I'm better today but yesterday...

I had been in a mood, stuck not at a crossroads, choosing between between the tried and true and the "path less travelled." I chose. As I wrote tdown my thoughts, I was on a train, headed to New York, torn between two temples: the one based mythology but where my history told me I should be, and the one that feeds my imagination and mental health. A place that a very bad playwriting teacher once said was where "you just make shit up." The Theatre.

It was Erev Rosháshonah. Notice the accent mark over the 'a', a sure sign of my heritage. I say it the Yiddish way, not as modern Jews say the more literal Rosh Ha Shonáh, the Head of the Year. In the past, I would know exactly where I belonged on this day. Whether it was at my grandmother's table or my mother's, I would be with my family. There would be a round challah on the table followed by gefilte fish, homemade lukshun soup, a brisket or chicken. On the second day, when we were flush, the main course would be replaced by a stuffed Crown Roast. Crowns are significant during this holiday. There'd be Honey Taeglach, what the Italians call Strufaleh, for dessert, and I would be surrounded by family. 

So, when did it stop, and why?

Even when one rejects the mythology... Perhaps "rejects" is too strong a word. Recognizes the mythology: that's better. Even when one recognizes the stories you grew up with as mythology, the stories endure. There is an almost sentimental attachment to the things you can't possibly believe in a literal sense but that come up to bite you when the calendar says, "The Gates Are Opening." For a moment, as the stations flick past the moving train, you wonder, is God really watching me? 

My husband says I don't need anyone else to make me feel guilty; I do it so well myself. He's right. But is it just guilt, or the sincere desire to belong to something other than myself? At these moments, I beat myself up for having abandoned the practices of my heritage and raised children who don't even consider them as important. I watched a video yesterday of my cousin's Bat Mitzvah. (I'll call her "J" so I don't get lost in pronouns.) I saw the joy in J's parents' eyes as they hoisted her up in celebration of this Rite of Passage. I heard and saw my grandmother, mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, so many gone now, beaming with pride as this first child of a new generation entered adulthood according to Jewish tradition.  I laughed, cried, and regretted that my son will probably not know the joy we all felt, the joy I felt when we celebrated at his Bris, (That was exactly 37 years ago today on the Jewish calendar) his Pidyon Ha'Ben when my cousin, who should have been a Rabbi instead of a businessman, accepted silver dollars in exchange for my baby boy to keep him from a life of dedication to the Temple in Jerusalem, (oh, the stories!), and thirteen years later, as he blew us all away with his reading of the Torah, delivered a remarkable speech and then danced in to the party like the King of the World.

How did I let it all get away from me? Why was I on this train?

I think I was on the train because a family dinner doesn't work when the family is gone; when the cousins are 3000 miles away and your children walk other paths. You might want to insist they come but are afraid you'll just make them mad. There is no joy in a dinner that is only an obligation and it's a hell of a lot of work, so I don't do it. Besides, it is imposible to find Honey Taeglach in Newtown. Instead, I watch the stations pass the dirty window of the train. I get to the play reading and meet several other Jews who have chosen to be here and we share our embarrassment, our loneliness, acknowledge our pasts, and our happiness at being together.

I don't really believe there are gates opening and closing, that the next ten days will decide who lives and who dies in 5785, that praying vociferously over the Days or Awe, the Days of Repentance, will change anything. I believe you have to be an ethical person all the time, not out of fear but because it is right. Still, I will go down to the river this afternoon and cast some bread upon the waters, not because I think it will cleanse me of my sins but because it makes me feel good. And since we really don't know... one can never be too careful.

L'Shanah Tovah. 

I'm Back

 It has been several years since I posted to this blog. I hope those who followed me will find me again. I hope you will share this with friends and share your thoughts with me.

My life has changed considerably since I last vented. In 2018, I decided to go back to school. I had already been teaching acting at the University of Bridgeport and wanted to expand on that. So I interviewed at Western Ct State University and, despite forty years' experience in the business, was told I needed a Master's Degree. I was despondent when I left that meeting. It seemed my years of working as an actor, even on Broadway, my teaching experience at a private university, the plays I had written which won awards when I really didn't know what I was doing, the fact that I operated a theatre company in a neighboring town... All this  was nothing when compared to an imagined academic who possessed none of my experience but had the degree.  

On the way home, I happened to stop at the office of our local arts council where I noticed a brochure for the WCSU Masters Program in Creative and Professional Writing.  "Why not," I thought. Two years, low-residency. I could stay home and write. And because I was an old fart, I could go for free! It was a no-brainer. I applied, sent a writing sample and attended my first residency within weeks. Turns out I could only attend for free if I went part-time and I had an agenda: get the degree so I could teach.  So I opted for full-time at half-price and gleefully embarked on my two-year journey. Lo and behold, the University came back to me immediately. It seems they were short a teacher and suddenly my years of experience, plus the fact that I was indeed pursuing my degree at that self-same university, were enough to secure me a position teaching Introduction to Theatre for non-theatre majors.  Now, there are people who love theatre and can't imagine a life without it. I was one of those people. My students were of a different persuasion. Many had never seen a play. Many had only seen plays at their high schools. The class met for an hour and fifteen minutes two times a week so taking them to see professional theatre was out of the question. Because of the hastiness of my hire, I inherited a syllabus that was guaranteed to make these newbie thespians hate the experience. In subsequent semesters, I kept Aristotle to a single lesson, posted his "rules" for future reference, and tried to find plays on tape or film that might stir an interest and, hopefully, lead to them one day buying a ticket to a play. We watched classics like "Death of a Salesman," "Twelve Angry Men," and they liked seeing Lee J. Cobb in two roles.  We compared different versions of "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" presented traditionally and reinterpreted contemporarily. We watched Mamet's "Oleanna" for an abject lesson in "why are you even in school?" While I subjected them to at least one Greek tragedy, it was the Jean Anouilh version. The best example of Aristotelian structure came from a modern play: Christopher Demos Brown's "American Son" for its adherence to the Three Unities and an almost textbook tragic heroine, but also because the discussion of race was something they could really latch on to.  My best day was at the end of my last semester there when a student approached my after class and said she had purchased tickets for "Take Me Out" on Broadway as a birthday present for her sister. (I did give them a content warning, just to be safe.)

I didn't get to blog during that period. Between teaching and getting that degree, the reading and writing that pursuit entailed. I just didn't have time. But the state budget cuts, exacerbated by the pandemic and low student enrollment brought my teaching career to a halt. Now, I write. The degree may or may not have gotten me a job for very long, but the two years I got to concentrate on writing were magical. I now have four full-length plays under my belt, a collection of short plays that is soon to be published, and a novel due to be released in July, 2026. I also have a stash of random thoughts, flash fiction and bad poetry which I may share with you, my dear friends, from time to time. 

I hope you will enjoy and share as you see fit. I am so looking forward to reconnecting!

Kate

Back to School

Well, I’m off to a great start at grad school. It has been 45 years since I accepted my BFA and I finally decided to pursue a Master’s Degree. I got my acceptance letter today and, frankly, I blushed at the accolades heaped upon me for my application alone. The little devil on my shoulder smugly wondered how many of these letters the author wrote. Was this praise a form letter? Then I turned the page and saw a request for $6300 for a program that is supposed to be free. 

There are few benefits to becoming a senior citizen and free college is one of them. It is now almost 9 p.m. and there is no one to ask about this until tomorrow, so I can look forward to yet another sleepless night. I know; I worry too much. 

The next page asked for my vaccination records and stated I would not be able to attend at all if I wasn’t vaccinated. Now, really! I’m 67 years old! I have moved from Brooklyn to Boston to Brooklyn to North Carolina to New York and then to Connecticut, collecting doctors all along the way. I’m certain I was vaccinated as a child, but any records I might have had have long since faded and crumpled into dust. I scoured the page for a phone number so I could explain my situation, eventually to discover this requirement only applies to people born after 1956. Phew! Thank you, fine print! Another benefit for the elderly!

Birth Day

Found this in my docs. Wonder what else is in there!

Birth Day

Everybody has one.

The very young and the very old look forward to it.

Everybody else would just as soon forget about it.

They lie about it, try to ignore it, wonder how the hell this happened.

They view it as some view a cliff;

As something you can never come back from.

I view it as more like a slide;

A giant slide.

A long glide

That begins the moment you come spurting into the world

All red and slippery

To the moment you land

Wherever it is that the slide ends.

Some think you land in a garden

Or a cloud…

I hope it is a pool.

Much nicer to land in a pool

Than on unforgiving ground.

No matter how grassy

That landing would be hard.

And I’ve flown through the clouds.

No support there.

Better to slip into some delightfully cool water

With frolicking swimmers of all ages,

Because some get down the slide faster than others.

Unnaturally fast.

Unfairly fast.

But I am ahead of myself.

I'm still on the slide,

Fortunate,

Gliding toward my destiny

See you in the pool.

Meanwhile, enjoy the ride.

Trying again for the first time.

It has occurred to me in recent weeks that our entire approach to encouraging creativity in young people is wrong. When I was a child, my parents took me to see great Broadway Shows that had garnered many Tony Awards. They took me to the opera and concerts and ballet. We had a house full of musical scores and I loved to sing along...in private. The realization that I was not as good as those stars made me terrified to even try. My parents should have take me to see flops! I had the bug but was so easily intimidated by brilliance, I couldn't bear the thought of not being as good.

My own acting and writing careers have had their ups and downs. But lately, I have been exposed to -how to say this without sounding arrogant - bad plays.

Some context: I fell in love with a play a few years ago written by a writer I really like. It was a two-hander about two legendary figures in the world of art and commercial art. It was funny and touching and had a real message that people could take home with them and think about for days to come. I produced and directed this delightful and deceptively profound little piece and felt strongly it should move to New York. We didn't make it. We didn't know how. I didn't know how. I deferred to people who spoke a good game but, ultimately screwed it up anyway.

Last year, I got involved with another play. I loved my part but not the play as a whole. If anyone had told me that this play would end up with a New York run I'd have been very skeptical. And yet this is were we stand, on the precipice of an open-ended run in NYC this year. It is testimony to an ambitious producer who knows how to get things done, and it has, for me, been both educational and inspirational.

It inspired me to start writing again. I thought, "If this could play NY, why not me?"

I remember being told as an actress, "Never type yourself out." Submit even if you don't think you're right for a role. I always had a problem with that. I only submit when I believe I am the best person for the job. I'm not one for throwing spaghetti at the wall in the hope that something will stick.

I have also been reading plays submitted for a One-Act Festival we'd like to start. My partner in this endeavor advertised for a specific type of play with certain parameters to be met. He pressed "send" and the responses started pouring in almost immediately. Now, with over half read of the 200 submissions to date, I have made some additional observations. They are not all good. In fact, very few are good. Some are just awful!  These self-professed writers must have trunks full of plays just waiting for the right occasion. They are professional spaghetti tossers.  And here I sit with a similar collection of material and I NEVER sent any of it out. And they're good! I think they're good. Well, some of them are good. Certainly none of them are causes to hang my head with shame. Is this reluctance to share or risk because I HAVE read and seen great plays? And I'm afraid mine won't be as good so, therefore, they should never see the light of day? I've learned that there is a lot of gray area between Fiddler on the Roof and Frecklefaced Strawberry. 

And maybe, just maybe, my work can fit in there somewhere... if I send it out.

Dems, Does and Haircuts

Does anyone else do this?

My husband has different voices for the people he talks to. You can almost always tell with whom he is on the phone by the volume of his speech or the sudden disappearance of certain vowels and consonants that might make him seem of one class or another.

I just laughed myself into a coughing spasm as I listened to him make an appointment with a new barber. “Hey! Can I gettanappointment with Pat faw tamarrah?” And he’s yelling on the phone as if the guy was across the street on his stoop instead of on the other end of the phone. If he were calling a new hair salon, I’m certain he would have asked for “an appointment with Pat for tomorrow”, but the fact that this place probably charges no more that $20 for a haircut places it in the category of working class people who, as we who grew up in Brooklyn know, have certain restrictions on the use of vowels, consonants and decibel levels.

I have heard it over and over throughout the years in calls to painters, plumbers, the boilerman, the guy who cuts down our trees. The volume goes up but the tone goes down, deep into the manly chest-voice region. It is a verbal slippage into a blue-collared shirt, designed to make the person on the other end of the line believe you are just a regular guy who understands these things by virtue of the fact that you speak the lingo. Never mind if the blue-collared pro at the receiving end of your query ever set foot in Kings County, he will understand by the tone of your voice and the ‘dems’ and ‘does’ slipping past a suddenly paralytic tongue, that you are man of the people, not ignorant and not to be taken advantage of.

This is a voice that never shows up when he is making an appointment to see the doctor. If he speaks to a broker, you’d swear he was a member of the royal family. He is an actor so these personality switches come as easily to him as time jumping in “Jumpers”. “Now I’m smart!” “Now I’m regular!” “Now you see me!” “Now you don’t!” But unlike the ‘jumpers’, he is totally unaware of these speech patterns. Rather, they spring from his brain unbidden; an unconscious call for help from one peer to another; an “I’m like you so how do I get dis squirrel outta da chimney?” Or like today, “I don’t want to wait three weeks for a hairstylist; I wanna get a heh-cut tamarrah.”

The Subway

When one grows up in a big city, one develops a patina, an immunity to the constant assault on one’s senses of noise, bustle and too many people trying to occupy the same space at the same time. It takes a while, but when you move away, eventually, that protective layer wears off. Coming into the city from CT, I routinely take my car. Even in bumper to bumper traffic you are buffered from the up-against-you press of humanity by the comforting frame of your vehicle. But lately, with multiple days scheduled in a row, I have left the car in Brooklyn, slept in my brother’s apartment, and ventured forth on the Q train from Brighton Beach to Herald Square. It is not an undaunting experience.

First, there’s the noise. The rumble of the train on the el cuts through the neighborhood like a stampede throughout the day and night. Then there’s the climb. From street level to the tracks, it is about four stories; enough to leave my asthmatic chest writing with knife-like pain for several minutes. The ocean breeze, coming as it does from the beach a block away, cuts or soothes, depending on the temperature. Today is a cutter.

I got on fairly empty train this morning at about 9:30, tired, aching from this ongoing sinus thing, but having avoided rush hour. There was plenty of room. I sat, then moved to the next bench to avoid two women chattering loudly in some dialect of Chinese. Now I was opposite a guy speaking loudly into his cell phone in Arabic. I considered moving to the next car but he got off at the next stop and I was left with the blissful white noise of the rickety subway system and the two talking women. I disappear into my word game on the cellphone. People trickled on at the next few stops but it was still manageable. 

The doors open at Sheepshead Bay or Kings Highway (I’m not paying attention) and 2 women get on. The first one motions to the second one to sit in the small seat next to me. They are not together. This is, I perceive, an act of kindness. I soon came to suspect it was self-preservation. Subway benches are designed so 3 people can fit between the poles. This woman needs 2 seats. She has a cane, a tote bag and a suitcase, which she parks between her legs making "man-spread" seem like a minor infringement. She is not dirty per se. The odor can best be described as stale. It is not pleasant. She starts to adjust herself, piling her bag atop her suitcase and what could not be called a lap. Am I unkind? Yes. But really! Next comes the disgorging of items from the bag: the phone, the earplugs; is that candy I see in her purse? With every adjustment she makes, she presses her body further into the bench, and I slide, am pushed, molded into an ever-shrinking space. I cannot resist. The bench is slippery and she is much bigger than I am. I am now being pressed into the metal bars that keep one from sliding off the bench altogether and blocking the door! I can feel my arm bruising with every jostle. I want to shift and put my arm through the bars to relieve the pressure but I know, if I remove my arm, my ribs will be crushed instead. I try to concentrate on the Wordbrain grid fucking with my brain on my cell phone. The work "stink" rises up from the grid of previously random letters. My right side is starting to sweat as we creep toward New York, going underground at Prospect Park, losing cell service and any chance of mentally escaping my situation. We stall on the Manhattan Bridge. I cannot breathe. Diving underground again at Canal Street, a few seats open up across the car. Do I get up? Do I risk letting this woman know she is an assault on my senses? Or do I stay put and allow this fetid feeling to become a part of my whole day? Sit… Sit…. Sit….. Can't do it! I don't need to gather my backpack for I have been clutching it for a while now. I bolt across the car and sit between two women of average size. I can breathe. I look across and she has expanded into my vacated space, spreading like Jello released from the mold, no hint that this vacancy was not an act of kindness on my part but one of self-preservation.

Finally, Herald Square. I climb to the street level and relish the cool air that dries my sweat. A man cuts in front of me and coughs violently in my face. The air is redolent with cigarettes. It is disgusting. I am reminded of a saying I heard back in college: “A frog can live in boiling water if the heat is applied slowly enough.” Well,… no. It's simply unaware it is dying.