Shorter line

At the grocery store earlier this evening and the ladies room was down to one stall. The very nice maintenance guy offered to let us use the men's room, an offer I promptly took him up on. He guarded the door until I was done and there was one man waiting to use the facility, looking very annoyed at having to *wait* for *a bathroom.* I said "thank you!" and thought #CheckYourPrivilege.

For we are members of one another

We find in the Bible what we look for, I believe.  This week, because it was second lesson and because it's what I look for, I found this:  

²⁵So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

(The Epistle to the Ephesians 4:25 - 32)

In Paul's text to the Ephesians, he shortened it to "try 2 get along, k?  Love and hugs!"

If we'd met when we were teenagers. And Irish.

Mag:  Oh, you're so clever!  Well, I'll tell you something:  there are occasions in my life when I know how G-d feels.

Joe:  Good for you.

Mag:  And one of those occasions is now.  (Puffing her cigarette regally.)  At this moment G-d feels ... expansive ... and beneficent ... and philanthropy.

Joe:  Philanthropic.

Mag:  (after momentary setback).  And we will not be put into bad humor by grubby little pedants.

Joe:  Look, Mag:  we came up here to study.  What are you going to do first?

Mag:  French.  And then maths.  And then Spanish.  And then English language and literature.  And after lunch geography and the history of the world.  I have planned a program for myself.  The important thing about revising for an examination is to have a method.  What are you starting with?

Joe:  Maths.

Mag:  Then what?

Joe:  That's all.

Mag:  Only maths?

Joe:  Huh-huh.

(She considers this absurd idea for a second.  Then, because Joe is wiser in these than she, she readily agrees with him.)

Mag:  Then that's what I"ll do, too.  (Really worries.)  My G-d, if the volume of a cone doesn't come up, I'm scootrified!  Not that I care -- I can afford to go down in one subject.  (Pause.)  Joe ...

Joe:  What?

Mag:  What's the real difference between language and literature?

Joe:  You're not serious, Maggie!

Mag:  Don't -- don't -- don't tell me ... I remember now ... One is taking and the other is ... books!

Joe:  Talking? ...

Mag:  That's it.

Joe:  That's no definition!  Language is ----

Mag:  Don't say another word.  I have it in my head.  But if you start lecturing, I'll lose it again.  I have my own way of remembering things.

Or ... maybe not

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.   Blaise Pascal


I think my favorite thing about watching Pinter's plays is that almost as soon as I think I understand what was going on, a voice in my head tells me "No, that's not it.  Try again."

We saw Old Times last night and its themes of the unreliability and possessiveness of memory meshed perfectly with that sense I always have of not having understood what I just saw.  Or having understood it through my own filters.  We interpret what we think we remember, changing the memory, and changing its meaning.

I don't remember several things about what happened when I got rear-ended a couple of weeks back, but at least I know that I don't know. It's very comforting to have a yes or a no answer.

The plays I hate the most - and they are often early plays by newer playwrights - are the ones where when asked why a character did something, said character responds immediately, with the complete reason.  In complete sentences, too. I don't actually know anyone like that.  We are mysteries to ourselves just as we are to others.

So now I'm revising what I saw.  Did this mean that?  Why did she behave that way?  Did I totally misunderstand that character?  That scene?  That play?

And because it's Pinter (pause) I may never know.

... And that's okay.

Fair Warning

People from my past find and friend me on Facebook with a certain regularity.*  The farther back they are from the  more I think that the "about me" should be changed from "Leta spends a lot of time in theaters" to the equally accurate but more "full disclosure"-like "If you thought I was nice but weird back then, well, I still am. Sure, I cover the weird better, but time doesn't make us different, just more thoroughly ourselves.  Weird has had quite a while to settle in and get comfy."


* Which is fantastic.  When it happens, I tend to spend a whole bunch of time just saying "Wow ... [name]. Wow ..." and looking at their profile to see what's new with them.**


** And the very best "from the past" friending I got was a college boy friend.  There was a time when that wouldn't have been possible, so finding out that he no longer disliked me made me very happy indeed. 

Why I do dark, difficult plays sometimes

I'm currently in rehearsal for The Shadow Box which is a lovely play about three families coping with terminal illness.  Needless to say, it has fewer laughs and "feel good" moments than your average Neil Simon play.  The show isn't about uplift, it's about closure.

I find myself feeling the tiniest bit defensive about the show because a cheery evening out, it ain't.   Frankly, it's always easier to ask your friends to come see happy comedies.  But theater, as I like to say, is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.  How human beings got where are are and how we'll get where we're going.  And that isn't always sunny or uplifting.  Sometimes it's sad or difficult.

My friend, Craig, who loves dark, difficult plays recently directed David Harrower's Blackbird in comparison to which The Shadow Box is pretty sunny.  I think that he would be very interested to read these quotes which were found and posted to Savoynet* by Andrew Crowther** about W.S. Gilbert's drama The Hooligan which is celebrating its centennial this month. The Hooligan is story of a condemned man's last hours.


Andrew wrote:

A comment from the Stageland column in the Penny Illustrated Paper of 11 March 1911 (a more racy and perhaps more working class paper than others):

It disturbed everyone. Most to applause; a few to resentment. There was the ruddy, ample gentleman whom I met in the bar during what the Col. calls the 'Intermission.' 'You come here to be amused, not to be----" He groped for the word and lost it. 'A man of a morbid turn of mind might think it all right, mightn't he?'


A play that can wing a ruddy, ample gentleman; leave him puzzled, gasping, unsettled; stir up vague doubtings about killing folk and giving them 'no chanst'--a play like that is a play which you ought to pop in and see at once.

In Holbrook Jackson's essay "Why Do We Laugh?" in his volume of essays Occasions (Grant Richards, 1922, pp 94-95):

I always felt that the laughter provoked by [James Welch's] characterization in The Man in the Street was an expression of relief from the underlying tragedy of the thing. But if there is any doubt about that, there could be no doubt whatever about the small gasps of hysterical laughter during his realistic interpretation of the condemned man in Gilbert's little tragedy The Hooligan. The theme is so painful as to be almost unbearable. I have seen people walk out in the midst of this play unable to stand any more of it. Yet those who remained in the grip of the horror, watching Welch revealing the fear of a condemned man during his supposed last few moments on earth--the fear of a man who is half idiot, and who has very little worth preserving in his life--those who remained laughed every now and then at the humour of it. Some things may be too deep for tears, but nothing is too deep for laughter.

* An e-mail list for Gilbert & Sullivan fans


**Andrew is a G&S scholar who has added greatly to what we know about those two men, their works, and their times.

The Sting quote I really like*

"Bad reviews should give you a bad breakfast but shouldn't affect your lunch."


*At some point I will post a quote from Stewart Copeland so that he doesn't think that I'm taking sides.  Maybe it'll be one of the snarky things he said about Sting that make me laugh.

My corollary*

Attachment isn't.




*Osborn's Law:  Variables won't constants aren't

This might not be as easy as I thought

Listing to Power Breakfast on NPR in the morning means that at least once a day I mutter "self-serving jerks" about our elected officials. Probably not what Elizabeth Wynne Johnson has in mind as she broadcasts this daily snippet of what the powerful and corrupted are doing, but that's what I'm always left with.

I have voted in every election in which I was eligible and I don't really want to stop now, but the major parties and their corporate owners don't offer anything better politically than Burger King offer nutritionally, so I don't really want to play with them any more.

It has occurred to me that there is at least one party out there that a) seems to agree with some of things that I find important, and b) has neither the money nor the power to annoy me nearly as much as the behemoths do. Heck, I don't think I've ever heard them even mentioned on "Power Breakfast," which may be a good sign.

So I've decided to start voting for the Green Party. I have voted for their candidates before, but I've decided to make them my default. It's similar to Brett's "vote against the incumbent" policy, possibly, in that it includes a certain "please go away" message to people who have learned that their real job is to get re-elected.  Besides, I've long thought that a viable third (and even fourth) party would be our best chance of maintaining a genuine representative democracy.

However, there is a small difficulty. I went to the website for Maryland's Green Party yesterday in order check out the candidates for 2010 and beyond and I got this message:

WANT TO RUN FOR OFFICE?

If you would like to run for office as a member of the Green Party, please call 443-449-4159.

That's right: the the independent restaurant of politics seem currently to have no candidates.  Or no menu to continue the metaphor.  I hope they have some candidates very soon because I really don't need or want another Double Down.


King: What means this most unmannerly irruption?
Is this your gratitude for boons conferred?

Scaphio: Boons? Bah! A fico for such boons, say we!
These boons have brought Utopia to a standstill!
Our pride and boast--the Army and the Navy--
Have both been reconstructed and remodeled
Upon so irresistible a basis
That all the neighboring nations have disarmed--
And War's impossible! Your County Councillor
Has passed such drastic Sanitary laws
That all doctors dwindle, starve, and die!
The laws, remodeled by Sir Bailey Barre,
Have quite extinguished crime and litigation:
The lawyers starve, and all the jails are let
As model lodgings for the working-classes!
In short--Utopia, swamped by dull Prosperity,
Demands that these detested Flowers of Progress
Be sent about their business, and affairs
Restored to their original complexion!

King: (to Zara) My daughter, this is a very unpleasant state of things. What is to be done?

Zara: I don't know--I don't understand it. We must have omitted something.

King: Omitted something? Yes, that's all very well, but--- (Sir Bailey Barre whispers to Zara.)

Zara: (suddenly) Of course! Now I remember! Why, I had forgotten the most essential element of all!

King: And that is?---

Zara: Government by Party! Introduce that great and glorious element--at once the bulwark and foundation of England's greatness--and all will be well! No political measures will endure, because one Party will assuredly undo all that the other Party has done; and while grouse is to be shot, and foxes worried to death, the legislative action of the country will be at a standstill. Then there will be sickness in plenty, endless lawsuits, crowded jails, interminable confusion in the Army and Navy, and, in short, general and unexampled prosperity!

W. S. Gilbert, "Utopia, Limited"

Why I blog

For years I have contemplated telling this story, and for years I have put off telling it. While I have delayed, my memory has not improved, and my recollections of the past are more hazy and fragmentary than when it first occurred to me that one day I might write them down.

...although I was at one time conscientious and diligent enough in keeping a diary, I kept it for use at the moment, not for future reference.... It had become a bursting, groaning dust-bin of information, for the most part useless.

About six years ago I moved into a smaller house in London, and I burnt a great many of my earlier diaries as unmovable rubbish. The few passages which I shall quote in this book from those which escaped destruction will prove that my bonfire meant no great loss!

Still, when it was suggested to me in the year of my stage jubilee that I ought to write down my recollections, I longed for those diaries! I longed for anything which would remind me of the past and make it live again for me. I was frightened. Something would be expected of me, since I could not deny that I had had an eventful life packed full of incident, and that by the road I had met many distinguished and interesting men and women. I could not deny that I had been fifty years on the stage, and that this meant enough material for fifty books, if only the details of every year could be faithfully told. But it is not given to all of us to see our lives in relief as we look back. Most of us, I think, see them in perspective, of which our birth is the vanishing point. Seeing, too, is only half the battle. How few people can describe what they see!

...For weeks I had hesitated between Othello's "Nothing extenuate, nor write down aught in malice," and Pilate's "What is truth?" as my guide and my apology. Now I saw that both were too big for my modest endeavor. I was not leaving a human document for the benefit of future psychologists and historians, but telling as much of my story as I could remember to the good, living public which has been considerate and faithful to me for so many years.

From The Story of My Life, Recollections and Reflections by Ellen Terry with thanks to Sam for sharing it as Savoynet discussed how much reliance to have on memoirs written in a subject's later years.

Because I relate everything to theater anyway

At Bridget's grandmother's funeral, I told her something that had occurred to me during the mass.  And I don't know what it says about either of us that we both found it both comforting and rather cheering.

"When your grandmother passed away, her show closed. And this is the closing night party where we talk about what a great show it was."

What he doesn't understand

It's not that David isn't entitled to half of his own bed when I stay over, it's that my half happens to be in the center.

In a nutshell

But that was a very, very long time ago and I'd like to tell you that I'm better but all I am is older.

Quinn Cummings

Boy, that's handy

I bought an iPod Touch from one of my co-workers and being just a little too cheap to buy expensive apps for it, I have only acquired the free ones. As it turns out, one of them has come in very handy lately. I recommend it highly.

It's called Flashlight and it makes the screen a very bright white (or blue or red or green or black* or any custom color). During The Laramie Project there are long stretches when I am sitting quietly, Stage Left, on the lip of the stage. So if anyone is missing from rehearsal, I read in their parts because ... well, I because I love read parts. So I sit there with the script on my lap and as we are at that point in the process where it goes randomly dark while lighting is being tested or adjusted or set, I keep the iPod Touch with me and use Flashlight to read in the missing lines. It's also helpful when someone needs a little assist on the escape stairs. Definitely handy. I'm glad I have it.

And it's also nice that I have Freecell. Which casts a light, too. I'm just sayin' ...


*I have no idea about the black, but I admit that I am intrigued by the idea of a black flashlight.

Sometimes I do say the right thing

Which contrasts nicely with so much of the rest of my conversation. Although my friends generally seem to agree that my usually kind intentions often cancel out any infelicitous phrasing.

But every now and then I do say the right thing, which pleases me greatly and which is possibly why my friends are still willing to ask me for advice. Or perhaps they just enjoy the Magic 8 Ball experience of "What Will Leta Say This Time?"

I don't remember if I have "documented" these here before, so stop me if these sound familiar ....*

# One
Some years ago Friend #1 was considering proposing to his girlfriend. We had dinner and he told me this but wondered if it was the right thing to do.

"Absolutely. You should ask her to marry you."
"But I don't have any money."**
"Yeah, but you've never had any money."
"Thanks."
"No, what I mean is that if money, per se, were important to her, she wouldn't be with you now."
"But I can't afford a ring."
"All she will hear when you propose is that you want to spend your life with her. Really. Give her a cigar band now and buy her a real ring in the future."

They got married and have been living happily ever after. And his sister, when she heard this story from him, promptly went upstairs and got their mother's ring from her jewelry box and gave it to him. So no cigar band was required.

# Two
Friend #2 also had a proposal dilemma. He wanted to propose to his girlfriend but as his field might require relocating a few times until he was sufficiently established and her field didn't have as general a possible practice area, he was concerned that marrying him would have a negative effect on her career. Or that they might have to be a long-distance couple. Or, etc.

"Marry her. If you love each other enough, crossing the country for each other is not too much of a problem. If you don't crossing the street is too much effort."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. Deciding to build a life together is what's important. The rest is just logistics."

And they are married and living happily ever after ... ***

#Three
I was standing on the stage at the WATCH awards a week ago and the friend standing next to me was listening to his name get mispronounced. More than once.

"Should I correct it when I get to the mic?" he asked me, sotto very voce.
"Well, [previous MC] mispronounced my name for five years running," I murmured back.
"Okay. I'll let it go."

Yep, sometimes in the midst of the nonsense the Magic 8 Ball gives the right answer.


*My having told them to you in person several times doesn't count.
**We were young and poor back then. We're middle-aged and poor now. Me because I am completely incompetent financially, him because this is a rotten economy.
***As you can see, I think that people in love should get married. "This is true love - you think this happens every day?" says it well. So, more darkly, does "You truly love each other and so you might have been truly happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the story books say." both from The Princess Bride

I am so deep

The thoughts that went through my head - in order - when a doctor's office told me that there was a problem with one of my routine tests:

1. I guess David would be willing to take Pekoe if ...

2. Huh. Does this mean I can stop contributing to my 401(k)?

3. Screw that gluten-free diet.

Luckily for David, Pekoe, my 401(k), and the manufacturers of the gluten-free products I buy, the specialist to whom I was referred declared the area in question "extremely normal."

Just like the good old days

The best thing about playing a tiny part in a kid-dominated show is that I have lots of down time at rehearsal. So Karen and Felicity and Julie and I can gossip to our heart's content and I can work on my crocheting*. It all reminds me very much of my days in Gilbert & Sullivan choruses. No one will remember that I was in the show but I'm having a lovely time helping to put it together.


*I am making a scarf or two or three for women serving in Afghanistan, a project that my friend Pam alerted me to.

Understudy

No one prays more for the good health of the star than the under-rehearsed understudy.

Eat your vegetables, Anna, and wash your hands often.

A Bright Side

When Mom moved to Very Assisted Living boxes and boxes of her papers came to me. I am packrat but Mom is even more of one.

The central part of my study has been filed with boxes for the past year and I'd frequently walk in there on a Saturday morning, fully intending to sort, ditch, file, and generally reduce the level of the worst Disney ride ever, Paper Mountain. I'd take one look at it, desultorily move a few items from one place to another, feel totally overwhelmed, and find something else to do. Often something really productive, like play FreeCell.

Well, with Mom running out of money, it's time to submit the paperwork for a "spend down." Mom paid a pretty steep "deposit" when she moved into the facility where she lives and now that she does not have the income to pay the $295 a day that it costs to live in VAL, they will help me organize spending down the deposit. When she runs through that and uses up all but $2,500 of her assets, they'll apply for Medi-whichever it is.

The people in the Finance office are very nice, but it turns out that they actually do need to see paperwork. Lots of paperwork. So I've been spending time in the study and because I have a goal - find X, find Y, find Z - I'm not being dissuaded by chaos and dispair.

So while it doesn't look like it to the average passer-by, the study is tidier and more organized. And I've been getting rid of things outside of the study as well.

Except for the fact that I know it's too much hope for, I'd say that maybe by the time that my nieces have to do this for me, I'll have broken the packrat habit.

Not as cute as he thinks it is

Of all of the tricks that Pekoe has learned over the past 10 years, I think that his new one of tipping his cat box onto its side is my least favorite.

Especially when he does in the middle of the night and I find out by walking though cat litter a little while later.