The Best Day: Ithaca, New York. Wine Country.

You know those days that, for whatever, reason, take on a soft perfect glow in your memory? It may not even be a momentous day – like your wedding, or the birth of your child – it might be a day where nothing all that huge happened but it’s a day where everything was in alignment, where joy seemed like the natural response to being alive, when all things felt RIGHT. I had one such day in Ithaca, and it’s all there … in photographs. Strangely, the photos seem to capture the sort of chaotic happiness and open-hearted freedom that was ours that day. So often photographs pale in comparison to the real thing – and indeed, the real thing in this case was far more vivid, and heart-throbbingly beautiful. We all just pulsed with life. I don’t know what it was … but the four of us just clicked into something that day. It was the best day. One of my best days ever.

So this will be a photo essay of that one day.

Michael (he who directed and wrote and starred in Kwik Stop, don’t you know) and I were in a play in Ithaca and we were dating. Life was awesome.

The rest of the cast – Pat, Laurie, and Ken – were all fantastic and we became fast friends. In looking back on it – one of the fun things about this cast was that we were all kind of throwbacks. I can’t really describe it any other way. We weren’t “over” things, we weren’t cynical. I mean, we’re human beings, we had our bad days … but we settled into this very Pleasantville-esque existence in Ithaca. We ate at diners and befriended waitresses. We drank black coffee. We didn’t party like maniacs, but when we did go out, we drank whiskey and played trivia. Very old-school. Michael and I found a weekly 70s dance party that we attended with religious fervor. It was a non-alcoholic event and that was fine by us. We were there to put on our dancing shoes.

Laurie loved playing cards and continuously roped Michael and me into playing with her. The two of us just weren’t into playing cards. It wasn’t our thing as a couple. We were more into lying on a blanket in the park and reading books. But Laurie would beg and plead – “Come on! Play!!!”

So below are two photos.

One is a picture of Michael and me backstage. The second photo makes me laugh out loud. It is a photo of us – taken by Laurie – during one of our forced card games. We were SO unhappy to be playing cards. Michael’s face makes me laugh out loud.

Notice my ‘do. I worked HARD on that ‘do. I played the trashiest slut to ever walk the earth. Sharla is bad BAD news. She gets her comeuppance in the end – but not before she wreaks havoc on every life she touches. I love that photo because, oh, I don’t know … I can SMELL backstage in that photo.

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

hahahaha

I also enjoy that he and I are dressed like twins. It was all about the flannel and the glasses. My glasses are on crooked. I have become undone by the fact that I DO NOT WANT TO BE PLAYING CARDS. My eyes are PISSED.

We had one day off a week – Mondays. Laurie ended up acting as our tour guide director. There would be no lethargy! One Monday we took a tour of all the Ithaca waterfalls. One Monday we hiked up to Cornell. We reveled in our days off. Laurie did a little research on the wine country surrounding Ithaca and suggested that we do a little wine-tasting tour. It was October, the leaves were aflame … it would be great to see the countryside. Ken’s girlfriend had come to visit (it’s a hard life being in an out-of-town show when your girlfriend is back in Chicago and the rest of the cast has coupled up!!) so he didn’t come with us.

But on that flaming red and orange October day, Laurie and Pat (who had started dating as well) and Michael and I got into Pat’s beat-up car and set out to do some wine-tasting!

We were on a field trip! We were giddy!

Here we are starting out on our journey.

Please notice that I am wearing the same shirt I wore in the backstage photo, as well as in the card-playing photo, as well as in the seesaw photo earlier. I loved that shirt as much as I loved my soft blanket I had when I was a kid. The shirt was a soft plushy flannel, it was comfortable, and I pretty much never took it off. Oh, and Michael – who had never had a taste of alcohol before – dribbled wine down on his shirt during the subsequent tour and had to change his clothes. The sight of Michael getting tipsy for the first time was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life.

One of the reasons I loved Michael (and still love him) was that he didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body. Whatever, we were wine tasting, that didn’t mean he felt the need to act snooty or to rein in his particular brand of insanity. Our hysteria just mounted through the day, as we kept drinking wine. I eventually had to leave one of the wine-tasting events because I could not keep back the laughter, and I actually snorted into the solemnity of the moment.

But here we are … arriving at our first winery.

I love how, in these photos – throughout the day – everyone is in motion. It’s rare that any of us just stood and posed for a photo – we were always moving, walking, running, talking …

For some reason, Michael in that first photo makes me laugh out loud (AGAIN). Something about his pose, his attitude … He looks a bit adrift. He so is not about to adjust his personality, just because we’re at a wine-tasting event with wine snobs!

Pat was an awesome guy. We became really good friends. He smoked like a chimney, he was mainly a comedian but he was playing Killer Joe in this play – the terrifying hired killer who infiltrates this family. He was amazing. Killer Joe is the one who discovers that Sharla has been betraying them all and he punishes her in the most brutal and humiliating way possible. Onstage. He and I didn’t know each other at all when we started rehearsal so doing that scene was quite an odd thing. I remember the first time we really did it – in rehearsal. He stood over me, I was on my knees – it’s a very violent scene … I started weeping – but he kept going, as he should … It’s the part. Killer Joe has no conscience. Well, he probably has more of a conscience than Sharla does – but his is a rough frontier brand of justice. You fuck with me, bitch? I’ll bring you to your knees. Tears didn’t move him. Pleading for your life didn’t move him. It was a tough scene and I never got used to doing it. Which was why it was good. Sharla thinks she has gotten away with it. And, like a cobra stalking its prey, Killer Joe waits, waits, waits … and then, in one devastating moment, strikes. And Pat – who was a tough guy, the kind of guy I really relate to – he’s like all the men in my family – tough but with a heart of gold – had to put aside his own sense of compassion and reticence in order to do the scene. You know the kind of guy who knows his own strength? And so he is even more responsible about using that strength? Pat was that guy. So the first time we really HIT the moment with the scene – the first time we really clicked into it in rehearsal – was inTENSE. I was crying, begging for mercy, he was choking me, and laughing evilly in my face, and I was fighting him, but he was holding me down … Awful. To not be able to get away. You know, we went there. The director then called out from the dark, “Okay, stop …” We both stopped. I wiped my tears off, but I was curled up on the floor – Pat, with the gentleness of a father, with the kindness of a good good man, reached his hand down to me, and helped me stand up. He had this strange ashamed look on his face, but we both knew we had nailed the moment. That was the moment. His hands, which had been around my neck, were suddenly soft and manly – firm and kind – He held his arm around my waist, and said, in a kind of shy amused way, “This is a very strange sensation …” It was like he faced his own capacity for violence … That’s the beauty of acting in those moments. You get to act out the stuff you suppress as an upstanding citizen of society. We all have violence in us. Most of us do not act on it. Pat’s a tough dude, man – you do not want to get in a fight with Pat – but like I said: he knows that, and so he holds back. He’s responsible with himself. I loved Pat.

Pat was only a couple years older than Michael but he took on a kind of older brother thing with Michael. They’re still friends. It doesn’t surprise me at all. There was none of that posturing competitive shit between them (well, there was at one specific moment … but that had to do with me, so it doesn’t count) – They didn’t beat their breasts like gorillas, or try to be alpha male. They just were buddies. They cracked each other up. They complemented each other.

I give you this background merely as a set-up for the following photo.

Michael, like I said, had never had a sip of alcohol before that day. This is Michael after one glass of wine. I laugh out loud looking at it today. And look at Pat, being patient with Michael, who apparently is reaching out – in order to say some deeply drunken and profound thing.

We moved on to the next winery. Another huge drafty barn. Pumpkins, gourds, sheafs of wheat, dusty bottles … We stood around, sipping wine, pretending to “taste” it … and savor it … when really, let’s be honest, we were just guzzling.

Which explains the quality of my next photo.

A sort of group hysteria was escalating. We were having so much fun, and we were all enjoying each other so much, that we found ourselves at this level where everything was funny. Everything was beautiful. We were one. The four of us were one. Nobody was being a drip. Nobody was wishing that the rest of us would stop giggling and snorting and BE SERIOUS. We all were just having a blast. The wine person would set out glasses for us. We all would slowly take sips. I would glance at Michael, and see him pretending to take it seriously … He would have that “look at how serious I am being” face on that he wore during the card-playing extravaganzas … He would nod seriously at the wine person, mutter something about “yes, the smoky aftertaste, right …” and then throw back the entire glass in one gulp.

Because it was Halloween time – at one of the wineries we went to there was a ghost hanging from the ceiling. If you pulled on the ghost, it would make this swooning “Whoooo-hoooo-ooooo-ooooo” sound.

Michael loved Halloween. I think it was his favorite holiday. He loved ghosts and witches and goblins and all that. He was FASCINATED by this rigged ghost. He stood beneath the ghost and KEPT pulling on it so that the “Whoooo-hooo-hoooooo” sound KEPT swooning through the air of the winery. It was almost like he was an autistic child. He could not stop pulling on the ghost. There were other people in the winery, people who actually, you know, took wine seriously, and who were taking tiny sips with no irony, and musing over the bottles … and over in the corner was Michael, pulling on the ghost insistently for, I am not kidding, about 15 minutes.

Laurie had HAD it. She finally said, “Michael … yes … the ghost is cool … PLEASE STOP PULLING ON IT.”

Michael’s response was to call over his shoulder in the general direction of the winery employees (I am literally shaking with laughter as I type this), shouting, “How much for the ghost?”

I can’t take it.

I still can’t take it.

We moved on to our third and final winery. The sun was starting to go down. It was the time of day known in the movie business as “the magic hour” – the fleeting hour when the lowering light glows against the earth, when the rays are long, the shadows longer, and when everything, indeed, takes on a certain magic. The air was cool, crisp … the leaves burning in the light of the sunset. We were sloshily tipsy … not trashed … just that soft mushy wine-drunk. It was perfect. One more glass and all of us might have been in deep trouble. As it was … it was just perfection.

As a group, we bought a couple of bottles of wine.

Then we headed back out to the car … we thought we would be heading back into town straightaway, not realizing that the fields across the road would literally CALL to us to come to play.

I adore the photo below – not sure why – it’s rather random, but something about it is so suggestive.

First of all, you can just see the magic of the magic hour light … not as much as you can in the later photos when we really hit the perfect moment … but it’s begun. You can see how the shadows are cool and nighttime-ish where we are, but if you look over to the left, you can see how the sun is GLOWING on the field across the street.

I also love how Pat, Laurie and Michael are walking – they’re all tilting different ways. The photo FEELS like they’re wine-drunk. Like they’re all just reeling drunkenly towards the car. But in such a friendly way. Not WASTED. No. We were not wasted. We were punch-drunk. We were tilt-a-whirls. That photo shows our meandering perambulatory …

The winery walk.

Instead of getting in the car, we basically hung out BESIDE the car and that’s when things got nuts.

Here’s a photo of Pat and me.

Words cannot even express how much I love this picture. It’s so in the moment. It captures, first of all, our friendship – we were kindred spirits, the two of us … we “got” each other … we come from the same background … and there we are. But also, it’s one of those photos that truly captures a feeling, a fleeting second of time. I have no idea what was going on there, and what we were saying and doing … but it’s a photo that captures a specific moment. It makes me laugh.

You can see a scar above my left eyebrow. How did I get that? I got that from the curling iron while I was making my Farrah Fawcett curls one night before the show. I wasn’t really good with a curling iron, obviously. I burned my damn head.

At the car, we all kind of just dissolved. I mean, our personalities dissolved. We lost it. We cracked up. Collectively. We all were taking pictures. We were shouting at each other. We were howling with laughter. The fields glowed across the street. But not yet … not yet … It wasn’t time yet to run into the gold. There was too much to DO beside the car.

Like … er … this …

Or this …

The paparazzi … embodied by Pat … who appears to be following Laurie around … snapping pictures … we are in the PARKING LOT of the WINERY.

Just so we’re clear on that.

Again, notice the blurriness of everyone … due to the non-posed nature of the photo … and the general craziness that took over the 4 of us …

The following four photos are a series. I mean, honestly, look at them. They go together, don’t they? How could you separate one from the other?

The first one is so riotous that I still don’t know what to do with myself. I just … love those two guys so much. I can’t stop laughing. And the one where Michael is obviously squatting and clutching Pat’s leg … what is going on there?? I have no idea but I know that it made PERFECT sense (in a drunken way) to us at the time. Chaos. We were out of control. The laughter was intense. I love these, too, because they capture the goofy relationship between Pat and Michael.

And I’ve gotta just say this. The last photo in the series? Michael? Rowr.

The next one kinda says it all.

I mean … what else can I say. Uhm … yeah.

That last photo is a perfect segue. We couldn’t get into the car and go back into Ithaca after THAT!!! The fields across the street glowed in the magic hour so we wandered over there … for a romp. As you can see, there is more blurriness.

It appears that Laurie and Michael are attacking Pat … running at him with pummeling fists, as he’s just trying, for God’s SAKE, to light his 50th cigarette of the day. Would you guys just let me do this, please??

Just LOOK at that glow in the air – the shadows, the gold, the vista …. stunning.

God. I just want to swoon into that light. Just look at it.

Perfection. Transcendence. A cosmic moment, uplifting, all brought about by our mutual regard for one another, and an afternoon of red wine. God, how I loved those two men. LOOK AT THEM. LOOK AT THEIR BEAUTY.

Later, Pat said to me, “That was so cool when you just started running …”

Magic hour also means crazy hour. It went to my head. It was too much. I had to somehow get it OUT. I had to EXPRESS it. I had to MOVE. The sun was going down. The shadows were violet and cool but the sun’s rays were long and golden, and we could see for miles and miles. The woods were ablaze.

It was too much sensation … I was going to EXPLODE! So I took off … and just started RUNNING through the fields. By myself. I ran …. and ran … and ran … and Pat, Laurie, and Michael all started screaming … an exhilarating moment for some reason … shouting, screaming, bursts of adrenaline … there she goes …

Once I started running, an epidemic of random running spread, until all four of us were running like tasmanian banshees, circling the field, criss-crossing, jumping, ambushing each other, breaking free …

Michael took off, running, trying to catch up with me. Pat took this picture.

Look at the line of shadow in the field … gold and then dark.

Takes my breath away still.

Pat and Laurie chased each other through the fields. We all were screaming. Michael was trying to catch up with me, to tackle me, basically. At some point, during this free-for-all, Michael got Pat’s camera … and took the last two photos of this series.

She’s comin’ at ya …

Closer …

The light in that first photo slays my heart. It’s like every blade of grass is distinct. Touched with gold.

And that last photo is my favorite. Not because I’m vain but just because the photo itself is perfect. It’s perfect in composition, the light on my face and how it hits it, the flame of my hair and all that … but it’s perfect because it is the culmination of that perfect day, and it is the perfect expression of my feelings in that moment and my feelings for Michael. That’s how I felt when I was with him so there, in that photo, I am just GIVIN’ IT TO HIM. How often do we have photos like that? Also, it’s perfect because it’s spontaneous.

And the next moment? The moment that came after that last photo? It can probably be guessed. I had grass stains on my jeans the next day from rolling around in the magic-hour field with Michael, kissing him, pulling him on top of me, the two of us rolling around in the grass, laughing and devouring each other. If anyone had driven by that glowing golden field at that very moment, they would have seen 2 couples – dark against the gold – separated by a respectful distance – lying in the grass … cameras discarded … and deeply involved in their own private communion with one another … which would have to end when the magic hour ended … Of course.

Magic can’t last.

But for now? For this fleeting moment in time? The couples are together. They roll around in the grass, hugging, kissing, laughing … sometimes calling out to each other … one couple reaching out to the next … but more often than not, engrossed … completely engrossed in the other.

The moment is eternal because the cameras captured it. Or at least that’s how it feels. That best day is long gone and the 4 of us are scattered to the winds now. But there we are …

It feels like, on some plane of existence, we’ll be running thru that golden field forever.