September 5, 2009

Minutes after midnight. The full moon blasts blue-white high in the southern windows.

Spent the evening with J. We drank good sangria at the reception for a pretty bad art show– sloppy and amateurish, decorative in the silly sense, hardly more than doodles–then went to laugh ourselves silly at the Usual. The waitress, remembering what had been written in icing on my birthday cake, said, “I wished I had friends like that.”

Watched tennis, the US Open, with DJ last night, the first time ever I have seen a match. It was exciting-- blinding speed, inhuman volleys, torrents of sweat. I could become addicted.

Noticing at yoga and working out at the Y that I don’t have much tolerance for pain. When something gets physically painful, I lose interest. Emotion can push me past that point, but reason keeps asking, “Why?” If there had ever been a chance for me to be an athlete, professional or otherwise, it is that which I would have had to conquer. The conviction that avoidance of pain is, pretty much, paramount, would be hard to set aside.

Mysterious phone call from Japan. The voice sounded like somebody imitating a Japanese man speaking English, but the number left on caller ID was legitimate.

Morning. Midnight chili leftovers made me sick, and when I was on the porch getting rid of that, I was surrounded by a pale blue ocean of moonlight. The light was so bright the yellows and oranges of the garden were yellow and orange.

Coffee with Tom after dawn at Starbucks. Stephanie came sleep walking by, between bouts of building the Macbeth set. She likes my beard.

Evening. Women chanting on the CD. What a long day this has been, when I think back to writing, and then vomiting into the most radiant moonlight, last night. Painted some, finishing a strange image of masked and winged colossi. Waited for J, but he never came. Driving home from the studio, I stopped, meaning only to waste a little time, at the antiques warehouse by the tracks and the river. When I was a child my imagination was keenly animistic– everything was alive to me. Moths against the window screen brought me news of the night. The toys in my room spoke to me, and at bedtime I would choose one to start the before-sleep revery that would put us to sleep, and whatever was actually happening, what I remember is that they did. Sometimes in a store I had to hide, because the toys or other things shaped like people or animals seemed so sad to me, so many sad voices, like orphans longing for a home. It could, at times, be agony. I’d stop to explain to them how I was a child and powerless to help. I remember one time very clearly. We were visiting grandma in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and all downtown in a 5 &10 cent store. A white toy bunny sat on the shelf, calling to me with such piteous and heartbreaking fervor that I asked my mother if I could take it home. I remember, with the most amazed and enduring gratitude, that she said yes. Maybe she had been the same in her childhood. In any case, that emotion, the sharp conviction of the very hour and occasion poured in upon me in the antiques store. All came alive around me. It was powerful, grievous. I began to weep spontaneously and could not stop. I knew what I was looking for. Something I saw had reminded me of home long ago. I thought that if I could find something in the store that once belonged to me, or mother, when I was a child, or something that looked convincingly enough alike, or perhaps if I could go back in time and save some object from a shelf or drawer and hold it to me, then I could build from this side a life that never quite formed from the other. The warehouse is very big, and I could find places to hide until I slunk with my purchases out the door and into the car, where I could sit and howl unseen. I have not recovered. The objects in this room still seem alive–though, as they are “home,” not desperate or sad. Sadness is exhausting, and through parts of the day I could barely move. But, let me say, I did go to the Y and did a weights round. Something in my melancholy, in my almost out-of-the-body detachment, allowed me to do multiple reps of weights I had not dared before. One wonder succeeds another.

The day after I got the fuzzy bunny from the store, we went to grandma’s church. She made me keep it away from her, because it shed white hair on everything. She said, “You’re too old for that sort of thing.” I suppose I was, though age did not seem to me to be part of the occasion at all. The shedding bunny soon “disappeared.” I think they thought I wouldn’t notice. Where? How? It would have been too sad even to ask.

Maud the cat sleeps on my feet. Minutes before midnight.


September 4, 2009

Chili dinner and production meeting for The Beautiful Johanna. I had run aground over the issue of a budget, but Steve created one in minutes. Crawford’s set looked great, I suppose, though I confess myself unable to visualize such things properly before they exist. I am not the right person to produce anything. I should write, act, attend, maybe nothing else. Of all Virgos I am the least interested in detail.