the post office?") I am treated as though I am a spy for the INS. These people do not have bank cards, is the information I am trying to impart.

Finally, I get out money. I walk home. The day is beautiful, the sun is shining, the Empire State Building rises gleaming and misty above the horizon - I am blind to it all.

I am all about my bags. My DAMN BAGS.

I come home, I call a car service. They arrive in 5 minutes, and take me into the city. They take me to the door of my office. I gather together my 3,965 bags on the sidewalk, stagger towards the front door ... The doorman sees me standing there. The doorman knows me by name. He smiles at me. He likes me. But does he open the door for me? Does he aid me in my time of need?

He does not.

Therefore, he is off of my list forever.

Buh-bye.

And now for the conclusions I have drawn:

Be warned. It may be a bit out there. I will try to be clear, but frankly, I am not in the mood for clarity.

As I carefully, for the 11th time, re-arranged my strapless bag on my wrist, my duffel bag up over my wrist, my slowly-ripping bag clutched in the free hand, the other slowly-ripping bag in my other hand, with another paper bag gripped in my now-feeling-less fingers ... a frantic and angry thought occurred to me.

I need a husband. FAST.

Now guys ... let me explain. I appreciate much about men, I appreciate them for many reasons - not just for being my little man-servant. I love men's humor, I love the hands of men, I love the curiosity of men. I love the kissing, too.

My bed has a tendency to grow emptier and larger as the years go by. I started out with a full-size bed, and now I am convinced that it has become a king-size. All on its own. My dinner table is eerily quiet. I read as I eat. Before you all take out your mocking violins, I realize what this sounds like. And in calmer moods, I will say this: I love eating by myself, I love the quiet, I love stretching out sideways across my triple-king-size bed, I love not having to make conversation with someone if I don't feel like it, thank you very much.

But dammit. What I would have loved more than anything else this morning was for a man to help me carry my damn bags.

And for that you need a husband.

And that was one of the other things I shouted out into the quiet misty morning, as I staggered awkwardly back to my apartment for the 8th time, realizing that this was not gonna fly, and I was gonna have to get a car service. Along with shouting out, "This is ridiculous" I also burst out once, like an insane person, "Where the HELL is my husband??"

Whoever he is, I am sure he would be absolutely thrilled to know that not only am I excited that he can take up space in my now-20-foot-wide bed, but that I cannot wait for him to do the heavy lifting.

How romantic.

Norman Rush

I was thinking the other day about Norman Rush - a man who wrote one of my favorite books of all time - Mating - a highly celebrated and award-winning first novel published in the 1980s. Rush's story is one of those dream-come-true stories for would-be writers. He publishes a couple short stories here and there - nothing major, no attention given them - and then - with his first novel hits a major jackpot.

I have read Mating probably 5 or 6 complete times over the years.

And earlier this year - suddenly - after never publishing ANYTHING after Mating - suddenly Rush came out with a second novel.

I have written quite a bit about Norman Rush in the past. Mating is a book which has engaged my imagination and intellect to a degree that few other books have ever reached. I cannot give you an easy explanation why - and I believe that that is one of the major strengths of the book.

It is a book I can keep re-visiting. It never appears to be the same book twice. I see different things in it each time I read it. Only great books can follow you through your life like that.

Here are some of my experiences with Rush and his writing. The first piece below tries to describe what it is about Mating that means so much to me - and how I felt when I realized Rush had published something else. The second piece describes my response to that long-awaited second novel called Mortals.

Norman Rush's MATING

Me being me, I have to back up a couple of days to tell the story fully. Actually, this is already inaccurate. I have to back up many years. The journey begins in 1992 when I first read the novel Mating, by Norman Rush. It is one of the most pivotal books I have ever read. It's become a part of my mental landscape, a part of how I interpret events.

Today, that book is dog-eared from use. The cover is taped on. The pages are filled with underlinings. And in the back, on the couple of blank pages, I have crammed up that blank space with as many dictionary definitions of words found in this book as I could. The vocabulary in the book is, as my friend Allison called it, "daunting". I agree, and I have a pretty good vocabulary.

ressentiment: rancor expressed covertly against benefactors
proleptic: the anticipating/answering of objective/argument before it's put forward
omphalog: the naval/a center
copula: a verb that identifies the predicate of sentence with subject -- usually a form of 'to be'. "The girls are beautiful"
syncretist: attempt/tendency to combine or reconcile differing beliefs (philosophy or religion)
bolus: a small round mass. Greek: lump/clod

WHAT? Expanding my vocabulary was part of the fascination of the book.

But the hold Mating had, and still has on me, goes way deeper than that.

The characters in the book (mainly the two leads: Nelson Denoon and the unnamed female narrator) live on in my mind, the way characters like Holden Caulfield do. Or Captain Ahab. Or Anna Karenina. Their life, their potential life, does not stop with the words "The End". You cannot tell me that Holden does not live. It seems an insult to Salinger's creation.

There must be an alternate plane out in the ether, with fictional characters wandering about. Not every fictional character, because not every author manages to create a living, breathing, human personality. Actually, "human" is too limiting as well. Because, to my mind, Charlotte the spider (from EB White's Charlotte's Web) lives on. She exists on that alternate plane. As does Wilbur the pig. It's sort of like the plot of The Velveteen Rabbit. Once the rabbit is loved, and loved deeply, it becomes real.

I love all of these fictional characters in that way.

Mating is, on the surface, the story of a love affair. Other themes are: what to do about Africa, the problems with "development projects" and do-gooders in Africa, socialism in Africa, differences between men and women, competition between females for males (hence, the title) - and then, more specifically, an in-depth description of the world of Botswana: the diplomatic community in Gaborone, the issues with "villagization", the issues with development, how the development community lives high on the hog in Africa - etc. It's a BIG book, with BIG themes.

The main theme is something the author/narrator calls "intellectual love". Rush describes a very specific kind of love, and because he did so, and took such care with it, the concept became real to me. He articulated one of my deepest longings in a way I had never before encountered. It was like his words illuminated my own needs. Very interesting. Some quotes from the book in this vein:

My utopia is equal love, equal love between people of equal value, although value is an approximation for the word I want. Why is it so difficult? Assortative mating shows there has to be some drive in nature to bring equals together in the toils of love, so why even in the most enlightened and beautifully launched unions are we afraid we hear the master-slave relationship moving its slow thighs somewhere in the vicinity? It has to be cultural. In fact the closest thing to a religion I have is that this has to be cultural. I could do practically anything while he was asleep and not bother him. I wrote in my journal, washed dishes in slow motion if we hadn't gotten around to them. I was emotional a lot, privately. I wanted to incorporate everything, understand everything, because time is cruel and nothing stays the same.

More:

He was appropriate for me and the reverse. I felt it and hated it because it was true despite his being around fifteen years older than me. What did that mean about me? I also hated it because I hate assortative mating, the idea of it. One of my most imperishable objections to the world is the existence of assortative mating, how everyone at some level ends up physically with just who they deserve, at least to the eye of some ideal observer, unless money or power deforms the process. This is equivalent to being irritated at photosynthesis or at inhabiting a body that has to defecate periodically, I am well aware. Mostly it comes down to the matching of faces. When I first encountered the literature, I even referred to it privately as faceism. I will never adapt to it, probably. Why can't every mating in the world be on the basis of souls instead of inevitably and fundamentally on the match between physical envelopes? Of course we all know the answer, which is that otherwise we would be throwing evolution into disarray. Still it distresses me. We know what we are.

A couple of people I recommended this book to were extremely annoyed by the writing-voice, as evidenced in the passage above. I, however, LOVE the voice: cerebral, obsessively psychological, yearning, illogical -- It comes from right out of me. I relate. Here's more. The book is encyclopedic on love.

If I overdwell on this it can't be helped: love is important and the reasons you get it or fail are important. The number of women in my generation who in retrospect anyone will apply the term "great love" to, in any connection, is going to be minute. I needed to know if I had a chance here. Love is strenuous. Pursuing someone is strenuous. What I say is if you find yourself condemned to wanting love, you have to play while you can play. Of course it would be so much easier to play from the male side. They never go after love qua love, ever. They go after women. And for men love is the distillate or description of whatever happened with each woman that as not actually painful in feeling-tone. there is some contradiction here which I can't expel. What was moving me was the feeling of being worth someone's absolute love, great love, even. And to me this means male love whether I like it or not. C'est ca. Here I am, there I was. I don't know if getting love out of a man is more of a feat of strength now than it used to be or not, except that I do: it is. It's hideous. It's an ordeal beyond speech. When I'm depressed I feel like what was meant by one of his favorite quotations: A bitter feast was steaming hot and a mouth must be found to eat it. Men are like armored things, mountainous assemblages of armor and leather, masonry even, which you are told will self-dismantle if you touch the right spot, and out will flow passionate attention. And we know that this sometimes does happen for one of our sisters, or has happened. This comes full circle back to my attitude about kissing, which he never adjusted to. You want kisses, obviously. But you want kisses from a source, a person, who is in a state. This is why the plague of little moth kisses from men just planting their seniority on you is so intolerable. Of course even as I was machinating I was well aware I was in the outskirts of the suburb of the thing you want or suspect is there. But at this moment in my life I was at the point where even the briefest experience of unmistakable love would be something I could clutch to myself as proof that my theory of myself was not incorrect. Theories can be reactionary and still applicable.

And now, here is Rush's (or his nameless female narrator's) treatise on intellectual love. Obviously, this page in my book is covered in notes, and underlines. Oh, and I don't agree with every sentiment here, but that doesn't matter. I don't read books to meet people just like me. But it is the concept articulated here, the concept of 'intellectual love' which, for me, when I first read it, was like a lightbulb going on, or a door opening. I saw something new. I recognized the longings of my own heart when I read the following passage:

Intellectual love is not the same animal as landing a mentor, although women I've raised the construct with want to reduce it to that. I distrust and shun the whole mentor concept, which is just as well since I seem not to attract them. Nelson was not my mentor, ever. I gave as well as I got, with him. But there was intellectual love on my part, commencing circa that night.

Intellectual love is a particular hazard for educated women, I think. Certain conditions have to obtain. You meet someone -- I would specify of the opposite sex, but this is obviously me being hyperparochial -- who strikes you as having persuasive and wellfounded answers to questions on the order of Where is the world going? These are distinctly not meaning-of-life questions. One thing Denoon did convince me of is that all answers so far to the question What is the meaning of life? dissolve into ascertaining what some hypostatized superior entity wants you to be doing, id est ascertaining how, and to whom or what, you should be in an obedience relationship. The proof of this is that no one would ever say, if he or she had been convinced that life was totally random and accidental in origin and evolution, that he or she had found the meaning of life. So, fundamentally, intellectual love is for a secular mind, because if you discover someone, however smart, is -- he has neglected to mention -- a Thomist or in Baha'i, you think of him as a slave to something uninteresting.

What beguiles you toward intellectual love is the feeling of observing a mental searchlight lazily turning here and there and lighting up certain parts of the landscape you thought might be dubious or fraudulent but lacked the time or energy to investigate or the inner authority to dismiss tout court. The searchlight confirms you.

Mating was the context in which I went through the major "love affair" in my past, with a man who shall remain nameless. My friend Mitchell, who also read and loved the book Mating , referred to this man as "your Nelson Denoon". The similarities were arresting. And when everything fell apart with "my Nelson Denoon", leaving a nightmare in its wake, that book became even more of an anchor.

In the past couple of weeks, I took Mating out to read again.

It is a first novel, and what a first novel. He has not published anything since. There was a book of short stories called Whites which came out years ago, but besides his magnum opus, Norman Rush has been silent.

Mating was a huge hit, financially and critically, it won the National Book Award in 1991. Rush clearly put everything he knows about everything into that book. It's about love, obviously, but it's also about Africa, and politics, and socialism, and the position of women in Africa, and religion. It's a book dedicated to taking a large view of the issues in Africa - and yet it is still an extremely personal story.

And the ending. The last section, a kind of epilogue, is called "About the Foregoing". It is very mysterious. It ends on a very ambiguous note.

She has left Africa, and has left Denoon, her great love. Things have fallen apart. She is now trying to get her life together when suddenly she gets a mysterious message, telling her to come back to Africa. It is not Denoon who calls her. It is a woman. She does not know who this woman could be. Or why she has been summoned. She obsesses about it, wondering what to do. Should she return? What would be waiting for her in Africa? If Denoon did not summon her, then perhaps she would not be welcome anymore? The book ends with these two lines:

Je viens. Why not?

So, the book leaves you knowing she is going to return, but you do not know the outcome.

I have been haunted by this. Then what? Then what? It has been so long since Mating came out. I have tried to reconcile myself to the fact that I need to, a la Rilke, "live the questions".

The fact that the book ends mysteriously, that it could go either way, confirms for me one of the essential tenets of my life:

You just never know what will happen. Things can always go either way. Also: Things never really end. Not really. They transform, they morph. Love never dies. Ever. I'm not an "I love you I love you - oh you don't love me back anymore? Then I hate you I hate you" kind of girl. Sometimes I wish I were. It might be easier if love turned readily to hate, but for me, it does not.

So alongside my relatively quiet life now are the vibrant exciting love affairs of my past. They make me who I am today. They do not go away, or submerge into the past for good. They are still very much with me, late and soon.

Literally last week, I became obsessed again by the up-in-the-air ending of Mating. What does it signify? What is the message?

And more than that, on a more literal level, on a more literary level: What happened when she returned to Africa? Are they together now? Out on that alternate plane for fictional characters? I always liked to imagine that they were. It made me happy to imagine so. It made me happy to fantasize that on that alternate plane, all turned out well. Eventually.

It's a sort of "Somewhere over the rainbow" sentiment. Things may be lonely here on this plane, but somewhere -- even if it's just for characters in a book -- things might work out. And this alone gives me reason to hope. Things just might work out -- because the ending of Mating doesn't make it clear whether they do or no. This is the degree to which this book affected me, and the degree to which these characters LIVE on in my imagination.

On a personal note: I used to have these old crazy fantasies about "my Nelson Denoon", fantasies which felt more like getting a glimpse of a never-before-seen alternate path. I comforted myself, after it was all over, by imagining that on that other plane, down that other path, things might have worked out. Or in another lifetime, although reincarnation and alternate lifetimes are not quite in my belief system.

However, I became convinced that this was not the first time around for me and "my Nelson Denoon". I would obsess about it. "Were we married in another life? Or ... with each successive lifetime, are we coming closer to one another? It just so happens that I am stuck in the lifetime where it doesn't work out..." I was blithering like that to my patient friend Kate. She listened. And then she said, "Actually, I bet that your Celtic tribe probably slaughtered his Celtic tribe." We roared.

So I digress. All of these crazy thoughts are very tied up, for me, in Norman Rush's book.

All of this came up to the foreground again, in the last week, (it all began dovetailing), and I thought, impulsively: "I should just write to Norman Rush and ask him what he's up to ... if he's working on anything ..." He hasn't published anything else since Mating, so -- I wondered --- is he chugging away at a sequel? Is he dead? I needed to know desperately.

"Mr. Rush -- are you just going to leave me hanging with the end of Mating? Do you know how important it is, how essential it is in terms of my understanding of how the world works, that I know what happened with the two of them? Will I ever know the outcome?"

Wanting to write to Norman Rush was a random fleeting thought. I have written to authors before, so it wasn't too far-fetched.

Then, a couple of days ago, I stopped off at a computer place to check my email. While there, I visited my SiteMeter for this blog, to check in on my traffic. I saw that someone had gotten to me by typing "Norman Rush" into Google. It led this person to that excerpt. And this piqued my interest. Somebody else is looking for Norman Rush right now? Why? Is something going on?

So I blatantly Googled the man.

The first thing that came up was a Village Voice article dated May, 2003. I opened it, and lo and freakin' behold, it was a review of his new book. The man has a new book out. Mortals.

I hope I have conveyed how important this is to me. But I am having a hard time finding the words.

It would be like hearing that JD Salinger had suddenly come out of hiding and published a new novel. While Salinger is still alive, there is still hope that he may write again. He just might. And the book might be crap, but that wouldn't matter. At least not at first. It would be a miracle. To hear from that writer again.

So Rush has a new huge novel out. And again, it takes place in Botswana, Africa. Botswana! The country that Rush made live for me.

Mortals (and I just skimmed the article feverishly ... I didn't want to read any spoilers, no give-aways, nothing that would ruin the experience) is NOT about Nelson Denoon and our beloved unnamed narrator. It is another couple altogether, although Rush again tackles man/woman relationships, only time in the context of marriage. It doesn't seem to be so much about finding the right mate, and how arduous that process is, how it can break your heart. Rush now goes into the realm of established intimacy, and ... what happens then?

And here's the thing: (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT)

I raced through the book review excitedly and could not believe my eyes: Nelson and "she" DO show up in this new book, peripherally. They ARE characters on the outskirts. And, oh so casually, Village Voice reviewer states: "We learn that they have married."

What? They married?? I almost shouted out loud for joy.

I didn't read the rest of the review, I signed out immediately, paid my bill, and hustled my ass down to Barnes & Noble to find the book, which had been published THAT WEEK.

(Okay, let's just take a moment to reflect on how weird that is. I contemplate writing to Norman Rush, pestering him to write a sequel, and dammitall if he doesn't have a new book published on almost that same exact day.)

And there it was. A huge book. Hardcover. With a map of Botswana inside. I got a chill of excitement. I felt voracious. Almost sick to my stomach, actually. I wanted to download the entire book into my brain immediately. I glanced through and saw that there was a chapter called "The Denoons", and I had to restrain myself. Prolong the anticipation, more pleasure that way.

And as I was walking down the street, with my booty in my bag, I suddenly got weirdly emotional.

It was as though I had heard that real friends of mine had finally gotten married after much strife.

It would be like if me and "my Nelson Denoon" ever got hitched (not a possibility anymore). But let's just say he and I got hitched - my friends, who went through the whole thing with me, would probably jump up and down for joy, yelling, "At last!" Okay? This is the power this book has for me. I felt -- well, it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I was almost in tears, truth be told.

There have been times in the past couple of years when life has been the cliched howling wilderness. "My Nelson Denoon" remains a kind of monument, a sort of goal. I have tried to knock him off that pedestal, but I have finally accepted the fact that he actually deserves to be up there. Whether I am with him or not. This is a bit more personal than I normally write, but this is my blog, and this is what is going on with me right now.

When things did not come to fruition between us, my baffled thought was: If that didn't work out, that which seemed so damn right, then what the hell will work out? For quite a long time, my answer to that question was: Nothing. Nothing.

But then ... here ... years later ... walking down the street, knowing that she and Nelson got married -- after all that --

I suddenly felt an upsurge of hope. Not for me and "my Nelson Denoon", because like I said earlier: that is no longer possible. But what I mean is: hope in general.

A word on hope:

Hope for me, now, always goes hand in hand with a bittersweet and rather vague pain. Hope never ever comes by itself anymore. The way it used to when I was a little kid, or a teenager. I suppose that's indicative of age and experience. It seems so to me anyway. That's life. I am not saying this exactly as I wanted to. Basically: Hope no longer comes alone.

The sadness and hope I felt, walking down the street, wasn't about Nelson and the narrator of Mating being married... at least, not only about them. The sadness and hope was also from how I see life now. In terms of mating. I feel like I had my run. It was a good run. I had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs. But that all has stopped now. And that's why hope never comes alone anymore.

I still feel hope, occasionally, but never ever by itself.

So I got overwhelmed by this weird sense of sad hope --- a feeling that STILL, after all THAT, "things" might "work out". For me, in my life. It's awful when one becomes afraid to feel hope anymore, protecting oneself against the inevitable disappointment. This is a constant balancing act.

I am not a young girl of 22, with a couple of disappointments in my past (like David W. saying no to being my date at the junior prom, etc.) ... I am in my 30s, and I've been through a lot. Not all bad. Of course not all bad. Like I said: a lot of laughs. Much fun. But now, I just find it easier not to hope ... at least in that arena ... and focus on other things. My work. My ambition, my plans.

But ... but ....

They got married. They got married. What does that mean? For me?

(This is the level to which literature can affect me - if I let it! The Shipping News had a similar impact.)

I am so used to the state of affairs I live in now, since I have lived there now for about a decade. I mean, I have changed and grown, of course, I have moved from city to city, I got my Master's, I've made new friends, it has been a very full existence. But I have been alone the entire time. THAT has not changed. Not even close.

Perhaps a breakthrough is approaching. A breakthrough in how I see all of this. And the appearance of Norman Rush's Mortals is the harbinger of something good. Or, something different. Something exciting, unforeseen, challenging. That's what I was feeling as I walked down the street, too. I'm scared of it ... and yet. Perhaps it is time. I don't know. Even as I write that, the logical side of my brain, the side that has all the experience, that knows the let-downs, etc., says: "Yes, but you have felt this before. You have felt this so strongly before. And you were never right."

But maybe ... maybe ... Maybe this is it.

There is SOMETHING weird about how all of this has come about:

Mating
The book being wrapped up with "my Nelson Denoon"
Wishing the main characters well -- hoping they are happy in another reality
Holding onto a weird strange hope that things worked out well, at least for them
Wondering if a sequel was coming
Studying the book over the last couple of weeks
That book, for me, is the monument, the goal
Wanting to write to Norman Rush
Someone coming to MY blog, through Googling Norman Rush ...during the very week I was obsessing about Rush, and where he was, and whether or not he was writing
Finding out that Rush has written a new book ... published last week ... in which we discover the Denoons have married

And so:
Things are not what they seem.

Back to the old painful belief: You never ever know what will happen. You can never tell what the future will hold. Your predictions will all be wrong.

I have tentatively and slowly begun Mortals, forcing myself not to browse ahead, looking for references to the Denoons. I want to savor every word.

I have waited for this day for so long.

Norman Rush's MORTALS - a sequel to the above

I'm now reading Mortals, the long-awaited second book by Norman Rush, author of one of my favorite books, Mating.

I am having a very hard time getting through it. As a matter of fact, I have stopped reading it completely.

Mating is a special book. Mortals is not. By page 100 I was sick of the two main characters. Norman Rush obviously finds them both very fascinating, and endearing. So every single tangent in the minds of the characters needs to be drawn out for sometimes THIRTY PAGES ...

If I had a marriage like those two do, I might have to slit my wrists. Just to escape and get some peace and quiet, for God's sake.

It is so self-conscious. So pleased with itself. So obsessively analytical. Do these two people ever just sit on the damn couch and NOT talk to each other?? That is my ideal relationship. One that is filled with an inordinate amount of comfortable shared silence.

Another thing Rush does is continuously assure us of how funny Iris (one of the boring main characters) is. He fetishizes her humor. He gives us glimpses of it (or tries to). But mostly he just repeatedly states it, as though it is an indisputable fact. "She was such a funny woman." "He loved her humor." "He was going to be losing a funny woman."

The problem with this goes back to one of the first rules of writing: SHOW. Don't TELL.

I don't think Iris is funny. She never made me laugh. And you can't keep just re-assuring me: "No no no, wait, she is a DAMN funny woman! You have to see her when she's had a couple of glasses of wine! She is a riot!" That doesn't work in a book. It doesn't work in life either. Either something IS, and you know that it IS because it can be SEEN and ACKNOWLEDGED by more than one person, or it ISN'T. Iris ISN'T funny, in my book.

Just saying it is so, Mr. Rush, does not make it so.

He gives us examples of her humor, but ... to my mind, it's all coy stupid little puns. Now I know some truly funny people, people who you describe as "Oh my God, he is so funny" if you are asked "What is that person like?" Humor is undeniable. It's not like being sensitive, or being kind, or intelligent. You cannot fake humor. Some people THINK they are hilarious, but no one is laughing.

I think I have made my point here.

The good parts of the book are when it goes into the life of a CIA agent ... how they live, their relationship to "the agency" -- what it meant for the CIA when communism fell apart. What that event did to the psychology of the agency, etc. What it is like to have a job which is, for the most part, invisible. You will never be acknowledged publicly for your work. You cannot talk about it with your wife. All of that, so far, has been very interesting.

There's also a long sequence where Ray, the main character, is being held prisoner in this warehouse in northwest Botswana. The Boers are involved. He is being held hostage with this other man, an African, who is a psychiatrist, and very anti-Christian. His name is Morel. Morel has lived in England for years and has returned to Botswana on a mission to rescue Africa from the yoke of Christianity. He thinks organized religion is designed to keep people passive, to keep people in a state of waiting, etc. Morel is an African. Morel believes that what Africa needs is common sense, industry, and people willing to invest in THIS life. It's an interesting question - which is also brought out to interminable degrees in Mortals, but I actually have learned a lot, and it made me think.

Ray is obsessed with the poet Milton. Which is understandable - fine. I am relatively obsessed with Milton myself.

But what I am picking up on, somehow, in the writing of this book, is that it is RUSH who is obsessed with Milton, and has tried to wrestle Milton into this story, in order to express how he, Rush, feels about Milton. And because of that, it doesn't really work. It reads as very self-indulgent.

An interesting contrast: June 16 is Bloomsday (the day to celebrate James Joyce and Ulysses - which all takes place on June 16).

The entire summer of 2002, for me, was taken up by James Joyce. Joyce Joyce Joyce.

Now you kind of cannot find a more subjective writer, a person more fascinated with his own obsessions, a person who can go off on a tangent for thirty pages just because the subject matter interests him.

June 16 came smack in the middle of my struggling with Mortals, and there are some vague similarities between the books. And yet Ulysses captivated me, challenged me. One author (Joyce) goes off on tangents, and I suddenly find myself looking stuff up on the Internet, calling my dad for information, trying to understand what exactly he is getting at ... what is REALLY going on in the book. The other author (Rush) goes off on tangents, obsessed with his own obsessions, and I get increasingly annoyed, thinking to myself: "Shut UP! You're not the first freakin' person to discover Milton ... Get OVER it...Shut UP! Get to the friggin' point, man."

So here's the difference, the undeniable difference:

James Joyce is a genius.

You should not attempt such a book unless you are CERTAIN that you yourself are a genius.

Here's where I stopped reading Mortals, and I will eventually finish it, because I still feel a certain amount of obligation toward the writer who brought Mating into my life.

Okay: So Ray (the CIA agent) and Morel (the African crusader) are being held in this warehouse, and are pulled out separately by these Boer thugs to be tortured, on occasion. It is a bad situation. The two of them are enemies, for a very boring reason. It is a plot device, rather than a reality. So they are forced to deal with each other. There is a bucket in the room for them to use as a toilet, and there are two pages, two pages which took two years off my life, years I can never get back, where Morel goes to the bathroom, and he is constipated, so it is difficult for him, and Ray, to relax Morel and also to distract himself from the shitting going on across the room, recites Milton outloud.

I read those two pages. And then I put the damn book down and have not picked it up since.

When I pick the book up again, I am going to have to skip the Milton-recital-during-Morel's-"evacuation" (a word Rush actually used, and which, quite frankly, grossed me OUT.) and pick up from after that episode. Evacuation? I'm sorry, but that is NASTY.

Now, when we first meet Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, he is eating breakfast with his wife Molly before leaving for the day. He is inwardly anxiously, thinking she has cuckolded him. But before he leaves, he goes into the bathroom and shits. It was hugely shocking at the time ... you don't usually follow characters into the bathroom like that, but Joyce did.

I read the whole sequence, and laughed out loud at the audacity of it ... the reality of it ... and the thing is about it: there was a POINT. He is bringing us all down to the human level. It may be pedantic to say to ourselves, as a way of reassurance, "Everybody has a crack in their ass." Or: "Yes, he may be Secretary of State, but he goes to the bathroom like everybody else." But it is the human condition. It's the truth.

That's what I got when Joyce followed Bloom into the bathroom like that. I became overwhelmed by humanity. The tragi-comic nature of our existence.

There was a higher point to the scene. Not to mention Joyce's desire to really stick it to the priggish censors, and to really tell the truth about Ireland. There is a POINT.

In Mortals, there is no point. And the scene goes on FOREVER.

In Mortals I just got grossed out and now I cannot get the image of Morel squatting over the bucket out of my mind. I wish I could. I need that brain space for other things.

I need to take a break from boring old Ray the CIA agent and his un-funny wife Iris, and the African Morel going to the bathroom in the corner, while Areopagitica is being recited. Jesus. Spare me.

What a disappointment.

My love for the book Mating is untouched, however. Perhaps that was Norman Rush's one story. Some writers only have one tale in them. They may try to do more, tell other stories - but they fail.

Perhaps Rush is one of those writers.

An essay I wish I had written

... on the whole South Park Republican phenomenon - and the problem that many people have with "conservatism" - as it sometimes manifests itself. Bravo.

It's called "Republican Not Conservative". (via Instapundit) The word "conservative" comes with all kinds of baggage, and you know what? A lot of it is justified. Not ALL of it, but a lot of it.

The problems described in the article are exactly my problems with "conservatism" and some conservatives. The anti-art conservatives. The "let's halt change" conservatives. The conservatives who ... claim to hate big government ... and yet LOVE big government when it is serving their needs ... the government in your bedroom, the government censoring music lyrics, the government everywhere.

I hate that. I am not for it.

I do not think there is a past which is so glorious that we should "go back to it". The very concept of "going back" is so ... anti-reality ... that I cannot get behind it, and I cannot countenance it.

If you're a human being, if you are connected to yourself as a part of the human race, then you know, in your heart, that you can never "go back". There is no "back there". You cannot halt change. And wanting to halt change - on a political level, or on a human level - is a sign of dysfunction. Sorry, but it is. It's like an 80 year old woman, wearing deep purple lipstick, dressing in skintight clothes, trying to pick up 24 year old boys. I mean, God bless her for trying! But she has not halted the clock - she cannot halt the clock no matter what she does - she is still 80 years old. You cannot go back in time.

I have a friend who constantly romanticizes what it was to be a child, or a teenager ... "Wouldn't it be great to go back to such a simpler time?"

To my view, she is ignoring huge chunks of reality in order to say that. I say to her, "I don't know ... In retrospect I may be able to laugh at what I thought was tragic when I was 7 years old, or 14 years old ... but at the time, while I was in it, I remember feeling all KINDS of emotions, not just happy ones. I remember feeling insecure, unhappy, scared, intimidated ... I don't want to 'go back' to that time ... because it wasn't all good."

Here's a quote from the article I link to above:

Conservatives once defined themselves as “standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” This antiquated thinking doesn’t suit (if it ever did) young generations who see the future as promising more freedom, more prosperity, and more potential. We don’t want to freeze progress; we want to unbridle it. From time to time, conservatives have proffered new explications of “conservatism” – social conservatism, political conservatism, fiscal conservatism, et cetera -- but we all know what a conservative is.

Damn straight we do. And that's why I want nothing to do with the kind of mentality which thinks change is bad, and which fears progress.

That's why people like me, people not so easily classified, people who think artists should have the freedom to express themselves however the hell they want to, and then let the PUBLIC decide whether or not they like it, people who love art, and culture, and who live on the fringes of normal society, want absolutely NOTHING to do with the social conservatives who try to push this conservative agenda.

My friends are writers, dancers, theatre directors, performance artists, drag queens, poets ... I have friends who are teachers, computer consultants, photographers, stay-at-home moms, entrepreneurs, corporate lawyers, publicists ... It runs the gamut.

I want nothing to do with the anti-gay hysteria of National Review. I want nothing to do with the conservatives who want to shut up Eminem, or who want to shut down the Reagan movie on CBS.

You got a problem with the depiction of Reagan in that film? Then MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE, where he is revered, lionized. Fight back with your own free speech.

But here's another thing - another thing I find distasteful and boring about the sort of conservatives we're discussing here:

Don't confuse propaganda (in the service of a cause you happen to agree with) with good art.

I may not "agree" with how the people behave in Requiem for a Dream - but who gives a crap? The acting is unbelievable. The film is arrestingly good. I do not look to art to mirror my political beliefs, or my "moral" beliefs.

Mark Rydell, film director of "On Golden Pond", came to my school and gave a seminar, and he talked about what it was like when he directed John Wayne, a man whose political beliefs were completely opposite from his own. "I thought of him as right-wing, completely against everything that I am for." Rydell described the surprise of Wayne's gentle and gentlemanly personality. And then he said something which I thought was so awesome. Rydell said, looking right out at us, "You know ... a lot of people who agree with me on certain issues ... are total jerks."

"Agreement" is not what I look for, when I respond to art. I don't look to art to ... reflect the world as I wish it was. I don't look to art to do anything political at all. I look for it to entertain me, to move me, to transport me, whatever.

Art should be unleashed. The public, inevitably, will decide "yes" or "no".

The people trying to push the conservative agenda - the ones who are NOT the "South Park Republicans" are against a lot of the things I hold dear.

Books like Catcher in the Rye or A Wrinkle in Time. Eminem. Gay equality. A clean environment. Art for art's sake.

Am I really on the same "side" as people who want to keep books like Catcher in the Rye off the shelves? No. I am not.

I'm not a party-line kind of girl, anyway. I suppose I should say I am a "party girl" - not a "party-line" girl. My beliefs are not monolithic. I do not buy agendas hook, line, and sinker.

PJ O'Rourke is quoted in the article I link to - I love it - he expresses this perfectly:

So, what I’d really like is a new label. And I’m sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way. We are the Republican Party Reptiles. We look like Republicans, and think like conservatives, but we drive a lot faster and keep vibrators and baby oil and a video camera behind the stack of sweaters on the bedroom closet shelf. I think our agenda is clear. We are opposed to: government spending, Kennedy kids, seat-belt laws, being a pussy about nuclear power, busing our children anywhere other than Yale, trailer courts near our vacation homes, Gary Hart, all tiny Third World countries that don’t have banking secrecy laws, aerobics, the U.N. taxation without tax loopholes, and jewelry on men. We are in favor of: guns, drugs, fast cars, free love (if our wives don’t find out), a sound dollar, cleaner environment (poor people should cut it out with the graffiti), a strong military with spiffy uniforms, Natassia Kinski, Star Wars (and anything else that scares the Russkies)…

The fact that he includes Nastassia Kinski as something he's "for"... I think that's hysterical.

So yes, obviously, I agree with the warning to "conservatives" in this article. You're gonna lose people. You cannot hold onto the past with fists. It is not possible. Look to history and you will see a million examples.

The more conservatives favor expanding government to “protect” marriage, outlaw abortion, ban assisted suicide, harass pot smokers, et cetera, the quicker they will drive their new friends away. Glenn Reynolds has called these conservative expansions of government evidence of “fair-weather federalism.” Whether or not the young reptiles care to dally on the constitutionality of these actions is a question still open. What has been decided is that decades of politician-suggested conservatism from both sides of the aisle – the PMRC; the Clipper Chip; smoking bans; congressional hearings on video game violence, rap music and college drinking – have definitely rubbed young people the wrong way.

Yup. That's all I have to say. Yup. I am "for" all of the things PJ O'Rourke is "for" - even Nastassia Kinski - but I can't, in all good conscience, call myself a "conservative" - although I am so anti-political-correctness that my anti-stance borders on fanaticism.

But I'm a freer spirit than what I come across in much of the rhetoric in conservative rags. They say too much which sends off flags of alarm and offense in my brain. So no. Conservative is not the right word for me.

I like "South Park Republican" instead. Let's let all hell break loose, let's let the change and progress come.

There was already something a little off ...

about that morning.

I was running late. Normally I am on the bus, on my way into Manhattan from Hoboken, at 8:45, 9 am. But that morning, I was 20 minutes behind. Because I was late, I decided to walk two blocks north, and pick up the bus at 9th and Washington as opposed to 7th and Washington. Washington is the main drag in Hoboken. Washington is 3 blocks west of the Hudson, but the brownstones lining the street block any view of Manhattan. If you walk east on the numbered streets in Hoboken, you can see the Hudson and a glimpse of Manhattan (the Chelsea area) at the end of the street, but that is it. We were completely unaware, as we gathered at the busstop, that an enormous jet had plowed its way into the WTC.

As has been described ad nauseum, it was a stunning day. A real fall day. Saying "not a cloud in the sky" is not a euphemism or an exaggeration. It is the truth. The buildings of Washington cast long shadows in the morning, long chilly shadows, but the day was bright and blindingly sunny.

I am such a creature of habit in the mornings. I am also barely awake in the mornings. But I had taken an unfamiliar walk, I had veered off course, I had chosen 9th instead of 7th, so ... Well, for me, it made a difference. I could walk down 7th Street in Hoboken with my eyes closed and never ever trip on the buckling sidewalk. Not so on 9th.

I never walked up to 9th, but that morning I did.

I was 3/4 of the way through Catch-22, a book I had never read before, much to the amazement and chagrin of ... THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD. I come from a long line of Catch-22 worshippers, so I finally picked it up.

I mention this only because this is a post about what I remember on that morning. And it's weird what you remember. Or what grows in significance later, when you look back on it. I remember that I had my nose in Catch-22, standing in the long chilly shadows on Washington Street, at 8:35 in the morning, 8:40, 8:45 ... wondering, in the back of my mind: Where the hell is the bus?

Full disclosure: I do not wear a watch. So I can put together the timing of the events on my side of the river only through deductive reasoning. I left my house at 8:30, late for me. I arrived at the bus stop, at 8:45 or thereabouts. I was on the causeway before the Lincoln Tunnel when the second plane hit. Puzzle pieces.

I began to read. Standing on the curb.

Busses during rush-hour, in Hoboken, come one after the other after the other. If you wait 3 or 4 minutes for a bus, it feels like a long time. And if 6 or 7 minutes go by, then you know something is up.

So 6 or 7 minutes went by.

Desultory conversations broke out between my fellow commuters. "I wonder where the bus is." "I should call work ... I'm gonna be late." People stepping off the curb, peering down to the left, squinting for busses. "Maybe there was an accident in the Tunnel," I heard. Then someone arrived at the bus-stop, and I heard her inform a couple of people, "I guess a plane hit the World Trade Center." This was second-hand news. She was not hysterical, just reporting a possible reason for the slow-down of busses.

This was, even though we had no idea of the scope or the magnitude, disturbing to hear. In the same way that anything bad is disturbing news, if you have a heart beating in your chest. A massive earthquake in Turkey or South America. You take a moment to think, "Oh God. How awful. How awful." Fellow human feeling. Some kid shoots up his school across the country. You take a moment: "Oh my God, how terrible ... I hope people weren't too hurt." Hearing about the plane generated a response on that level, for the most part. Perhaps it was a bit more intensified because it was just across the river, and also: we couldn't SEE anything yet. We, as human beings, have a need to SEE. I know that the first thing I did when I finally was let off the damn bus 40 minutes later, still in Hoboken, the first thing I did was run, as fast as I could, down to the water, so that I could see what was happening. I HAD TO SEE.

So not being able to see what was going on just across the river was ... disturbing. Everybody got thrown off. People dropped their change. Strangers broke out into conversation.

I assumed, as many people assumed, that this was probably a (as I called it in my mind) "JFK Jr. Situation". An inexperienced pilot, a small plane ...

If I had actually contemplated it, and tried to be logical, then I would have soon come to the conclusion that that guess made no sense whatsoever. JFK Jr. was flying over the ocean, on a foggy black night, with no instrument training. Flying only by what he SAW, which was a wall of black. How in the world could someone MISS the World Trade Center? When they are the tallest things on the landscape, dwarfing all else, and visible from miles away? My "JFK Jr." guess made no sense.

But again: I wasn't sitting there trying desperately to figure it out. I had a moment of: "Oh God. I hope nobody was hurt! That is terrible!" and then went back to Catch-22.

It sounds so callous. But we had no information, and no visuals, even though it was happening just across the river.

I did notice, (again, in a desultory casual way) that everybody was on their cell phone. And that nobody was actually speaking into the cell phone. I didn't make anything of it. It was only later when I realized that that was the beginning of the being-unable-to-use-our-phones phenomenon. Everybody knows somebody who worked in those buildings. Everybody was trying to get through to them, and say, "What happened? Are you okay?" And already, at that early time, before the second plane, people's phones had stopped working. Obviously because the rest of the country probably had a better view of what was going on in Manhattan than the majority of us actually here did. And everybody picked up the phone.

And still ... the bus wasn't coming. I don't know how long we waited. 10 minutes maybe. 15. And then a bus came. We all piled on, gratefully. At last! We're off to work!

In my memory, the bus lumbered down Washington very very slowly. It seems like we were in slo-mo, but that could just be retrospect coloring the memory. I am not sure what was true, what was not, but I felt like we were chugging along at a horse-and-buggy pace. Why?

Maybe we were actually going slow, because the driver, in contact with the officials at Port Authority, knew something that we, the riders, didn't. Of course, I didn't think this at the time. I was too busy reading Catch-22, and trying not to think about the horrible-ness of a plane crashing into a skyscraper. I was sure some people had died.

A woman sitting behind me had miraculously gotten through to her boyfriend on the phone, who was home, watching CNN, and trying to tell her what was going on. The second plane had not hit yet.

She hadn't yet transformed into the correspondent for the entire bus, as she would do, moments later. She was speaking quietly, privately, trying to figure out, with her boyfriend what was going on. "So ... what kind of plane was it? Is anyone hurt? Yeah, well, there's a ton of traffic on the causeway ... we're completely stopped."

Others were engrossed in trying to dial their cell phones. Some people were zoned out as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

As the bus chug-chug-chugged along Washington, towards 14th Street (and the edge of Hoboken), where it would then take a left, and then a right ... to head onto the causeway leading into the Lincoln Tunnel, I dealt with my own sense of "Something's not quite right about this morning" by reading my book.

I remember the whole Catch-22 part of this morning so vividly because that would be the last pleasure-reading that I would do for well over a year to come.

When I finally felt that I could read again (I mean, read a book just for pleasure, and not just read books by Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, Robert Kaplan, and Sandra Mackey) - I picked up Catch-22 again, and tried to figure out where I had left off on that blindingly blue morning. The book suddenly held even more significance than it had before. Catch-22 has always had a mythical glow around it, for me, because of my father's love of it, my uncles' love of it, my friend Rich's love of it... but now ... I picked it up again, and all I could see was the morning of September 11, being stuck on that causeway, before we knew what was happening, what was going to happen, that the world, as we knew it, was about to die.

I went to go pick up where I had left off in the book, feeling ... this deep sense of oddness inside me. "Where I had left off in the book" meant: Where people started screaming and we saw a pillar of flame in the sky ... That was when I put down my book. For good. Or, at least, for a year.

I hadn't remembered where I left off, so I figured it out through deductive reasoning along these lines: "Okay, so I remember the episode described in THIS chapter, so I clearly read THIS ..." (flip ahead) "Okay, I KNOW I didn't read THIS episode, none of it looks familiar, so I must have stopped before THIS ..." (flip back) And in this way I finally narrowed it down to the exact sentence where I put the book down. (I'm freaky like this.)

And, without any unnecessary commentary from me, let me just say, that when I re-read the last paragraph I had read before putting the book down on the morning of September 11, I put the book down and didn't pick it up again for months.

I was not ready. I was not ready to stop reading Bernard Lewis, Robert Kaplan.

And I also was astonished at what I read, at what I had been reading on the bus, having no idea what was coming, having no idea how prophetic it would be, having no idea ... having no idea ...

Chapter 36 The Cellar Nately's death almost killed the chaplain. Chaplain Shipman was seated in his tent, laboring over his paperwork in his reading spectacles, when his phone rang and news of the mid-air collision was given to him from the field. His insides turned at once to dry clay. His hand was trembling as he put the phone down. His other hand began trembling. The disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed -- how ghastly, how very, very awful! His feeling of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe and his other friends would not be listed among the victims, then berated himself repentantly, for to pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men he did not even know. It was too late to pray; yet that was all he knew how to do. His heart was pounding with a noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside, and he knew he would never sit in a dentist's chair again, never glance at a surgical tool, never witness an automobile accident or hear a voice shout at night, without experiencing the same violent thumping in his chest and dreading that he was going to die. He would never watch another fist fight without fearing he was going to faint and crack his skull open on the pavement or suffer a fatal heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. He wondered if he would ever see his wife again or his three small children. He wondered if he ever should see his wife again, now that Captain Black had planted in his mind such strong doubts about the fidelity and character of all women. There were so many other men, he felt, who could prove more satisfying to her sexually. When he thought of death now, he always thought of his wife, and when he thought of his wife he always thought of losing her.

It was at this moment that the bus filled up with screams. An explosion had filled the air behind us. The second plane.

Screams. Hysteria. The girl, already on an open phone line with her boyfriend, elected herself liaison, so she stood up and started hollering out to all of us, what her boyfriend was saying, her boyfriend watching CNN:

"That was a second plane --- a second plane -- My boyfriend said a second plane just flew into the other tower."

This is when, for the first time, I thought of my sister. Who worked a block away from the towers, which were now both on fire. Black smoke was filling the air. Screams through the bus. Panic. People were jumping up and down. Crying. Screaming with frustration at how their phones would not work.

It seemed 5 million years ago since I had categorized the unknown magnitude in my mind as "a JFK Jr. Situation". Obviously, America was under attack.

But all the other stuff, all the stuff I live with on a daily basis now (the rage, the foreign policy perspective, the interest in global happenings, the voracious hunger for knowledge) - none of that stuff was going through my mind. I was just trying to call my sister. My parents. My brother.

And praying.

Dialing. And praying the Hail Mary. Underneath the established prayer, with memorized words, was another prayer.

let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay

And that's enough for today. No more writing.

This Morning...

I sat on the 126 bus into Manhattan.

It was 8:30 in the morning, and we hit some major traffic on the causeway into the Lincoln Tunnel. Traffic stopped. To my right, out the window, was the skyline of Manhattan, which I look at every morning, without fail.

It has a changeability about it which is hard to describe. It looks different every day, although the buildings remain the same, of course. The city is a moody bastard.

On rainy days, the structures glower darkly, and sometimes The Empire State Building vanishes into the mist, as though it is not there at all. Other times, because of the light of the sky behind it, the spire of the Empire State Building stands out like a black paper cut-out. Stark and beautiful. Spare. Sometimes the entire landscape is washed in a glow ... light pouring against the buildings, making everything look warm and soft. Like you could mush up the bricks into mud. I love it on days like that.

My favorite is when there is turbulence in the weather. As in: To the left you see clear gleaming sky, and directly overhead are purple-black thunderclouds, bearing down on the blue. In weather like that, the city of Manhattan has a beauty which, quite frankly, takes my breath away.

The causeway I was trapped on this morning is the same causeway where I witnessed the second explosion in the World Trade Center. By the time we reached the causeway on that day, the first building had already been burning for about 20 minutes ... the buildings could not be seen, because of an parking garage obstructing the view, but you could see black smoke filling the air.

When I saw that pillar of smoke, I knew. I knew that we were not talking about a pilot accident, a JFK Jr. moment. I knew it was big. Nobody's phones worked. One girl got through to her boyfriend at home, who was watching it all on TV. She became our eyes and ears, reporting to the rest of the bus what was happening.

It was such a beautiful day. Remember what a beautiful day it was? Blue sky, no clouds, beaming sun ... the city across the river looked benign, peaceful, ordinary.

And then suddenly, everyone started screaming.

Before the screaming began, there was definitely a tense air on the bus, people clenching fists, conversations breaking out among strangers, nobody knew what was going on, only that a plane had flown into one of the towers ... but suddenly someone started screaming ... everyone looked back at that black pillar ... and we all saw the second explosion ... streaming up into the sky ... Everybody stood up ... everybody started panicking ... I was screaming ... everybody was ... nobody's phones worked ...

The girl who had miraculously gotten through to her boyfriend started shouting to all of us above the chaos: "That was a second plane that just hit ... a second plane..."

Then. For the first time. Terror.

I started praying outloud ... I was not alone ... many people were praying ... as we all feverishly kept trying to use our cell phones. My prayer became all one word:

hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeathamen
hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amenhailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedart
thouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholy
marymotherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amen...

Dial, hang up, dial, hang up, dial, hang up .... hailmaryfullofgrace....

Meanwhile, traffic still was not moving.

I know now that within 5 minutes after the second plane hit (or an extraordinarily short amount of time, let's put it that way) all access in and out of the city was shut down. All tunnels closed.

And then, slowly, our bus drove itself over the median strip, turned itself around, and drove us all back into Hoboken.

People were screaming, crying, jumping up and down, completely freaking out.

Every time I go over that causeway, to this day, I remember September 11. I stare out, again, at the city skyline, in all its different moods, and remember that blindingly blue awful morning.

ABBA and The Man in the Dusty Grey Boots

There have been times in my life as an actress when I've been doing a play (we're talking about GOOD plays now), where I will have a funny line, or a funny bit, and hear the waves of human laughter hit me from out in the audience ... a group of people bursting into laughter as one ... There is literally nothing like that sensation. Or, for that matter, like that sound. Laughter. It's a healing thing. (I say that as though it is an original thought, as though "laughter is the best medicine" had never been said before.)

But that's the thing with certain sayings that contain truth.

There's a reason why truisms like "absence makes the heart grow fonder" or "laughter is the best medicine" stick around for millennia. We can never ever discover the truth of them enough.

In the wake of September 11, a couple of shows opened on Broadway, very very September 10th kind of shows. "Mamma Mia", the musical written around the songs of ABBA, and "Noises Off", the show by Michael Frayn, the door-slamming farce, whose only raison d'etre is to make you SCREAM with laughter. It is over-the-top slapstick keystone cops comedy.

Completely incongruous (I felt, originally) with the mood in New York at the time.

Mood??? What a stupid ineffective word. There was no "mood" in Manhattan. We weren't in a bad "mood", or a sad "mood". What was going on for us had nothing to do with emotions at all. An entire city of millions of people was openly walking around in shock. For months. People cried openly in public, women, men, on the bus, on the sidewalk. Sometimes someone would approach and say, "Are you okay?", but usually not. Because everybody else was also staggering down the sidewalk with that same look of terror, grief, and shock ... And the smoke never seemed to stop rising from downtown. In my memory, lower Manhattan kept burning well into November.

So these two wacky shows opened ... and an amazing thing happened: They both became massive hits.

Again, anyone with a sense of history and human nature will not be surprised by this. People wanted to escape, yes, but the successes of these shows went deeper than that.

People, in their trauma, needed to be reminded that there were still good things on the planet. Things like joy, and hope, and the possibility of human connection. People (myself included) clung to moments of softness, of man's humanity to man.

The spectacle of the selflessness, courage, and love for humanity displayed by the NY fire department (and all of the other firemen, from around the country, who raced to Manhattan to help), and the NYPD and the rescue workers was overwhelming. Overwhelming evidence of man's essential goodness. At the exact same moment of the display of carnage and hatred, we also were witness to some of the most moving displays of GOODNESS the world has ever seen.

I remember in the week directly following September 11, before the adrenaline had stopped racing through my heart, before anything outside of the events of that terrible day started taking up space in my brain again, I was standing in line at a CVS in Hoboken, and a fireman was in line behind me. In his full firemen get-up. His boots were caked with grey dust. The grey dust of the rubble at the WTC.

In the weeks after September 11, the months, firemen were treated like the biggest rockstars in the world. Mick Jagger and a fireman could be walking down 6th Avenue together, and the crowds would mob the fireman.

Again, this, to me, in those desperate dark days, was evidence of man's essential goodness. It was evidence of Americans' goodness as well. People around the world think of us as shallow, light, soft. People around the world don't know us at all.

The vibe at the CVS, with this dusty fireman standing there, buying some bottled water and a snack, was one of hushed stillness. We were in the presence of "it". There he was. He was one of those guys. One of those amazing people who run INTO a burning building as everybody else runs OUT. If I were trapped in a burning room, he would race in, scoop me up in his arms as though I were a little girl, and pull me out to safety. Or, he at least would do his damnedest to pull me out to safety. And he might DIE, he might lose his OWN life, in the attempt to save mine.

There is enough distance between September 11 and now that my ruminations may seem ... simplistic, or overly obvious. But directly in the wake of that awful day, all of this had a vibrant pulsing reality. I read every single tale I could about the heroism of the firemen that day, every last stinking word, because, piled up, it continued to give me hope. I continued to force myself to believe that, in the words of Anne Frank, "people are really good at heart".

The firemen, the men in the dusty grey boots, were the ones who gave that to me. To all of us.

And that's what I felt, in line at the CVS. I felt all of us having those thoughts, those emotions towards this stranger, this man with the grey dusty boots.

I wanted to say something to him. I didn't know what to say. "Thank you"?? That seemed so ... inadequate. After September 11, we had to find a whole new language, to express gratitude. Love. Hope. Humanity.

As is probably obvious, as I stood there in line, my consciousness bombarded with the awareness of the firefighter nearby, I was in tears. But I was holding back, too ... I was trying to keep it together.

If I had done what I felt like doing, I would have turned to this stranger, burst into sobs, taken his dirty hands in mine, and kissed the dusty palms, the fingers. Held his hands against my face. That's what I wanted to do. Instead, I just looked over at him.

He saw my tears, he took it all in, and then he just nodded. Calmly. He nodded, accepting the ... what should I call it ... I guess it would be the "love" that I was throwing at him. He just accepted it. No emotion. Just a calm nod.

The thing with firemen, the thing that makes them so extraordinary, is that they really don't think that what they do is a big deal. Or if they do, then it doesn't manifest itself as arrogance. They respect the foe of Fire too strongly to have big heads about it. They are logical men. Men who stay calm in the face of chaos, men who maintain their reasoning abilities as the walls burn down around them. In a very strong sense, despite their immense humanity, these men have ice water running in their veins. They better! How could they do such a job otherwise?

I don't want a soft gushy sentimental type who weeps when he sees a sunset breaking in my door with an axe. Or if he does well up at the beauty of the sunset, I want him to do that on his day off. When he's in charge of saving my ass, I want a cold logical big man stomping through the flames, with a cool head. A guy who can successfully IGNORE his emotions (of terror, panic) long enough to get me the hell out of there.

And that's how this fireman nodded at me. Other people around him were swirling masses of emotions, and feelings. Not just me. He stayed calm. It is in his blood to do so. But there was kindness in the way he looked at me, in how he nodded.

Afterwards, I went into the park across the street, sat on a bench, put my head in my hands, and wept. It was like a prayer, that crying, those tears. I was so full of rage and grief, but I also was bombarded by the goodness of people ... the goodness of people seemed so bright to me in those days (perhaps because everything else was so dark) that I felt like I needed protective goggles at times. I was thanking that dusty fireman, I was thanking God for him, and for all the other men like him, I was mourning what had happened ... I was a wreck.

This is an unbelievably long tangent. I began this post wanting to talk about humor and joy, and those two random Broadway shows that opened in the wake of 9/11 ... I just wanted to describe how it was, here in New York ... during that terrible autumn.

When "Mamma Mia" opened, on October 18, 2001, Ben Brantley, one of the main reviewers for The New York Times was there. Ben Brantley is not an idiot. He is able to call a spade a spade. In general, I find that he uses his position of immense power wisely and well. He can make or break a show (sidenote: that is WAY too much power for one reviewer!!). But he is a very good writer, a very good reviewer. He's fair.

I kept the review he wrote for "Mamma Mia" (and I know I kept the one for "Noises Off", too, but I can't find it at the moment).

I just read the review right now, right before I began writing this post, and that is why I had to tell the story of the fireman in the CVS.

The tone of the review completely brings back those surreal traumatized "post" days. Ben Brantley is a human being, a New Yorker. His position as a theatre critic didn't separate him from the masses THAT much. Yes, he must try to be objective, but NOBODY could be objective then.

And actually, I don't know if "Mamma Mia" would have become such a smash hit if it had opened before September 11.

Listen to Ben Brantley's criticisms, the flaws he was willing to overlook:

The choreography is mostly stuff you could try, accident-free, in your own backyard. And the score consists entirely of songs made famous in the disco era by the Swedish pop group Abba, music that people seldom admit to having danced to, much less sung in their showers.

...If you take apart "Mamma Mia", ingredient by ingredient, you can only wince. It has a sitcom script about generations in conflict that might as well be called "My Three Dads". The matching acting, perky and italicized, often brings to mind the house style of "The Brady Bunch".

OUCH.

At any other time, Brantley may have taken these embarrassing elements, these critiques, and based his entire review on them. The whole show might have been painted in that bad-review brush.

But the review is glowing. There's a reason that I kept it. Listen to what else Brantley says:

It is a widely known if seldom spoken truth that when the going gets tough, the tough want cupcakes. Preferably the spongy, cream-filled kind made by Hostess. Actually, instant pudding will do almost as well; so will peanut butter straight from the jar. As long as what's consumed is smooth, sticky and slightly synthetic-tasting, it should have the right calming effect, transporting the eater to a safe, happy yesterday that probably never existed. Those in need of such solace -- and who doesn't that include in New York these days?-- will be glad to learn that a giant singing Hostess cupcake opened at the Winter Garden Theatre last night. It is called "Mamma Mia".

Brantley describes the clumsy stupid plot, the "lurid" costumes, the "smirkiness" of it all, but none of that seems to matter to him. The show made him laugh, made him tap his feet, made him forget his troubles ... and that was enough for him. He recognized a necessary catharsis when he saw it, and he needed nothing else to give the play a glowing review. I guess I am so used to tired cynical reviewers, reviewers who have forgotten what exactly it means to be an AUDIENCE. For FUN.

Here's where he starts to really talk about what this clearly GOOFY show made him feel, how it really was all about identification:

"Mamma Mia" often suggests a world in which everyone is the star of his or her own music video, the kind you can create at those small karaoke sound stages at amusement parks.

Crucial to the emotional punch and appeal of these moments is that the singers are not the hothouse exotics of MTV in their overblown sci-fi settings. Every character in the show, as presented here, could pass for normal at a suburban cookout. Which makes the return of Donna and the Dynamos, in finned and ruffled disco drag for Sophie's pre-wedding party, a rousing apotheosis.

They're what they were and what they are at the same time, with acknowledgements of joints that now creak and backs that catch in pain. But the hedonistic spirit is still defiantly present in their voices. And I remembered a middle-aged friend describing the cathartic value of lip-synching to the disco standard "I will Survive" shortly after she broke up with her husband.

Although many of the performers in "Mamma Mia" have voices of considerable power, the show still creates the beguiling illusion that you could jump onstage and start singing and fit right in.

Similarly, Anthony Van Laast's choreography, which includes a fantasy sequence in scuba gear, never looks studied, though of course it is. In the party numbers, you have the impression of the kind of synchronized exuberance that sometimes spontaneously settles onto a dance floor shared by the same people for a long time. It is also reassuring to see an ensemble of so many varied body types. Again, the idea is that they could be you or me.

Brantley closes his review with the following anecdote, which still brings tears to my eyes today.

Reading over it, I realize why I have held onto this, a review of a show I have not seen, for two years now.

[Ms. Kaye's] courtship bid to the adamantly single Bill (Mr. Marks), in which she sings "Take a Chance On me", is the most charming number in the show.

Unbidden, the audience starts clapping along happily with that one. By that point, you've surely realized that whether you're conscious of it or not, you've been listening to Abba music all your life. Mr. Andersson's and Mr. Ulvaeus's hook-driven, addictively tuneful melodies have been heard, in some form, in many an elevator, dentist's office, and supermarket aisle.

They're the sort of songs that seem to belong to some hazy collective memory. And it's amazing how much cumulative emotional clout they acquire here...

"Mamma Mia" manipulates you, for sure, but it creates the feeling that you're somehow a part of the manipulative process. And while it may be widely described as a hoot by theatergoers embarrassed at having enjoyed it, it gives off a moist-eyed sincerity that is beyond camp.

The woman who accompanied me to "Mamma Mia" wore hard-edged black and an air of weary skepticism. At one point, she hissed irritably at me, "I hate the 70s." That was early, though. When the curtain calls came, she was openly weeping and laughing at herself for doing so.

My whole being responds to that; Yes. Yes. Yes. That is why we go to the theatre, that is why we care about theatre, and movies. For that reason. Because sometimes, randomly, you get to connect. You, through a play or a movie, CONNECT. To the rest of the earth, to every other person on the planet. Like E.M. Forster commanded: Only connect.

I can't describe how that occurs, and Ben Brantley was obviously pleasantly surprised that it had occurred for him during "Mamma Mia" of all things - but that's the thing. You never know when such a miracle will occur.

What interests me, what I am noticing right now ... is the strangeness, the apt-ness, of me remembering the man in the dusty grey boots as I read that theatre review from two years ago. How strange.

For me, he is the subtext of every damn line in Brantley's review.

And who can describe why that might be ... I don't know. I just know it's so.

That PBS special

Allison got her hands on a copy of the PBS special about the building of the WTC and the Port Authority before it aired and we watched it last week. Parts of it was quite fascinating and informative. I did not know the full history of the Port Authority, and its switch of priorities, when it got itself into the real estate business. All very interesting.

But the special made me ANGRY. ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY. (Here's the transcript)

You could play a drinking game watching it. Actually, that would make the whole thing more watchable. Here's what you do: Take a drink every time you hear the word "hubris". You would be SMASHED before the first hour was out.

The implication was that those buildings were asking for it. They were asking for it even before they were built. We were asking for it. You know what happens to people who have hubris! The Greeks taught us that! Hubris is punished!

The way all of the "experts" talked, September 11 was a done deal from Day One of the project 30-something years ago. They were talking as architects. They spoke abstractly.

They spoke of symbols. They spoke of globalization (and they all took the position, as if there were no possible fair-minded question about it, that globalization was a bad thing). They spoke of symbols of globalization. They spoke of hubristic symbols of globalization.

One of them particularly got on my nerves. He was talking about blueprints and floor plans, but he smirked the entire time. His political views had been vindicated by the downfall of those buildings. The entire experience of September 11 was, for him, a morality tale, an aesop's fable, a symbolic fairy tale, an allegory.

Kudos to you if you are able to float so loftily above the dirt and grime of REAL EVENTS, and see everything in an abstract way, see everything as a symbol. Great for you for being able to be so cut off. Not all of us can do that, and I, for one, do not WANT to do that. Those buildings were part of my skyline. I took classes there. I went there every week. I knew the security guards, and the woman who sold me orange juice. I took the Path train into the buildings. They were not SYMBOLS. There was nothing abstract about them. They were buildings in downtown Manhattan, filled with people.

During the section where they talked about September 11 ...

Well, I went through a couple of things.

I realized how we never ever see the footage anymore. Footage of those planes going in, of people plummeting, has disappeared. I mean, I know this with my mind, obviously, but to really realize how those images have vanished, how ... I have lost touch with ... the horror of the visual ... So again ... after so much time ... watching ... I re-lived what happened that day. I re-discovered it. Not with my mind. But in my body. That familiar cold horror. No tears. Horror way too deep for tears. Rage. The people falling, one, then another, then another ... somersaulting through the empty air. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles.

Growing anger, anger that got bigger after seeing the images. No wonder they have disappeared. GOD forbid that Americans get angry. We have to stay passive, we have to crumple up handkerchiefs in agony, we have to blubber and mourn the loss. But righteous anger is to be avoided. Americans cannot be trusted to handle their anger. Anger is BAD, right? Anger is NEGATIVE. We have to try to understand WHY, we have to try to see the other side's point of view.

Well, you know what? I do see the other side's point of view, and I hate their point of view. It's like that great Dennis Miller quote from his recent HBO special: "You know what? I hated religious fanatics who wanted to murder me on September 10, okay?"

"Understanding" is not the key to everything. You can understand something and hate it with all your heart just the same. As a matter of fact, the MORE I understand the reasoning of the thugs on those planes, and the ideology behind them, the MORE I hate them.

Seeing those images again made me outraged at those of us who chide others to get over it. I am stunned that anyone could ever look at the carnage on that footage (and I saw the whole damn thing with my actual eyes) - and somehow ... not be changed. Get OVER IT? What? Are you out of your goddamned freaking mind? What is the MATTER with you?

There were shots of the air filled with paper. The ripped and torn pieces of paper raining down on Manhattan.

Maria and Cashel, out in Brooklyn, later that day, found a piece of paper, burnt around the edges, on the ground in Prospect Park.

That paper drifted everywhere. When the wind changed, scraps of paper floated out onto the Hudson, floated over the Brooklyn Bridge, floated all the way out down Flatbush ... Relics of the offices that were no longer. Offices that were there at 8:00 am, and now ... nothing. Gone. The towers ... gone? How could they be ... gone? What? No ... No. That can't be. They can't be gone.

Where is my sister? Is she all right? Was anyone in the office where I took classes? Carla? Karen? Where are they?

What?

This isn't a symbol. This isn't abstract. This is real.

I may sound like I'm speaking too simplistically, or too emotionally, but if you saw the PBS documentary, and you feel the same way I do, then you will understand. I wanted to shake them all. I wanted to bludgeon a couple of them, especially Mr. Smirking "We paid for our hubris" architect.

William Langewiesche, a journalist, said about the rainfall of paper:

In all cases, an office fire is many things burning -- partitions, carpets in particular, computer cases -- but paper. Mostly paper. And if you look at the dynamics of the collapse, what you find is that in both cases it was the paper fire that was sustained long enough, because of the amount of paper in there, to cause the steel to weaken, to cause the collapse and the hammering down in both cases. I mean, paper on that day was a constant presence. It rained down on the city, as if in mockery of the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center. "Here, have some of the paper." And it burned, and it brought the buildings down.

Now let's look at that quote again. "It rained down on the city, as if in mockery of the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center."

"As if in". "As if in". Three little one-syllable words, but they can be so dangerous, when put in the wrong hands. Like the hands of Mr. Langewiesche.

"As if in mockery of the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center."

There's so much that is wrong with that.

First off, Mr. Langewiesche is making an editorial comment, albeit in an esoteric above-the-fold way, letting us know what he, personally, thinks of "the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center".

Here's the deal, Mr. L: Paper burns. There was a massive fire from the jet fuel. The paper ignited. The paper flew over the city of Manhattan. THAT is what happened.

But the entire documentary had a subliminal message of "as if in..." throughout.

It had this feel:

The buildings rose. As if in defiance against a world who hated what they stood for.

The steel beams were hauled into the sky during construction, as if in consort with the forces of globalization, reaching its tentacles around the world.

The architects took a lunch break. As if in mockery of the starving masses working the sweat shops in Outer Mongolia.

Jesus Christ. (I mean, obviously, I made all that up, but the entire PBS special should have been called "As If In".)

A cigar is never just a cigar to some people. Burning paper was not just burning paper. The paper burned in mockery at the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center.

I am outraged at those who hold those views. Outraged. Outraged that they remain so detached. Also, that they are proud of their detachment. They are proud of their removal from passion, from emotion. They are more interested in their own clever-ness, in their own phrasology, than in allowing any impact of that day to hit.

Pete Hamill was good. I liked him. He's a real New Yorker. I met him once, and liked him very much. He's an old-school journalist, a real guy. He would never say something so snobby, so stupid, so ... heartless, as "as if in mockery".

Am I making too big a deal?

I do not think so. We speak how we think. Which is why I am often a splutteringly inarticulate freak. I wish I could be more articulate, I wish I could put what is in my heart into words with more eloquence, more grace, but after seeing that documentary I thank GOD that I do not talk like those architectural boneheads.

Jeff Jarvis talks about the "The PBSification of 9.11" here. This goes along with the piece I posted earlier by Chris Hitchens.

Jarvis writes:

Far, far worse, Burns shows, more than once, the most horrifying images from that day, the ones that haunt me most: people falling more than 100 stories from the top of the towers, people fleeing from death to death. Most shows about 9.11 have had enough sense and empathy and civility not to show that and certainly not to dwell on it. But this show has no human heart and apparently sees nothing wrong with setting the deaths of real people to background music.

: For it's not the people who matter. It's the agenda.

After seeing the now-disappeared-from-public-view footage of September 11, after seeing, again, innocent people choosing to fling themselves into the abyss ... a "tribute", making September 11 into a day of tributes to those who died seems, I am sorry, inadequate. It is only PART of the picture. It is too soggy. We need resolve. We need to "stiffen up".

"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." said Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on December 7th, 1941. We are nothing without "terrible resolve" after an attack such as that.

We need to remember. Not to dwell, not to sink into victimhood, cherishing our wounds. No. We need to remember, because we will need our anger to get through the tough times ahead. We will need to remember what was done to us, in order to face the challenges. Are we up to it?

Judging from those soggy drips on PBS, no, we are not.

It's indicative of how detached and enraging the special was that the person who seemed the most moved, the most devastated by what happened on September 11, was Philippe Petit, the guy who walked the tightrope in between the two buildings.

Actually, no, there was one other guy as well, a man I have seen interviewed before: Leslie Robertson, the engineer of the buildings. He, to me, seems like a ruined man. There is pain in his eyes that will never go away. It hurts me to look at him. Here's one of the things he said, during the special:

"I-- I have to tell you, I didn't know whether the buildings were empty or whether there were tens of thousands of people in them. I just had no idea. And I was-- I was totally devastated by the fact that all those people were in there and this building that I had designed was perhaps falling on them. The buildings were not so important to me. I-I'm good at buildings, but people are another matter. It was a terrible event. Absolutely terrible."

Now that is language I can understand. A human response.

But back to high-wire man. Here is one of the things Philippe said:

"My love for the towers was in my relation with them -- not as an overall appreciation almost in an architectural sense: my love was for their life they were alive. Not many people know that. The people who build them know that. They were vibrating with the passage of a cloud over the sun, difference of temperature, the wind. And the skeleton was actually making noise. I discovered that. And at times the towers were asleep, hibernating. And at times they wake up and they cry and they almost -- yell for help. I think I loved them from the inside. I didn't find them beautiful and interesting at first sight. But as I get to know them -- as I found out that to build those two monolith you had to had a group of insane designer -- architect -- structural engineer -- builders, hundreds of them for years it became something to love. I love their strength and their arrogance, somehow. They were so overlooking the skyline of New York. Somehow anything that is giant and manmade strikes me in an awesome way and calls me. And I cannot see the highest towers being built without wanting to celebrate their birth, right there."

And here is what he said about September 11.

"I was upstate New York when I heard of the towers being destroyed. A side of me was not believing it. It was a very strange blend of feelings. One was the sorrow, the horror at witnessing human life being obliterated for no reason like that. And I felt something beyond words. I felt almost an alive part of me being squeezed to nothing, being extracted, an evisceration almost. It's an interesting question, when you saw those two giant towers collapse almost cleanly on themself: Where did they go? I have read in some architecture article that they were made mostly of air -- if you consider the space between the solid molecules, the steel, the concrete, the glass, the aluminum -- there was a lot of air. Was mostly air, actually. And they disappeared. It was--. "Where did they go" was part of the disbelief that I was feeling. Because how you can make 200,000 tons of steel disappear? It's unbelievable."

Yes. I agree. It was unbelievable. It is still unbelievable. I still stare at the event in incomprehension. I try to wrap my brain around it. It is hard to grasp. It doesn't get any easier.

It is not that I judge those who have decided to move on. Of course not. Everyone moves on. I have moved on. I miss the old skyline, but I am getting used to the new view. I don't like it, but I have adjusted.

I am talking about those people who have wrenched that horrible event into some symbolic gesture, showing how we were rightly punished for our hubris, that we had it coming all along.

Here is another quote from William Langewiesche: "One of the surprising things, you could call it almost a sad poetic justice, is that the only buildings that were completely destroyed by this collapse were the buildings that carried the Trade Center label, buildings One through Seven. No other buildings, with the exception of the small Orthodox church there that dissolved, were destroyed. And every building that carried the label, died."

Read that again.

And then read it again.

Mr. Langewiesche: "Sad poetic justice?"

Shame on you.

Shame. On. You.