Fi-yuh!!!

With the weather being so nice this spring, my husband and I have gotten a good jump on cleaning up the grounds around the house in preparation for a summer of cooking on the grill, having friends over and just hanging out on the deck on cool summer eves. This is a very good thing because, with things as they are, hiring the local illegal immigrants to blow the leaves away and lift the many branches and acorns that have covered what is left of our grass is out of the question. And it’s not like we have a lot of property – just over half an acre – but we are surrounded by trees. Not little trees. Big, mother trees! Old trees. With limbs that break and crash down on things like our deck, our car, our friends… Consequently, we have amassed an inordinate amount of dry leaves and firewood. The leaves get blown into the woods and the firewood is designated for either the fireplace in the living room or the copper cook stove near the deck that keeps us warm and entertained after a hard day’s work. We built such a fire yesterday afternoon, enjoyed a well-earned cocktail, and left the embers safely smoldering in the cook stove until the last of the twigs and logs had disintegrated into ash. Then we had dinner, watched TV, went to bed, woke up, went to the gym, and came home. I worked on the computer while my husband called the insurance company, found a new eye doctor, made an appointment and THEN headed outside to do more yard work. It didn’t strike me as unusual when I smelled the smoke. And, engrossed as I was in watching a video of a very odd production of a high school play, it just seemed like the usual minor annoyance when I heard my husband calling my name. Well, he wasn’t actually “calling” my name. He was screaming it… several times. “Kate!” “What?” “Kate!!” What?!” “Kate!!!!!!” I finally got the computer to pause, set it aside, and turned to scream “What?” out the bedroom window, when I noticed the 10 foot flames shooting from the ravine behind the house where he had assiduously blown a lot of the leaves and then dumped the ashes from yesterday’s fire. “Call the fire department!!!!” I didn’t see my husband but his voice seemed to be coming in from every window and door as he ran around the outside of the house trying to figure out how to turn on the garden hose. 911 answered immediately and the volunteer fire department was instantly dispatched. We could hear the trucks driving past our house because Mapquest and the GPS maps of this neighborhood are all wrong. I ran out on the road while my husband continued to struggle with the water supply, flagged down the town truck that had noticed the smoke even though it was where the map said it wouldn’t be, and then he directed the others to our house via his walkie-talkie. The flames were now consuming an area about 30 feet wide and were licking at interesting trees along the ravine. Long story short, about a dozen fire-fighters and several trucks with much better equipment than our gnarly garden hose put the fire out and graciously acknowledged that it could have happened to anyone. Who could suppose that an ember in a cold cook-stove could survive 18 hours, overnight, in 40 degree weather, to spark a conflagration that could have consumed the entire neighborhood had we dumped it anywhere but into that ditch? The fire-fighters left. I returned to my computer and my husband blew more leaves from the front of the house back into the woods. Still, when the work day was done, we had our cocktail without a fire in the cook stove tonight. The weather forecast is for three days of rain. Good.

Post script: Before dinner, we ran out to the supermarket for a few items, returning to discover that I had left a pot of water boiling on the stove. Luckily, there was enough water in the pot that it didn't burn the house down. Still, how embarrassing would THAT have been?! Duh...

Open Letter to Clay Smith

Dear Clay Smith,
Have you ever been presented with a moment in which the one thing you did NOT want to do is make a fool of yourself, and then you do precisely that? In a room full of crazy people, at the very least you want to be perceived of as sane. But the demon grabs you and you babble like a fool anyway. I am done. I know, I’ve said that before. But this time I mean it! I will never attend another seminar to meet a casting director or agent. Unless you are so unique as to be a freak of nature, it is a complete waste of time. Unless you do “something special”, like… you are fluent in Swahili, or you are a sword swallower, or you can speak Swahili WHILE swallowing a sword… you have a better chance of winning the Powerball than getting representation or an audition from a casting director in New York. So I am sorry, Clay Smith. I wanted to impress you. I wanted you to see me at the seminar tonight and say to yourself, “I remember her! Her audition monologue was wonderful. Why didn’t I call her in? Why haven’t I signed her? I saw her video, the one I ASKED her to send me, and I loved it!” But I balked… and I babbled like a fool.

Epiphany

Well, it’s official. I’ve turned into one of those geeks who can’t stop playing computer games. Hours come and go and here I sit, playing backgammon with “Intermediate Arabic”, that faceless person across the globe who, I have a sneaking suspicion, has all this time on his hands because he’s sitting in a cave in Tora Bora, playing on a laptop. It could be. They have modern things; guns, bombs, Timex watches. I however do not have such time. I have things to do. My fate is not quite so cut and dry. I almost envy that son of a bitch. At least he knows what he’ll be doing for the next few years… if he’s not dead. And even if he is dead, he’s pretty certain he’ll be in heaven surrounded by 70 virgins. He’s wrong, but he’s certain. I however have no such delusions. No time and no delusions. I know, as I click and roll and chat in pre-selected language bytes: Nice role; It was luck; It’s your turn; Are you still there? … I know, as player after player quits the game the moment he or she starts to lose… I know that I am wasting my life!

My eyelids flutter and grow heavy and yet here I sit, mindlessly clicking on “new game”, “new game”, “new game”. When I get bored with backgammon, I switch. “Word Whomp” is a personal favorite. I own all the best times on Minesweeper. I mollify my saner self with the thought that this type of brain exercise will help me live longer and stave off Alzheimer’s. My saner self says, “Yes, you’re brain will go on… long after your body fails from disuse. They will keep it in a jar, on view as a cautionary tale. Would you like to ask it a question?” “It was luck; Good role; Are you still there?” Which conjures up ancient fears of being buried alive… Which compounds the problem because, even if I should tear myself away and climb the stairs to my bed, I am now too afraid to close my eyes… There’s a game where little bugs pop up in a bowl of soup and you get to hit them over the head with a spoon. This, while not being of the brain enhancement variety, gives me tremendous satisfaction.

It occurs to me that my house is getting dirty, and so I rebel against my fixation, click my way back to the desktop, and clean something; the floor, the bathroom, the kitchen counter. (I know it’s under these stacks of old mail somewhere). Then, with a great feeling of accomplishment, I tell myself I am entitled to a break. So I rush back to the computer and find someone to play with. Perhaps that’s it! I don’t remember it ever being easy to find people to play with. Imagine how wonderful it would have been as a child to be able to click and find a playmate, with none of the attendant risk involved of having to approach a stranger-child on the street and ask, “Can I play?” It’s more like coming upon a playground full of children starving for someone to play with and all you have to do is show up and they get in line to wait for a turn. Janie has to go home for dinner? That’s okay, Susie’s here.

Reunion

I’m a little nervous this morning. I’m about to travel into the city to meet three high school friends who I haven’t seen in over 40 years. What’s so scary about that you ask? Well, in thinking about it, I realized I hadn’t really been “friends” with them in the first place. I can’t recall a single social instance, beyond attending classes, perhaps sharing a lunchroom table. I can’t recall a single thing we had in common. Oddly enough, I recently connected with another classmate who I also had nothing in common with, only to discover that, now, we have a lot in common! But then? We barely knew each other. I was in the drama club. And I had a boyfriend. Those two things consumed every my every thought. I hadn’t even realized that this person actually did a show with me. I never saw beyond my own small circle. Of course I remember these people and the memories aren’t unpleasant. But I have no idea how I felt about them and, even more to the point, how they felt about me. How high the defenses I built around myself must have been; still are! I moved through my life as if each chapter was a separate room and I firmly closed the door on each one. I took no high school friends with me to college. I took no college friends with me to work. It wasn’t until years later that I reconnected with one college friend who hadn’t really been my friend while I was IN college, so I’m not even quite sure how we got together. And now, 25 years have gone by since I’ve seen her! So I ask, what’s wrong with me? Last weekend, my cousins went to a massive reunion of people who grew up in East New York. Where is my past? Perhaps I’ll get a glimpse today.

Cat: Menace or Medicine

There’s this smoky grey cat with lime green eyes that has laid claim to my home. I’ve seen it around the property for the last few months. It has walked up my driveway, up the lower steps to the front door and has cut around to the woods behind the house presumably to hunt. Yesterday it followed me up the front steps almost to my door. Today it hung out on the steps even as I came down to get the mail. He (she?) is becoming comfortable with my presence. I am not as comfortable. In the first place, I am a dog-person. I don’t speak “cat”. I don’t know what it means when a cat wags its tail as this one did this afternoon as I started down the steps and froze in my tracks, or what it means when it mews at me, and I mean this one looked me right in the eye and mewed. It’s a feral cat; no collar; a wild thing. But it seems so tame! There’s a part of me that wants to feed it but I’m afraid. There’s a part of me that wants to pet it but I don’t know if that’s advisable, or even possible. He seems to think that a five-foot buffer is as close as it wants to let me get. When I was a little girl, there was a neighborhood cat in Brooklyn that I dubbed “Muffin” because I had found it eating one from the garbage pail in the alley that divided our two-family, semi-attached house in East New York from the next one. Muffin played regularly with me and Shelley Harnett and Barbara Nigerian (how did I remember those names!), the other little girls on the block, and was very friendly until one day when she wasn’t. On that day, Muffin attacked me, biting at ankles which she held in outstretched claws that cut into my skin. I was terrified. The police came and took her away and I have mistrusted cats ever since. So what do I do? I know what I wrote the other day, about cats containing powerful spiritual “medicine” according to Indian lore. But I’m far more afraid of rabies than I am interested in the spiritual consequences of NOT embracing this cat. And yet, he/she is very beautiful and I am sort of excited that this animal has chosen me. Why is he here? Any cat experts out there, please feel free to advise. I bought the Friskies. Should I put out a bowl?

If I build it...

If I build it, will they come?

I am seriously flirting with the idea of creating a not-for-profit theatre company in my hometown. I see the need. There’s nothing here but one seasonal community theatre, high school shows, and an overly aggressive local money-mill rehashing Broadway musicals with a mini-star-system that leaves out all the talented students who have not impressed the local guru or who are not deemed “good enough”, “popular enough”, “pretty enough”, etc.

So I threw caution to the wind, tossed my hat into the ring and put forth the summer program I ran in Bridgeport for many years. I even got two local agencies to collaborate on sponsoring it. So now I wait. It’s a great program but, with only one student already committed, I wonder, do people really want to learn anything? Are they just content to pretend they are stars? Does it matter to them that poor directing and teaching can ruin their instruments? Do they care that they are lost without someone telling them where to go and how to say this or that? Do they care if they don’t understand a word coming out of their own mouths as long as Mom, Dad and Grandma are tickled pink? Do Mom, Dad and Grandma understand that Junior actually is NOT good but could be if someone would only take the time to teach him something?

Meanwhile, I joined with friends who already have a terrific professional program going and got three shows up here. And I am astonished at how difficult it is to get people to buy tickets! These shows that sell out on Westport, Greenwich and Fairfield, are struggling to find an audience in my backwater town. Why, I ask? Why don’t people care?

So I pause. If I invest my time, my money, my heart in creating something more challenging than another rehashing of a commercial musical, will anyone care? Will they come? Will I survive? All questions are moot if the lawyer doesn’t call me back.