bea/lady

i guess my aunt lady has always sort of vaguely or subconsciously reminded me of bea arthur. just something about her panache. as i think about it, they really have nothing in common. aunt lady is much more bubbly. maybe it was because she was tall and witty. i don't know. anyway bea arthur passed away this week. and last night i dreamt that she was aunt lady. all i remember of the long dream is that i was following her from one house to another house around the corner and there were high stone walls and she zipped across the street quickly before a huge bus came to the intersection. what stands out most is the high stone walls, as if we were in an old european city, the kind with narrow lanes and hidden stairways.

timeline

five years ago i was living at the guest house at my parents'. i was doing 'night of the iguana' at san pedro playhouse and driving my dad's ford F150.

ten years ago i was living at cathy's house in truckee. people were worried about Y2K and i think my only job was at the health department, plus KITUS.

fifteen years ago i was living in new york city and working at cooper's coffee bar on columbus avenue (i don't think it exists anymore). i was working on the play we were about to do in the summer with KITUS.

twenty years ago it was the spring of my junior year of college. mom sent me a care package that brought me to tears. it included an earth day t-shirt and a Goofy watch. i was in tunc's production of 'the learned ladies' and had decided to stick it out instead of quit school. i came very close to quitting, but yury convinced me to stay.

twenty-five years ago i was a sophomore in high school, in love with dave, paige, alex, traci, yvonne and kirk. i didn't want them to graduate.

thirty years ago i was at the end of sixth grade. i wasn't very happy, but i probably looked ok.

thirty-five years ago i was still pretty happy, though many of my creative impulses were being squashed. i danced and sang "jesus christ superstar" on the splintery back porch of our house on callaghan.

forty years ago they probably brought me a cake with one candle in the middle. i was very big and white and showered with love.

i am 41 years old today.

oh, all the times i've started over, had a sense of renewal and knew that things would be better from here on out. sometimes the energetic resuscitation lasted a week, sometimes a few days. i hadn't counted on entropy. as jaded as i may be, by now, i start over again today! ...with full knowledge of entropy's wiles, and of my own habits, comforts and changeabilities. 

as a kid i would get pissed when i wanted something and my mom would say, "maybe for your birthday." usually by the time the birthday rolled around, all the things i'd wanted had been forgotten. "what do you want for your birthday?" ... "uh... i don't know. i forgot." 

so, at some point shortly after i became an adult, i began to espouse the "every-day-as-birthday" theory, in which that kind of self-centered happiness which allows one to buy gifts for oneself takes over. not only to buy gifts, but to allow oneself a lot of love, mostly in the form of potential-- the idea that there is something wonderful happening, in just a minute, around the corner... NOW. this is the ideal i strive for.

it's fuckin good to be alive.

to mr. harrison

people can't resist talking about you. usually they talk about you. they talk about you when they're sipping margaritas after the show. they're dipping chips in salsa and talking about you, how you had your hand on that kid's ribcage, sitting too close, or how you ran the department like a cult. with fascinated energy in their eyes, people wonder about the workings of your brain. they say, "i can't believe i'm talking about him!" then they keep talking about you. they say, "he made us feel like we were part of something special," and then they keep talking about you and how your tactics were exclusionary and abusive. but they keep talking. "what was he thinking?" they ask aloud. 

after you left i tried to be you, in my mind, for a few months, comparing my every action and activity to how you would do it, measuring myself up against the example i had of you in my mind. i tried to engage the students as you did, to intimidate them, to idolize them, to set them hard against each other like books between bookends on shelves. then one day when i walked into the office i collapsed from the load. i was being pressed down from above and i was being pulled down from below. when i finally sucked myself up from the floor, fighting gravity like those girls in wicked, i looked to my right and saw the bank of file cabinets, full of all your documents, and had a bright, if still heavy, idea. 

i emptied out your file cabinets into trash bags and i had students throw the bags into the dumpster at the edge of the teacher's parking lot. i got rid of all those manuals, lists, contacts, monologues, directions, instructions, recipes, secrets, plays, procedures, spells. i threw them all away, and the next time i walked into the office, there was a breeze passing through, and roger said he'd take that carpet out and put in some nice tile.

i liked roger a lot.

weather like a saturday

there's a young dog in our neighborhood who has been barking, on much the exact same high note, since 8 this morning. it's driving david crazy. it's not driving me crazy, but it is causing tension in our home. it's not it's fault there's tension. it is the scapegoat of some other source of tension. and it's not it's fault in general. dogs are made to bark. it's the owner who is at fault, for allowing the dog to bark, or for abandoning it in the yard all day, or for whatever reason the dog just can't seem to stop barking.

i finished my taxes and sent a box of cds to a friend. i love making cds for people, it's one of my favorite things. i have been in my room most of the day working on my lines for the goat. i have only 10 more pages to go.

yesterday we saw a movie, "sunshine cleaning." it was an ok movie, the preview was better. i felt the movie was uneven and there was too much unexplained, unsupported, or perhaps there was content which at one time existed but was subsequently edited out. also, there were things in it that were kind of hackneyed. not overly original. but there were some good performances.

i kind of ignored easter, seems like for the first time. i'm sure i've sort of ignored it the last few years, but this year i really did. no candy or nothin'. not even a peep.

good new music acquired on the recent trip to seattle:

MGMT - "oracular spectacular"

Tunng - "good arrows"

qualities

with so many things you want to be, which are you to choose?

vulnerable

assertive

honest

empathetic

absorbent

energetic

productive

ruminative

intuitive

kind

self-confident

organized

flexible

selective

all-inclusive

aware