Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Matthew 6:34. This was my father's favorite Bible quote.


I was at the most bizarre yard sale, today.

A world famous personage was ridding his closets of the memorabilia of a lifetime in the theatre. More than one lifetime, actually, since he was the heir to other famous folk.

I stood on the Marley floor (where no street shoes were ever permitted) utterly surrounded by trophies and accolades. Here a grateful city, a grateful state, several grateful countries and a couple of grateful empires had piled up their treasures on earth, where rats could break in until conquered by a Nutcracker Prince.

It was impressive to the point of exhaustion.

The crowd was exhausted too, each member of it struggling with his or her own displacement. People chanced upon photographs of themselves, younger, imbued with the complicated patina of past time, and browsed among the emblems of their personal brush with greatness, for this place has certainly been home to greatness.

There were pipers, God help us.

I’m pretty sure, at this point, that no one will ever have to sort and tag my trophies.

My life has not tended in the direction of contests publicly won. But memorabilia I have in plenty, small random objects that bring back to me a day past. No one else could ever know what beach was the origin of each shell, so at some point their merit will have to stand alone, rather than in provenance. At that time, the sunset that is hidden in each of them for me will once again be invisible.

But I hope neither I nor anyone else will have to put tags and price stickers on them, and open their shelter to a last wave of mourners, inchoate, trying, in the dumb random way of commerce, to make a connection that will soon be beyond repair. I hope that when that time comes, those people will be telling my stories to each other, and making fun of my packrat ways.

I hope, in fact, that my memorial will be disbursed where it lights eyes.

As his is, piles of trophies aside.

19Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

King James Version Matthew 6: 19, 20, 21

Photographs

Among my failings I must include collecting. One of the things I collect are images, a somewhat random sampling of Mr. Eastman and Mr. Kodak*’s now dying art. I cannot throw out a picture, even the red faded ones of strangers I find tucked between the pages of books in the sale bin.

However, pictures specific to my own history I take more seriously. In one of the enormous drawers where I keep them is a folder somewhat boastfully marked “Lovers” in the firm printing of a long lost organizational moment. It’s full of pictures, although the “Is is” of their identity is probably open to debate.

I remember most of the names. This absurdly contributes to my self-satisfaction.

As I look through them, I meditate on what I know of them now. I know more than my general indifference justifies…there aren’t after all, so many people in the photos. On the other hand, it’s not the complete set.

This folder might, more accurately, be titled, “A few mistakes in my early life.” There’s the first High School boyfriend. He was on his second marriage, last I heard. Writes. There’s the poet and playwright, he has a little theatre in Vermont. There’s the outdoorsy bully. I don’t know where he is, thankfully. There’s the passionate affair across the Midwest. How did I never notice that sulky expression? That one is in Greenwich Village. There’s the optimistic couple. It’s impossible for me to imagine them moving forward in time, they were so rooted to their era.

To the errors of their era, one might say.

Here, though, is a photograph of three young people at the top of the world. At the top of the continent, at least, standing in the thin snow of the continental divide, above Estes Park.

I’m in the middle, looking happy, and slightly coy. I remember that day as though it were yesterday, which is to say, not nearly as accurately as I believe. Two of us were acclimated to the altitude by then, the third was a visitor, crashing with us as an endless stream of wandering hippy types did, following one of the affinity ant trails that led between friendly sources of tail and tofu. I honestly don’t know what the negotiation about tail was, in this case. I don’t believe I was involved, but it’s hard to say. Nothing but a sudden outcropping of good sense ever interrupted the constant general horniness that passed for political theory then, and good sense ran by biorhythmns, as much as anything else.

It was a lot too cold for my daring and mostly homemade outfit. Some of that smile is bravado. Probably the trip to the high country was spontaneous.

But the smiles on the three of us are genuine. It really is wonderful to be young and healthy, and looking out across miles of mountain top with at least enough money in your pocket to get you home. There we are, a portrait in gratitude.

The face on my left, he’s an apologist for a cult now. He looks fine on the news, although drastically more cleaned up and conventional than the daring young man who taught me trapeze in the old days. The one on the right is about five years sober, I believe, and very old looking now. He writes a depressing blog. I wish I could show him this picture, when he looked out across the hills so cheerfully, so innocently.

Have I changed since the picture? Not as much as I needed to, maybe. I still can be found occasionally hiking in a homemade outfit of more beauty than utility, and grateful to have enough gas in my car to get back indoors at the end of it.

Looking happy.
And slightly coy.

*There was never a Mr. Kodak, it's a made-up word.

Guidelines for amateur actors.

All right, it’s sort of unsporting to complain about amateur actors. Yet, sometimes it needs to be done. So, here, free to all, is my checklist for the chemist, lawyer and therapist who are spending a few weekends a year with the roar of the greasepaint.

• 
  Learn your lines. It is courteous to the author, the other actors and the audience.
• 
  Don’t rent the movie. There is a reason Kenneth Branaugh does not just save himself all those tedious consults with designers and film your production. Hopefully, there’s a reason people put on shoes and paid to see you. Let’s not get the two projects confused.
• 
  The purpose of blocking is to make the activity on stage more understandable and interesting. If what you’re doing isn’t accomplishing that, stop.
• 
  Young actors (and prop people, and lighting folks) grow up. Some of them, God help them, grow up to be in the theatre. Try not to treat them as idiots.
• 
  Elves don’t do your laundry and pick up your socks here, either.
• 
  When they say, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” that does not mean that your highest contribution to the show must be some bizarre plot to make yourself always the center of attention while on stage. Plays are collaborative.
• 
  Yes, it is necessary to wear make-up. No, it is not necessary to do your own make-up based on a book you got from the bargain bin.
• 
  The lighting people are trying. If they give you a special STAND in it!
• 
  I don’t care what your day job is. That means accountants may not lecture house managers, teachers may not talk about historical underpinnings, and I’m not buying insurance.
• 
  Your friends should think you, and your performance, are the greatest thing since buttered toast. This is not the same as reality.
• 
  Reality is overrated. That’s why this is theatre.
• 
  Pick a pond and be happy fishies. Brad Pitt has challenges, too.
• 
  Local reviewers are nicer than average people, but they might not mention you.

Thank you for not being home playing video games and surfing porn. With all your faults, you’re making possible something that resembles, (however vaguely), culture. And that’s kinda cool.

Blame the Dog

Out of idle curiosity, which is clearly one of my besetting sins, I tracked back a poster on a blog I was reading to find out who they were, when they were at home.

The answer saddened me. I was reading yet another blog of an educated political liberal who can’t make a significant human connection to anyone closer in species to themselves than a dog.

So, folks, what’s up with that?

I’m having trouble mustering up much sympathy for people who want to determine public policy under these circumstances, and that’s the truth. And, before I’m inundated in hate-mail from dog bloggers, let me be clear that I am not against dogs, or animals, or people who love and care about animals, or animals who love and care about people. I’m just discouraged by what looks like a growing subset of people who are afraid to get a marker in the game, and justify it as a “political” POV.

Sadly, many of these people are “breeders”. Everyone knows (and many of us have experienced) people who don’t make significant human connections but still bring a troop of children into the world, or waste the time of others in the dating (and sometimes marrying) process. They have a kind of biological momentum to account for that, though. What is it with people who seem to be creating a self-righteous rationale that they cannot risk their ‘independence' by connecting with anyone in an emotional way, despite their belief that emotional connections (as long as shared with a budgerigar, or a basset hound, or a rescued cat) are valuable?

This deep speciesism is not cutting any ice with me. And the spin you place on it, muttering about war, and carbon footprints, and heterosexism, and any other buzzwords you think might suffice to shut me down isn’t working, either. Because the fact is, committing to a relationship with someone (or several someones, as happens in families) is simultaneously the most and least selfish thing you can engage in. It just plain has more range than the alternative.

“A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

I’m in favor of “Relationship” because it is a creative process. Like any creative process, it’s essentially risky, and messy, and has no promise of successful outcome. It requires you to be emotionally present, it exists in the real world, and it has repercussions.

These things are not true of your love affair with your ferret. It’s true that you can invest your ‘life with ferret' with consideration or neglect, with play, with shared activities, with those little moments where you and the ferret experience perfect harmony and understanding… (Go ahead and reread this paragraph, if you need to.)

It may in fact be true that a corgi is your ‘soul mate.’ I think better of corgis, however. Corgis who get the opportunity to sleep in a real bed, mark territory, and create little corgis almost always take enthusiastic advantage of such opportunities. Trust me; you’re making no sense to him, either.

The thing people like about animals is, they’re subject. If your dog runs ahead on a walk you think he’s active and fun. If your boyfriend runs ahead on a walk you think he’s ignoring you and criticizing your fitness level. If your cat neglects your friends you think he’s exclusive in his tastes. If your girlfriend neglects your friends you think she’s anti-social. You can create the reality of your pet’s reactions to suit yourself, but another person’s reactions are intrusively out of your control. Maybe Fido hates your knock-knock jokes and your chicken paprikash recipe, too. How convenient not to ask.

So. “How does this relate to political blogging”, you may wonder.

Here’s the thing. Everyone (by now) has noticed that the American Left has discovered the blogosphere as yet another way to implode when success seemed possible, if not inevitable. I suggest that that’s partly because too many people are investing their compassion in imaginary ‘relationships’ that are completely devoid of effective criticism. That leaves us cranky, critical, and thin-skinned when it comes to each other, free to hunt violations of political correctness and small errors of judgment without the kind of forgiveness, or even strategic thinking, that is essential to the most basic of human relationships.

It also gives us time on the computer that could better be spent in making love. Sad misuse of priorities, guys.




For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Robert in L.A.

This is a story about a boy named Robert.

In the 70’s he was a suburban Boy-scout in New Jersey, and in the early 80’s he had moved to West Hollywood (well, actually his digs were in Pasadena, with the little old lady you’ve heard so much about) to reestablish himself as another person.

That’s when I met him. I was traveling with an old friend of his and we dropped by in hope of spending a couple of nights on his floor while we looked around. At least, that was my hope.

By the time we arrived, everything I had been told about him was out of date, except his amazing hair.

Robert had curly red hair in a giant corona, a foot high fro. It floated above and around him, as though he had his own personal field in a different gravity.

Until shortly before we came, Robert had been a manager (with a tie) in a brick and mortar bookstore. I don’t believe I ever knew why he had quit, and possibly I never asked. “I had arrived,” as they say in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, “on a rather special night.” I had arrived at a party that most of America wouldn’t find out about until years later. And I had arrived in the midst of the personal struggle of two childhood friends who hadn’t quite decided what to wear.

Robert had few furnishings, most of them consisting of piles of coverless paperbacks from the dumpster behind his (former) employer. In this he exactly resembled most of my other friends. We were a shiftless lot, on the whole. Our three passions were books, politics, and sex. Few of us had discovered a job path that gripped us, being mostly absorbed in the vagaries of our school responsibilities, and our politics were too diffuse and extreme to be of much immediate use, except as ways to criticize each other. My high-school graduation class was distinguished by the highest rates of drug use ever, so those of us who weren’t habitually part of that statistic were unusual in many respects.

I was pleased to see that Robert had simple tastes and clean habits. This made him a more agreeable roommate. I took over what food prep there was...with no income among the three of us our eating was pretty minimal. And we had to buy water, a new concept for me. Mostly we walked, getting to know the neighborhoods around LA, and occasionally driving my old yellow Subaru to out of town tourist spots. We blew someone’s birthday money on a trip to Disneyland, and headed down the coast to Black’s Beach in La Jolla, just because the existence of a famous nude beach implied the necessity to go. I am sorry for people from less experimental eras or memes, sometimes.

Robert moved to California to transition from the careful ‘bisexuality’ of his high-school identity to being gay. California was one of the places you could do that, and it was an entire continent away from his folks. The West Hollywood scene was a real eye-opener for me, although I had flattered myself that I was hip enough for anything. A few trips with my pack of friends to gay bars in smaller towns and a few protest rallies with leather boys had not prepared me for LA at the height of the party. It was a world of notorious parks, and cocaine and popper fueled clubs where Devo was playing.

It may be that Robert had thrown off his tie just because the rest of his life was so like riding an iridescent soap bubble.
Everyone realized, somehow, that it would suddenly disappear, but it was so pretty, and you could see for such a distance, if you were lucky. And young people generally feel lucky.

His transition was hard on his friend, though. Choosing up sides in sexual preference is one of those choosing up sides things. Someone is always last chosen.

I watched them struggle around it. We walked for miles in the warm sun, marveling at places where avocados dropped promiscuously over garden walls into the dusty alleys. Is there really such a thing as bi-sexual? Is there really such a thing as ‘totally gay’? Who has the most courage? Who makes the biggest cop-out? Who am I when my friends aren’t who I thought?

Robert was a nice young man with a shock of red hair and decent taste in science-fiction and fantasy. I wonder who and where he is, now.

But I remember fondly who he was, for a couple of weeks, a long time ago.

Don't piss off the cook.

Last night I was part of a fairly large party dining out, at a midlevel chain eatery. It was Saturday night, in one of those suburban exo-scapes that litter the American landscape, conveniently close to the blasted heath of upscale townhome communities and prestige single-family homesites that has replaced small agriculture, and far from the eccentricities of older neighborhoods. Therefore, the midlevel chain eatery was doing a brisk business.

The particular road to which our dining experience was proximate was, 40 years ago, dairy farms at this latitude. The first levittowns in the area had established themselves about 2 miles south, and the creep of Burger Kings and diners was inching in this direction. They had (although probably few knew it) passed the height of the “cruising the drag” while the construction outfits were still busy enclosing carports and leveling yards for above-ground pools.

Today, however, progress had arrived. The difficulty was, supper wouldn’t.

Now, when I travel with a group that will need someone to move chairs, I expect difficulty. I don’t necessarily expect famine. Chain restaurants of this stripe are fairly well-run, and while you may not get the personal attention to detail of a family-owned eatery where the owners have college tuition to pay, you generally have the advantage of a corporate experience that realizes the connection between “volume of diners served” and “take for the evening.”. Particularly in these locations, where a sister restaurant is 20 feet away, they will not rest on their laurels from over-confidence.

So, when young Eric bustled over, full of smiles and good orthodontia, to take our appetizer and drink order, I felt secure. And indeed, the drinks arrived. Sadly, not so the appetizers.

Conversation at the table continued brisk and merry, and Eric took our order. Conversation continued and our drinks were finished. I departed to scrounge the snacks from the bar (which I’d already requested of everyone in uniform in the area, including Eric.) Conversation continued and still, our friend Eric did not return to us. One appetizer (somewhat cold) arrived, in the kind hands of a stranger. Conversation began to lapse.

Most of the people I have met strike me as extremely passive and rulebound. This indicates that I am an outlier, in this respect. It seemed to me that while the discussion was centered on recovering Eric, the lack we had was food. I had no idea where Eric was, but they keep the food in the kitchen. Therefore, off to the kitchen I went.

To visit the kitchen of a restaurant is to break the 4th wall utterly. You have defied the illusion that food springs full-blown from the head of Zeus, or that you can walk to a box on the wall and say “Earl Grey, hot” and it will materialize. From my position at the entrance of the kitchen, I could see two objects from our order, resting on the rail. I struggled with temptation…not the temptation of food, but the much stronger temptation one feels during a miserable production of Julius Caesar to grab the knife yourself and kill Caesar in the first act so that that whiny Brutus will shut up. Once you have fetched any of your actual order, however, the social contract between patron and waitstaff has been broken.

Fortunately, my hesitation was rewarded when Eric appeared, like the White Rabbit. “Eric. Is there any possibility we will be seeing some food soon?” I asked, while our salads floated behind him on the rail, a coronet of caloric possibility. “Absolutely!” he said cheerily. “The kitchen’s been a little backed up.” “And we all need drinks,” I pointed out. “Absolutely!” he agreed.

Now, it is one of my habits to observe the people around me in public places. In this case, I had observed them eating, and, if delayed, their waiters apologizing and bringing bread, etc. Not so, at Eric’s table. There was another delay before the salads I had seen arrived, and another before drinks (sans ice and, where appropriate, straws) made their appearance. Finally, food had arrived and been distributed, and a fellow with the aura of ‘management’ showed up with what he identified (after a glance at the cup) as ‘tasty kid’s beverage.' He enquired how we were doing.

It is in the little things, in fact in the way we behave around the acquisition of ‘our daily bread' that we are judged, if we are judged. I admired the success of his Saturday business and asked if my friend Eric had been newly hired. The manager looked alarmed, as well he might. No, was there a reason I might think so? I said that the slowness of our food’s arrival indicated to me either Eric’s unfamiliarity with the system, or that he’d picked a big fight with the cook. The manager’s expression was eloquent in the timeless style of Jeeves inspecting Bertie’s new cummerbund. Perhaps their moving Eric to help out in the banquet room had contributed. Perhaps Eric had picked a small fight with the cook. He and I parted on amicable terms, with complementary dessert.

My dinner companions wanted to know what all that business about picking a fight with the cook was. Perhaps you do, as well. But the thing about waiting tables is, you cannot use all your charm on the folks out front who pay the tip. Part of your sunshine must fall on the people you work with, particularly on the cook. Because if the cook doesn’t like you, your food does not arrive. It is similar, in some respects, to the problem of suburban sprawl itself. When we have finished paving all the dairy farms, no amount of orthodontia will get the queso sauce to the table.

Don’t piss off the cook.

If I knew anything about what I'm doing with this computer

I'd know how to formally tell you to go read this guy.

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/

He's a fine writer.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a pretty schizophrenic holiday, these days. It's a 3 day weekend, and in this area of the contiguous 48 means beaches and barbeque.

Yet, I come from stock who saw "Decoration Day" in a much more serious way, and it falls too close to the mad relief of VE day (and before the futuristic terror that preceded VJ day) for it to escape without an overtone of the poppies on Flander's fields, and the proud old soldiers of the Spanish American War marching straight in their antiquated uniforms down past the picket fences on old Main.

And that's where it becomes difficult. I see those soldiers, and honor them, as the kids wave American Flags and eat popsicles, and the whole family retires back to the house for cold potato salad and stuff off the grill, to lemonade, whose ice makes the condensation on the glass pebble and finally run from our fingerprints to an unexpected drop, to badminton in the yard, and baseball across (and partly in) the street.

The soldiers, those fine old men who fought for Liberty, they were the survivors of America's first effective war of imperialism. Not the last, sadly. Not the only.

So, in honor of those soldiers, and of their heirs and descendants today, fighting bravely for all the right and true reasons (whatever the merits or demerits of their cause) in areas around the world, those who have fought and died or fought and survived, I leave you with a link to one of the greatest thinkers America has produced.

Mark Twain, "The War Prayer."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_War_Prayer

Support the Troops. Stop the War.

And be careful what you pray for, my friends.