Keep in Mind

A mis-overheard statement of Bob, the group seller, to someone on the phone:

"Then again, they're sports, and we're theater, you must keep that in mind... we're also amusing."

(I realize now it was "music" not "amusing," but still. Isn't that great?)

Some Lovely Quotes from Mark Twain

So... we're getting this one-man show called Mark Twain Tonight, and Hal Holbrook, the actor, has been doing this show for 50 years! Anyway, in the course of trying to come up with promotions, I found these gems...


Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
- "Chronicle of Young Satan"

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
- Following the Equator

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval--a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"

We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the one that keeps the others healthy; that watches over their dignity; that focuses their vision true--humor.
- Notebook, 1902

And my favorite:

But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

I Know These Are MUCH More Interesting To Me Than To Anyone Else, but You Can Take it Too.

Found this in Nathaniel's Blog.

Two Names You Go By
1. Becky
2. James

Two Parts of Your Heritage
1. Irish Catholic
2. German Lutheran (I feel like my mom would be sad if I didn't also say Italian even though it didn't fit in with the contrast-making!)

Two Things That Scare You
1.Being attacked by people I pass outside at night, mostly men.
2. That I'm going to suddenly go irrevocably and cosmically wrong with my life path, and therefore sacrifice all happiness and acheivement forever.


Two of Your Everyday Essentials

1. A satisfying lunch
2. A little time to read

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now
1. Cool brown and blue suede boots with manageable heels. (Arguably the most attractive and stylish footwear that I own, being that I own very little.)
2. Brown skirt that is tighter than it used to be, which fact I am not fond of.

Two of Your Favorite Bands or Musical Artists
1. Gogol Bordello! Gypsy punk!
2. William Finn (not really a band or a musical artists, but related to music and a favorite)

Two Things You Want in a Relationship
1. A place for my spirit to be free and my imagination to be fed.
2. Sex-- at the right time and in the right way and when I'm sure it's a good idea... but also with a sort of wanton and consuming passion. Hmm.

Two Truths
1. The world can be incredibly frightening, dangerous, and savage. Which sometimes I believe, and sometimes I don't.
2. To (perhaps quote, perhaps paraphrase) Julian of Norwich: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Which sometimes I believe, and sometimes I don't.

Two of Your Favorite Hobbies
1. Theater of any stripe except certain mainstagey weird stripes that pretend to be stripes but are actually polka dots.
2. Singing-- I miss it.

Two Things You Want Really Badly
1. To be a published writer.
2. To understand my direction in life and be at peace about it.

Two Places You Want to go on Vacation
1. India
2. Canada

Two Things You Want to Do Before You Die
1. Visit every continent at least once (including Antarctica!)
2. Walk in beauty every day. And go into space. Both are difficult, but worthwhile.

Two Ways that you are stereotypically a Chick/Guy
1. Wonderful and circuitous language skills.
2. Confusion about all things mechanical, or which have to be manually assembled.

Two Things You Normally Wouldn't Admit
1. What people think of me matters to me way too much (taken from Nathaniel because he's right)
2. I think about sex, my own sexuality, and tie myself in knots over real or imagined attractions more than I would EVER say. And I get very jealous about such matters.

Two Things You Are Thinking About Now
1. How to promote a Christmas Carol at Thanksgiving.
2. If anyone other than the people I know about actually reads this journal... and whether I want them to.

Two Stores You Shop At
1. A Garland of Letters
2. The Last Word (I'm picking the cool sounding favorites, not the grocery store and stuff)

Two people I would like to see take this quiz
1. Rachel
2. Katie (Because they will read it)

Two people I haven't talked to in a while
1. Cristina (and I really should because I'm head over heels about her being in Philly)
2. Kirstin (and I really should because I'm head over heels about her being in Pennsylvania)

One Show Left, or The Post About Everything Ever

So much... so much... SO MUCH has happened, is happening. There are so many things to say. And I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this, except that I want contact with someone, something, and half the apartment is cavorting at a bar, one quarter of it is cavorting in the shower, and the other eighth (excepting myself), is in some sort of catatonic state on the floor.

The problem with writing after so long is that I feel an obligation to catch up, and if I tried to do that now, I would be here for the next several months.

My God, the Fringe. The Fringe, my show, the Fringe, the apartment, the Fringe. Can I just say I feel everything about it? I feel everything about it. I feel that it is going wonderfully and horribly, and I love it and hate it, and all the gradations and shades in between. I know I couldn't keep this up for that much longer, but the fact that tomorrow is our last show might also break my heart. For good reasons and bad ones. Good reasons like love and wonder and delight in what we have done, are doing, in the talent and energy and the amazing women all around me. Bad reasons like panic over Philadelphia, and fear, the terrible cankerous fear of the moment when we all are definitively split. Fear that the moment has come and gone already, and that I am singularly disposable, less-than-ardently loved.

My own need to be loved haunts me. There's very little I can say about it without cringing. It follows me like a child, like a parasite... the more I hate it, the more it grows in power.

Well, and. And I saw a wonderful show tonight. It said lots of things, some things beautiful, some difficult, some weird. It was about terrorism, I guess, but about the terrorism in our hearts, too. Some of the things it said were so much like the things I was trying to say in my play. It was extremely frightening. I loved it, although it was sometimes extremely hard to handle. I think I sort of want to talk about it, but Crista has disappeared, and Rachel hated it so much she practically fled through the streets of New York to get away from it, which was extraordinarilly irritating for those of us trying to keep up with her. (I think you got that message from me, anyway, Rachel, but if not I apologize, because I don't want to be one of those weird passive-aggressive types who vents her frustration only in a private-public forum such as this one.)

So whatever... I mean, I'm annoyed... in fact, there are lots of little annoyances adding up to a little flame of anger inside of me, though the anger is not for anyone in particular, it just... is. I think mostly I'm lonely. Which is an odd thing in an apartment full of people. Or maybe it's to be expected. Why am I so concerned with having a place? Why do I need to be loved, not just at all, but in the right amounts by the right people at the right times?

I mean... it isn't all the time, but it's enough. The strange squeezed feeling inside, and the way I click, suddenly, into some kind of tunnel vision. I want to feel important! I may as well be honest. But inside I feel greedy, and grasping, and strange, for wanting this. And I hate being angry, but at the same time I can feel myself making decisions about it. Like, going down the street after Rachel, I could feel the anger come and offer itself, I could feel the warring desires to move toward it and away... the need to stay with the depth and the open space in me from the play vs. the need to be tethered and responsive to other people's feelings. What I don't feel is the moment of decision. I just seem to slip by, from one to the other, and then it has occurred, and my distress at that fact serves mostly to entrap me the more.

What is it that would be enough? When I was walking down the street, I had a moment of clarity, and before that while sitting and watching the play. In the play it was about compassion, about the tricky, particular nature of compassion, and the simplicity of it, that it is compassion that is holy and filled with truth, and compassion that tells the truth to our hearts in the face of horror and confusion and pain. Walking down the street, I was arm in arm with Crista and I realized that connecting is what matters, connecting with whomever is beside you, with as many people as you find... that it isn't who or for how long that detirmines connection and love, but only the magic that happens, between so many people. Like that old footprints on the heart thing, I guess... but it was very powerful. It made me see that I have not lost the people I loved, that the love is real even if it is only for a little while.

But somehow I moved from that to the complete particularity of anger, self-pity, grief. Anger at being abandoned, self-pity at same, grief at losing. Perhaps I am just afraid to be alone with myself... not to tangle myself up in my feelings but simply to be with them. I don't know, but I want to tell someone, Please don't go. Please don't forget me, Please love me. I'm here, please love me enough, love me with an ardent sort of echo in your eyes. Notice all the things about me that no-one has, and tell me so that I should know.

Am I talking to a friend, many friends, a lover, someone I want? Am I talking to God? No, I don't think it's God. Am I talking to me?

Weechee-in. Help me.

At the play there was a warm certainty. You must pray, I thought to myself, you must pray, pray and be full of compassion. But when I thought of prayers, of praying, of the supplicating act, that was not it. That was not what the warm certainty was asking for. My faith is perhaps being shredded by claws. Perhaps they are divine claws, or my own. Perhaps I shall make scarves out of the tatters.

The woman in the play said that great things are seen, are built, are understood through bodies and bloodshed and seeing such things. She did not name the cross, but I thought of it. She was wrong, I know that she was wrong. Or... that's not it. She was right. But there is another way. Make eyeholes in the mask of my beliefs, let me see it, let me see.

Then there is the voice that says I am afraid to see, that I am afraid always, that I am... Well, you know all about it. My God-- just realized I've turned into Professor Dilexi. Stuck between going forward and going back, between the unknown something and the known purgatory. Limbo! Like Bingo only less singing involved.

All right. Starting to ramble now. One show tomorrow. One show left. I'm scared. I feel sort of pierced. I will see my aunt tomorrow. Why doesn't my father call me back? Why doesn't he want to see me? Well, that's another thing.

One show left, one show. I do love you, you know.