Retreat

It's hard to describe what is going on. In my life. In Sue's. There are definitely cracks and fissures. Time is cracked like a busted windshield. Maybe there's been a wreck somewhere. Maybe I've been in a wreck, my head spidering the windshield upon impact and I haven't even woken up from it yet. I'm still in a coma. Shards of glass in my face. On life support.

Waking in the dark two nights ago, upstairs in our friends' house, I didn't know where I was, and suddenly I thought I was in a hospital bed. That's what it felt like. The assured breadth of the bed supporting me. Lying on my back. In the dark. Somewhere I felt there were nurses and I was safe.I sighed and I thought, I made it. I knew there has been some serious damage done, because our friends contacted us and said, come up, and they took care of us both. I was in a hospital bed, when you think about it.

Do you know when you can't breathe, how the doctors put an oxygen mask over your mouth and you breathe pure oxygen? No fumes. No pollutants. That's how this house was. No pollutants. Just creativity in its purest form, in everything. In the meals, in the food we ate and how it was prepared and consumed. In the conversation. Their friends came over one night, and on the porch we made music. More creativity. No judgement. Just sharing the gift of music we had, but no judgement. No snark. I hate snark. I hate the place where snark comes from: insecurity and cowardice. The cowardice to face your own self. To face your own insecurities. So they tear you down to build themselves up. I have someone like that in my life right now. She does snark, and I think people have told her its funny, that she's amusing and entertaining. I try to be patient, but only because she's popular, and I don't want to be unpopular.

I know someone else, she has to prove how good she is. It's a competition for her. It gets so dull and boring. I don't know why she does it. Probably for the same reason most people do it: to compensate for some inadequacy. To prove to themselves something. So prove it to yourself, I want to say, but leave me out of it. But we're not that close, to have that conversation. So I treat her like I would someone on the subway, who has a cold and can't stop sniffling.

Sue too. People in our lives who seem to have some real problems and we're in their splatter zone. We both try to sympathize. Be patient. But sometimes it seems the more patient you are with people, the more they stay where they are. Why should they change? Why should they work on their own shit when you're being patient? A long walk down an empty lane helps. The combination of quiet and vigor, the yin and the yang, for balance. The sound of conversation painted on a canvas of stillness.

And there's always the question of my role in things. What are others writing on their blogs tonight about me? How am I impacting others? How can I adjust to make someone else's life just a bit easier? Or even a lot easier? But I've done that. For a long time I concerned myself with the needs and desires and especially the opinions of others. Why give anyone that much control over your life? The test is, if you offer that kind of control, and the person takes it, you know it's the wrong person to give it to. Only the person who rejects it should be given power over your life.

Bountiful Gardens

Weekends make it hard to write. The thoughts still swirl around my head, but Sue's not working and we get caught up in weekend chores and events, and just reveling in the time we can spend together. She's my best friend, pure and simple, and I love that I can write those words. Just like I always sign my email to her or to Allison and Kathryn with the word, love, because for me, it's such a gift that I have people who I deeply love and can say that.

Maybe that's what's on my mind this weekend. Gifts, and things that we should be thankful for.

Tomatoes from our garden becoming pasta sauce. 

Kathryn and I were talking about food and cooking yesterday. I was making sauce from the tons of tomatoes our garden has been yielding this summer. Enough for big batches of sauce, while at the same time we can give some more away. Amazing what the earth will give you. But at the same time I thought what a privilege it is that we can talk about food in the way we do, what we like, how we like to cook it, and the intricacies of cooking and eating. Like Eskimos have all those names for snow, which I don't know if that's true or not, but it's like that. That is the privilege of a privileged society, and while I don't have any money, I do have that in my life. I have food and plenty of it; so much of it, in fact, that it is no longer simply sustenance, but it's some higher thing. I was telling Kathryn about a professor I had at Ohio University. The university, when I was there, had a program where the students could vote for their favorite professor, and that professor could teach a course in whatever they wanted. David Hostetler, who probably has no idea the impact he had on me or my growth, taught a course called, Art And Your Life. All it was about was making art everyday in your life. We studied motorcycle gas tanks and bread, and he said that in everything we do we should think about elevating it to art. Yes, if you think I'm crazy, you have David to thank for it. I mentioned how much I love grocery shopping, and that when I do, I consider every food item closely (another extraordinary privilege that we should all be aware of) to the point where I will pick up an onion, look at it, and think, this is going inside Sue or Kathryn, and does it measure up. Trust me, when you view ingredients in this way, you will look at them differently.

I wasn't around much when Kathryn and Allison were little. Their mother and I divorced when they were little, and I wasn't around to pass down things like the wisdom of David Hostetler to them. That happens to a lot of men in our society. Now, when I can sit with Kathryn and talk, talk about making everything in the world a work of art, or talk about our individual paths, comparing and contrasting them, she being gracious and listening to and taking in what I pass along as wisdom, is another great gift in my life. It's a second chance and while I don't have the memories of a traditional family life with them, I have this life with them now, and to me it is as bountiful as any garden.

What To Write About

I want to write something but I can't think what I should write.

Alice

I want to write about Jon Mouradian, and how I drove all the way to Winchester today to go to his shop, getting lost along the way, of course, because I always get lost when I drive anywhere but in the actual city. How I sat in traffic--and sitting in Boston traffic is the worst; it goes for miles and just creeps along--with Alice, one of our guitars in the back seat. I was going to sell her on Craigslist, but something stopped me. I knew she could sound better than she did, all it would take is Jon laying his healing hands on her. And it worked. Don't sell this guitar, he said. He lowered the bridge, taking out a shim he himself had put in a couple of years ago. And she suddenly did sound so much better.

I want to write about all the people in my neighborhood, but that will take way more space and time than I have here. And I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but what stopped me was that I kept thinking of the story in the form of a play, but I thought, that would be so futile, because nowhere in the American theater could you cast the multitude of races who live around me. The American theater, and especially here in Boston, is too white. So, I felt blocked, when I should have just written it, and see how it evolved, whether a short story or anything else. A song.

For starters, there's Lisa, the Chinese owner of the farang Chinese restaurant, Great Chow, who speaks with an English accent. There's Jimmy Abdon, the mechanic who is Syrian and who keeps all the poor people's cars running, and Steve and John, who are also Syrian. Tom and Neddy are two of my neighbors, but one is Mandarin and the other is Cantonese, but I can't remember which is which, but I know the difference means a lot to them. There is Bill and Lorena, a young couple who we are friends with who are American and Columbian, with their little baby, Athena. Debbie used to live across the street. She was pure South Shore, calling you hon and offering you a beerah, while she sunbathed in her front yard. She was out there frying herself under the sun so much, for that requisite South Shore crispy tan, that she was on Google view for awhile. She had to move away. There's Wayne across the street, and his four kids, and his wife who you never see because she stays inside the house. Bly and Judy just moved to Switzerland with their two kids, but they used to live next door. Judy was from Nigeria and Bly was bi-racial from California.

This is what came out of our garden today.
Just about every day is like this.
Sheer joy to pick this.

I think that's part of the what I was saying in a previous post about making a mistake by focusing on the theater. Just the theater. Not every story can be told in the theater, like a story about the people in my neighborhood. And I was limiting myself, and I was really feeling it. Limiting myself by the art form, and also by some of the people who I've been hanging out with.

I wanted to write about this and so much more. And I guess I sort of did.

I Wrote A Poem Today

I wrote a poem today.

And I made squash fritters for Sue and Kathryn for breakfast.

Both gave me the same kind of happiness and enjoyment because I put something of myself in something else--a little pancake, a little poem. And now there is just a little less of me.

Sorry, all of the squash fritters were eaten. Here, you can eat the poem:

The Hand Grenade

I am a hand grenade

I will explode

I will detonate in a sudden burst of passion 

and love and joyous shrapnel and sweet 

generous jags of searing metal. 

I am a hand grenade

I will explode

When my pin is pulled

my splatter zone will be smeared red with the carnage of

anger and hate and irrationality

with the offal of fear and fragility and distrust

packed into my hard pineapple core

consuming me in the welcome release of an expanding shock wave.

I am a hand grenade

I will explode

Amputating your dismissive hand mid-wave

The surprise on your face as you gaze at your spurting stump is hilarious

because hands were never meant for dismissal

in the first place

my explosion silencing your know-it-all ignorance

rearranging your entitlement in topsy-turvy fashion

upsetting you onto your big fat ass with a whomp

while you ask yourself, what just happened?

I am a hand grenade

I will explode

as surely as a rattlesnake will strike.

And so I know I am doomed

(for loneliness, either imposed or self-induced)

for who wants to pet the rattlesnake or play hot potato

with a hand grenade but still that’s not what grenades are for
in the first place.

Play With Your Food

I spent most of the day working on setting up the box office for Turtles, scheduling a meeting of the designers for Turtles, and cooking and working in the garden.

Setting up the box office for a play is almost as much fun as setting up a database for a theater company. Whoo-hoo. So many details. So many phone calls and forms to fill out and emails. 

I cleaned out the squash and zucchini patch of old leaves, and harvested a few, plus some tomatoes. The garden has been giving us so much great food this summer. Just about everything except the onions are doing great. 

I made a pot of chicken soup and a pan of cucumber salad, I guess that's what it's called. It's just cucumbers, vinegar, water, and sugar. A great summer side dish. You pour the liquid over the cucumbers and let them soak in it in the refrigerator. We still have more cucumbers in the fridge. 

Sue asked for turkey burgers tonight for dinner. It's the one night both of us are free, so we try to have a nice meal together. 

I'll go out in the garden and cut some dahlias for the table tonight. Sue likes fresh flowers. I do, too. She says it's because I'm a Libra. 

I went to the store twice today, because I had forgotten some ingredients. Twice, I forgot. I actually like grocery shopping. I think it's a throwback to hunting and gathering. I'm still a hunter and gatherer. 

Here's my dream: A theater on a farm with the productions in a big barn. Dinner is served before, meals prepared there in the farmhouse everyday fresh, made with ingredients from the farm. Fresh vegetables and homemade pasta and bread and cheese. Good wine and beer. No, I would not call it Play With Your Food. 

Sophie's Choice

Let it be known that, if given the choice between a book and a glass of water, I will choose the book.

The Little Voices Inside My Head

I know it's safe to write here. No one visits this blog to read my words except perverts who have Googled Miley Cyrus's crotch. Yep, that post keeps bringing them in. It's my moneymaker.

Yes, I hear voices. I hear them all of the time. Mostly they're just running dialogue, and if I were any kind of established, driven writer I'd record them somehow--write them down at my scheduled time at my writing desk or record them on this little digital recorder that I have that I think is so neat but my younger friends think is so old-school. I guess because it doesn't have an i in front of it.

But there is one little voice that, if I hear it, I know I'm in trouble. It's this little disembodied voice that wonders how I'm doing. "Are you ok?" it will ask. "Are you all right?" It's a gentle voice, like caring stranger at a bus stop or a well-meaning nurse who has broken through the crust her job has layered on her and is truly worried about me.

Are you all right? The answer is always, no. She always seems to know when it's the right time to ask.

Here's the other kicker. Sometimes she--and the voice is female of undetermined age--asks, "How bad did he die?" She's not talking to me. Who? Who is she talking to? There are obviously others in the know about me and she doesn't have all the facts about me, yet still she's concerned. That somehow relieves me, gives me comfort. But it's the question that throws me.

How badly did he die?

Is she asking, what was his death like? How much did he suffer? It seems this voice and her compatriots from the beyond know about dying. It seems as if they have intimate knowledge of it.

But then, the voices and the question seem to prove that there is "something else." That dying isn't the end, just something that has degrees of badness.

I Need A Change In My Life

Something is very wrong in my life. Changes need to be made. It was one week ago today that Sue and I returned from a wonderful adventure in Nova Scotia, but I didn't know it was a week ago until I checked a calendar. I thought it was about a month, maybe three weeks ago. When the life we returned to here in Boston, with all of its "challenges,"  can overwhelm the feelings of peace and serenity, of being, that we felt there, some drastic changes need to be made.

We started out just heading north from Boston, not knowing where we'd end up in two weeks. We had a tent and a car, and some camping gear. That's about it. But Acadia National Park proved too crowded. Too loud. Americans are loud people. So are French-Canadians who cross over to see the sights on this side of the border. And it's all family-oriented there, it's a safe little national park that Edward Abbey would have hated, and we realized it's us who didn't belong there with the parents with the wee ones who couldn't keep their voices down and the parents who were so stressed from their own life choices to not realize that they and their wee ones who pushed and shoved were rude. Sue and I looked at a map and headed for Cape Breton.

We realized when we got home that something had changed in us there. Something deep, like an earthquake that rumbles deep inside the earth, but it's barely felt on the surface yet a real, significant change occurred.

For me, my soul, that thing captured in this container called my body, began to make itself known again. I began acting and thinking like a writer. And just like I used to be when I lived away from the ocean and didn't know how much I missed the sea until I saw it again, I realized how long it's been since I acted like a writer. These internal dialogues between made-up characters, snatches of words, phrases, descriptions, exposition, all floated around in my head like dust mites in a sunbeam. All I could think about doing was finding a dilapidated old house set in the fog, heated by a wood stove, and get up every morning and put on my favorite old flannel shirt and worn baggy jeans, and write. And the creative spark burst into a creative flame that unfortunately seems to have been extinguished now that I'm back here in Boston.

I'm seriously questioning if the choice I made in 2008 to work in the theater was the right one. I co-founded Boston Public Works because of the hassles of getting a full-length new work produced in Boston, especially if you're a white man like I am. Especially if you're an older white man like I am. Boston is an extremely young, white city. The fringe theater scene, where a new playwright like me would get first produced, is populated for the most part by young, white theater graduates who came from families who could afford the expensive universities like Boston University and Emerson. They graduated, stayed, and formed theaters, and they pretty much cater to the younger population. I actually had the artistic director of a theater--a young man who I like and respect very much--tell me he likes my plays, but they can't cast them because of the actors in the ensemble they pull from, the oldest is about thirty years old. They don't understand the themes that I write about, don't understand older characters, don't understand people who live on the fringes of society, don't understand life events like death and adultery and loneliness. (If any of you are reading this, don't argue: You don't. You think you do on a surface level, but live the life you've lived one more time, commit a few sins, and you'll see what I'm talking about.) Anyway, Boston continues to be the most racist place I've ever lived in, and I grew up where the KKK was evident and real. Boston theater is as white as rice, all the way down through the production teams. I don't want to go so far as to say that the theater community in Boston is racist. I don't think it is. But I do think it acts in a racist manner. For example, gender parity is a topic the leaders in the local community is always promoting, but what they're really promoting are white, female playwrights. I've been to the meetings where all but three or four in room of about 40 to 50 playwrights are white women. If you're not young and white of either gender in this city, you might as well stay home.

And I try to fight the segregation and racism that I've seen for the 34 years I've lived in Boston, but even that--the formation of Boston Public Works--has been wearing me out. The cast and design team of Turtles is diverse, but within Boston Public Works, internal disagreements, members who feel they should have a vote in the way the company operates (if you want to run a company, then start one of your own; really, how do people grow up thinking they get a say in everything?) members who feel their productions should be supported but they don't feel they should have to support the other members, makes me feel as if it isn't all worth it and makes me want to throw up my hands and yes, pull a J.D. Salinger to Nova Scotia. We literally would drive for an hour and see maybe three cars. Heaven! No one preached about gender parity while tabling the racial side of the issue (just for the time being, they say) or cultural appropriation (another popular cause) because there were real issues to deal with, like feeding your family. Friendly, quiet-spoken, polite. Yet keeping just the right amount of distance, giving space to an individual because space was one thing they had plenty of.

Get away. It's always been my modus operandi. (Is that the correct usage of that term?) Sue and I have a short trip to an undisclosed location next week for a couple of days. After Turtles closes in November, we're leaving for London and Paris.  In the spring, more travel. Sue and I are wanderers. Seekers. We know that. Traveling allows us to take the souls entrapped in these human containers out for a spin. We find our American culture humorous, but in small doses. Americans are always trying to tell people how to live, how to think, how to behave, and after awhile we both reach the point where we say, enough is enough, it's time for a change.