"The whole California story as it was told to me had to do with the difficulty of getting here. Once you got here you were redeemed. Nobody ever talked about what you were redeemed for. The survival, the getting through the mountains before the snow fell was the big, big value. And if you had managed that then you were home free, as it were.
"As I started thinking about it, or as I passed on through not thinking about into some kind of adult life, survival as an answer in itself began to seem a more and more doubtful value. Survival leaves you more aware. California had always been about, had always celebrated the act of survival. In some ways, I think we were left with no higher value."
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Circus Amok!!
Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls, and the rest of us!
Tomorrow we leave for Chestertown, New York, where we'll do intensive rehearsal for about a week, then return for the opening at Riverside Park on Friday, September 1. The show this year is really conceptually together--I think it works well as a piece of theatre, not just as something fun and free to see in the park.
We've got a huge boat, yards of blue fabric water, dancing goats, eight-count 'em, eight!--pogo sticks, a return to the burning building clown act, and much, much more. Oh, the teacups are back, too. And it's all coming to your park, all alive, all real, always FREE.
For those of you who live in New York, you can see our full show schedule here. Or check our website, CircusAmok.org, for more info on the troupe, Amok history, and everything else you'd want to know--you can even make a donation.
For still even more excitement, check out a 5-minute piece on a show from two or three seasons ago on YouTube, here.
Tomorrow we leave for Chestertown, New York, where we'll do intensive rehearsal for about a week, then return for the opening at Riverside Park on Friday, September 1. The show this year is really conceptually together--I think it works well as a piece of theatre, not just as something fun and free to see in the park.
We've got a huge boat, yards of blue fabric water, dancing goats, eight-count 'em, eight!--pogo sticks, a return to the burning building clown act, and much, much more. Oh, the teacups are back, too. And it's all coming to your park, all alive, all real, always FREE.
For those of you who live in New York, you can see our full show schedule here. Or check our website, CircusAmok.org, for more info on the troupe, Amok history, and everything else you'd want to know--you can even make a donation.
For still even more excitement, check out a 5-minute piece on a show from two or three seasons ago on YouTube, here.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Talking to Her
My friend Ashley, a dancer and Circus Amok ring performer, asked me yesterday if I could marry someone who spoke to the dead, would I want to? I knew what she was asking. She was asking, If you could talk to Meg, would you?
I told her I wouldn't. What would Meg have to say to me, I thought, that she didn't already say when she was living? The things I want to know aren't things that she, specifically, would have to tell me (although I would appreciate them from her sensitive yet removed perspective): What is the journey like? Is there a tunnel of white light? Do the angels play harps? And, as I've written before, did you get all the text messages I sent after you died?
What a scene at your memorial service, I might say, with that long strange painting hung on the curtain, and the very colorful...quilt?...shawl?...draped over the podium. When you-know-who said you-know-what and I thought you might send lightning down to smite her--but I knew you wouldn't because you're like that. Or you're not like that.
I suppose I would want to talk with Meg. But if I can't, that's fine too. The last words she said to me were 'Happy Fucking Birthday,' which I cherish unlike anything else in this world. So--in our many nights laying awake in my bed together, stacks of letters, phone calls so long both my cell phone and cordless land-line went dead--we said basically everything we needed to say to each other.
I won't write "as if we knew." Because we didn't.
I told her I wouldn't. What would Meg have to say to me, I thought, that she didn't already say when she was living? The things I want to know aren't things that she, specifically, would have to tell me (although I would appreciate them from her sensitive yet removed perspective): What is the journey like? Is there a tunnel of white light? Do the angels play harps? And, as I've written before, did you get all the text messages I sent after you died?
What a scene at your memorial service, I might say, with that long strange painting hung on the curtain, and the very colorful...quilt?...shawl?...draped over the podium. When you-know-who said you-know-what and I thought you might send lightning down to smite her--but I knew you wouldn't because you're like that. Or you're not like that.
I suppose I would want to talk with Meg. But if I can't, that's fine too. The last words she said to me were 'Happy Fucking Birthday,' which I cherish unlike anything else in this world. So--in our many nights laying awake in my bed together, stacks of letters, phone calls so long both my cell phone and cordless land-line went dead--we said basically everything we needed to say to each other.
I won't write "as if we knew." Because we didn't.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A Meme About Books and Such
1. One book you have read more than once:
I'll have to say Run River by Joan Didion. I read it when things in my life have gone suddenly askew. Despite its plot and subject matter--the novel begins with a murder on the banks of the Sacramento River-- it brings me a sense of calm. The rhythm of her prose, the sentences, the repetition. Sometimes reading it feels like meditation.
2. One book you would want on a desert island:
I never know what this means. A book that I would read, or that I could burn to make smoke signals? How about I'll go way out there, and say the Icelandic Sagas. Not modern printed ones, but the originals. They were all made of hand-bound cow's hide, and therefore could be boiled in soup if there was nothing to eat during the long winter. A book that feeds you mentally and physically, now that's the book for me.
3. One book that made you laugh:
Most recently it was This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. It's so brilliant the way she sets the most ridiculous plots into motion and you just go right on with it like it's the most normal thing. A horse shows up in a sinkhole and the celebrity neighbor flies his helicopter over to help get it out. The absurdity is ultimately appropriate.
4. One book that made you cry:
There is a moment in Dan Choan's book You Remind Me of Me, where a child has been abducted and his grandmother is wondering where he might be. Choan writes: "She has never been a superstitious person, but she is certain at this moment she can sense the presence of the child. His little soul. It is a small, steadily blinking pulse, like the light of an airplane moving across the sky at night." I lost it right there.
5. One book you wish you had written:
I don't covet other people's work like that. I sometimes say, 'I wish I could write like that,' but I never think it terms of having written a particular book myself. One would always do something differently. So, I'm going to steal Ted's idea (genius!) but I'm going to go with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, only because she's probably richer than she'll ever need to be, but people will still be reading her book in a hundred years after Dan Brown is forgotten about.
6. One book you wish had never been written:
Was this list made by someone who doesn't write? I hate it when, like in personal ads on the internet, people don't really answer the question, but wittily prance around it, but oh well. My feeling is that even a book like The Turner Diaries or some assinine sack of garbage by Ann Coulter would be defended by other writers if it came to whether or not a person could write what they were passionate about. On second thought, maybe not the Coulter shit.
7. One book you are currently reading:
In 1969, Tobias Schneebaum wrote Keep the River On Your Right, which was a series of letters he wrote in his journal during his time spent in Peru, living with the Harakumbut people, (then called the Amarakaire,) where he, among other things, ate human flesh. He was also a painter, a lecturer, a teacher, an AIDS activist, and homosexual. He's sort of my hero.
8. One book you have been meaning to read:
I have this stack of Joyce Carol Oates books that I keep trying to get through. And since she writes like four books a year I'll never catch up. Currently, Wikipedia lists her published book count--including novels, plays, short stories, etc.--at 102.
9. One book that changed your life:
I always tell people that for me this book was Barbara Kingsolver's triumph of a novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It was just so clear to me what she was doing, both with language and voice, but also what she was doing artistically and politically. Other books that also got it right are Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy.
10. Now Tag 5 bloggers:
Witold, Mario, Michael, Amanda, and Tucker.
I'll have to say Run River by Joan Didion. I read it when things in my life have gone suddenly askew. Despite its plot and subject matter--the novel begins with a murder on the banks of the Sacramento River-- it brings me a sense of calm. The rhythm of her prose, the sentences, the repetition. Sometimes reading it feels like meditation.
2. One book you would want on a desert island:
I never know what this means. A book that I would read, or that I could burn to make smoke signals? How about I'll go way out there, and say the Icelandic Sagas. Not modern printed ones, but the originals. They were all made of hand-bound cow's hide, and therefore could be boiled in soup if there was nothing to eat during the long winter. A book that feeds you mentally and physically, now that's the book for me.
3. One book that made you laugh:
Most recently it was This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. It's so brilliant the way she sets the most ridiculous plots into motion and you just go right on with it like it's the most normal thing. A horse shows up in a sinkhole and the celebrity neighbor flies his helicopter over to help get it out. The absurdity is ultimately appropriate.
4. One book that made you cry:
There is a moment in Dan Choan's book You Remind Me of Me, where a child has been abducted and his grandmother is wondering where he might be. Choan writes: "She has never been a superstitious person, but she is certain at this moment she can sense the presence of the child. His little soul. It is a small, steadily blinking pulse, like the light of an airplane moving across the sky at night." I lost it right there.
5. One book you wish you had written:
I don't covet other people's work like that. I sometimes say, 'I wish I could write like that,' but I never think it terms of having written a particular book myself. One would always do something differently. So, I'm going to steal Ted's idea (genius!) but I'm going to go with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, only because she's probably richer than she'll ever need to be, but people will still be reading her book in a hundred years after Dan Brown is forgotten about.
6. One book you wish had never been written:
Was this list made by someone who doesn't write? I hate it when, like in personal ads on the internet, people don't really answer the question, but wittily prance around it, but oh well. My feeling is that even a book like The Turner Diaries or some assinine sack of garbage by Ann Coulter would be defended by other writers if it came to whether or not a person could write what they were passionate about. On second thought, maybe not the Coulter shit.
7. One book you are currently reading:
In 1969, Tobias Schneebaum wrote Keep the River On Your Right, which was a series of letters he wrote in his journal during his time spent in Peru, living with the Harakumbut people, (then called the Amarakaire,) where he, among other things, ate human flesh. He was also a painter, a lecturer, a teacher, an AIDS activist, and homosexual. He's sort of my hero.
8. One book you have been meaning to read:
I have this stack of Joyce Carol Oates books that I keep trying to get through. And since she writes like four books a year I'll never catch up. Currently, Wikipedia lists her published book count--including novels, plays, short stories, etc.--at 102.
9. One book that changed your life:
I always tell people that for me this book was Barbara Kingsolver's triumph of a novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It was just so clear to me what she was doing, both with language and voice, but also what she was doing artistically and politically. Other books that also got it right are Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy.
10. Now Tag 5 bloggers:
Witold, Mario, Michael, Amanda, and Tucker.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
We Has Risen!
Last night at the Helen Hayes Theatre, Herb tore up the keys while Kiki drank herself into angrier and scathier, even more anarchic rage, in Kiki & Herb's last preview before opening night of their new show, "Alive on Broadway."
Watching this more polished, more directed show, I kept thinking that somehow Kiki's world had finally arrived. She's survived countless tragedies and disappointments, with only a drink and a song to carry her on. As war, disasters, and political stupidity continue to haunt our present, when has Kiki been more relevant? When has the fundamental truth of equal parts outrage and apathy been more exact?
Although the comedy is darker and more deranged than anything I've ever seen, even their old, more chaotic shows at Fez and P.S. 122--Kiki's sloshed banter includes stories of her daughter, Coco, who drowned; her two other children who refuse to acknowledge her existence; child sexual abuse; abandonment; AIDS; and more, more, more--there is real pathos in the theatrics. In fact, I don't know of a more empathetic character.
Kiki is our melancholy, she's our ragged skeletons in the closet. She's our vitriolic disgust with the state of the union, and with the state of our own miserable selves.
During the standing ovation, Kiki becomes, momentarily, Justin Bond, her creator; Herb becomes Kenny Mellman. They have surived their own alter-egos, and--somehow--there is redemption. The world is always separating itself into us against them. But for Kiki, everyone is us.
Watching this more polished, more directed show, I kept thinking that somehow Kiki's world had finally arrived. She's survived countless tragedies and disappointments, with only a drink and a song to carry her on. As war, disasters, and political stupidity continue to haunt our present, when has Kiki been more relevant? When has the fundamental truth of equal parts outrage and apathy been more exact?
Although the comedy is darker and more deranged than anything I've ever seen, even their old, more chaotic shows at Fez and P.S. 122--Kiki's sloshed banter includes stories of her daughter, Coco, who drowned; her two other children who refuse to acknowledge her existence; child sexual abuse; abandonment; AIDS; and more, more, more--there is real pathos in the theatrics. In fact, I don't know of a more empathetic character.
Kiki is our melancholy, she's our ragged skeletons in the closet. She's our vitriolic disgust with the state of the union, and with the state of our own miserable selves.
During the standing ovation, Kiki becomes, momentarily, Justin Bond, her creator; Herb becomes Kenny Mellman. They have surived their own alter-egos, and--somehow--there is redemption. The world is always separating itself into us against them. But for Kiki, everyone is us.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Excerpts in Limbo, Vol. 5
This was recently excised from my first novel. Perhaps it will find a new place, who knows?
The neighborhood is mostly Greek and you can walk down Broadway and not hear anyone speaking English. ATMs are fluent in five languages. There’s the Old Greek Captain Restaurant, a florescent-lit patio furniture-filled dump where the deep fryer bubbles all night and the cook smokes cigarettes out on the sidewalk, still wearing his hygienic gloves. The more popular, but far more repulsive, Uncle Niko’s Restaurant, which is the one that the tourist guides suggest—it is forever full. There are nightclubs and coffee bars: Olympia 21, The Cave, Exo, others that I don’t know the name of, and which probably won’t last anyway—this city eats businesses like candy. Even a gay bar, Playa, which though mostly a black and Latino dyke hangout is often filled (on Sunday afternoons at least) with tight-lipped white men from Long Island who come into town to suck some cock, or to get fucked. They’re generally not very experienced, but they’ve all been nicely hairy, and most of them have had pleasantly average-sized dicks. Size matters, but not when you fellate for a living.
The neighborhood is mostly Greek and you can walk down Broadway and not hear anyone speaking English. ATMs are fluent in five languages. There’s the Old Greek Captain Restaurant, a florescent-lit patio furniture-filled dump where the deep fryer bubbles all night and the cook smokes cigarettes out on the sidewalk, still wearing his hygienic gloves. The more popular, but far more repulsive, Uncle Niko’s Restaurant, which is the one that the tourist guides suggest—it is forever full. There are nightclubs and coffee bars: Olympia 21, The Cave, Exo, others that I don’t know the name of, and which probably won’t last anyway—this city eats businesses like candy. Even a gay bar, Playa, which though mostly a black and Latino dyke hangout is often filled (on Sunday afternoons at least) with tight-lipped white men from Long Island who come into town to suck some cock, or to get fucked. They’re generally not very experienced, but they’ve all been nicely hairy, and most of them have had pleasantly average-sized dicks. Size matters, but not when you fellate for a living.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Project Podcast
Anyone who's a fan of Project Runway must immediately go to their iTunes and subscribe to Tim Gunn's podcast. Each Thursday, you can hear Tim talk for about thirty minutes about what really happened on the episode you just watched the evening prior.
For example, who would ever have known that (perhaps) the reason that the judges kept Robert Best over Bradley Baumkirchner was because when Robert designed the modernized outfit for Jackie O. that the judges decided she just wouldn't wear, it was Diane Von Furstenburg who came to the rescue, finishing the dialogue about the garment. Tim explains in the most recent podcast that Diane said "I did know Jackie, I knew her very well. And I think she would wear it."
Tim also puts to rest (well, not really) those questions about Bradley's sexuality. Tim assumed he was queer as the day is long -- but when it surfaced that Bradley didn't really know who Cher was, well Tim noted, what kind of self-respecting gay man doesn't know Cher?
Any self-respecting Project Runway fan must also peruse the Store, where you can buy limited edition t-shirts designed by each of the designers, in addition to bidding on the ACTUAL winning (and losing) looks from each episode.
For example, who would ever have known that (perhaps) the reason that the judges kept Robert Best over Bradley Baumkirchner was because when Robert designed the modernized outfit for Jackie O. that the judges decided she just wouldn't wear, it was Diane Von Furstenburg who came to the rescue, finishing the dialogue about the garment. Tim explains in the most recent podcast that Diane said "I did know Jackie, I knew her very well. And I think she would wear it."
Tim also puts to rest (well, not really) those questions about Bradley's sexuality. Tim assumed he was queer as the day is long -- but when it surfaced that Bradley didn't really know who Cher was, well Tim noted, what kind of self-respecting gay man doesn't know Cher?
Any self-respecting Project Runway fan must also peruse the Store, where you can buy limited edition t-shirts designed by each of the designers, in addition to bidding on the ACTUAL winning (and losing) looks from each episode.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Starting Over
I am so lucky. At Kip's house this morning, after we ate our bowls of strawberry/banana Cheerios, I got to watch most of today's episode of the syndicated daytime cry-fest "Starting Over." I was shocked (or maybe not so shocked) to see that some of the women who were in the house today, had been living in the house back in January, when I discovered how much I loved watching it. (I've not figured out yet, however, if we're watching reruns now, so maybe this was an old one, I dunno.)
Back in January, when things were really heating up, one woman had to wrap herself in ace bandages, replacing the fat self she used to be with this fake fat, because even though we may lose the weight, unless we've changed who we really are inside, what good does it do, right? Right! Not only did she have to walk around the house for who-knows-how-long covered in this fake fat suit, she had to then write in black marker all over the bandages things that she was holding onto: "Mother didn't love me," "I feel ugly," "Lack of intimacy," and whatever else.
At the same time there was a woman who had been relying on so many crutches. A-ha! The brilliant life coaches (or maybe it was the producers?) gave her some real crutches to walk around with for a while, so she would see what it REALLY felt like to rely on crutches. She had to write things on these tags which hung off the crutches, more "mother didn't love me" and stuff like that. The whole house was full of women in these ridiculous costumes taking themselves so seriously.
From their website, here is today's "Life Coach Tip:" "Call a thing a thing. Call your pain your pain. Call your hurt our hurt. Your anger our anger. Your joy your joy. Call everything what it is so that you'll know what is going on in your life." (Brought to you by Easy Off Bam, of course.)
I love you Starting Over--I call my joy my joy. I can't wait to see what masochistic psychobabble you dream up for the ladies next!
Back in January, when things were really heating up, one woman had to wrap herself in ace bandages, replacing the fat self she used to be with this fake fat, because even though we may lose the weight, unless we've changed who we really are inside, what good does it do, right? Right! Not only did she have to walk around the house for who-knows-how-long covered in this fake fat suit, she had to then write in black marker all over the bandages things that she was holding onto: "Mother didn't love me," "I feel ugly," "Lack of intimacy," and whatever else.
At the same time there was a woman who had been relying on so many crutches. A-ha! The brilliant life coaches (or maybe it was the producers?) gave her some real crutches to walk around with for a while, so she would see what it REALLY felt like to rely on crutches. She had to write things on these tags which hung off the crutches, more "mother didn't love me" and stuff like that. The whole house was full of women in these ridiculous costumes taking themselves so seriously.
From their website, here is today's "Life Coach Tip:" "Call a thing a thing. Call your pain your pain. Call your hurt our hurt. Your anger our anger. Your joy your joy. Call everything what it is so that you'll know what is going on in your life." (Brought to you by Easy Off Bam, of course.)
I love you Starting Over--I call my joy my joy. I can't wait to see what masochistic psychobabble you dream up for the ladies next!
Friday, August 04, 2006
Warnings
First it was Joyce Carol Oates,
talking about watching whole nations live
in a state of denial.
Then it was a widow, who lost her husband
in The Vietnam War--the same war, which
the Vietnamese call The American War--
who said that on the day before he left for duty,
she wanted to smash his hand with an iron skillet,
breaking his bones, so that he could not go to war.
Later, someone says "You would be amazed
at how many would go when their name is called."
The train lurches forward, shudders, continues on.
"People you thought you knew."
The whole world is of warnings.
Generations of foreshadowing, so delicate
and deliberate that only the very old can see it.
What is left, then,
after everyone has said "I told you so?"
There is only the lingering weight.
Of boots on sand and marsh.
Of children on the actions of landmines.
talking about watching whole nations live
in a state of denial.
Then it was a widow, who lost her husband
in The Vietnam War--the same war, which
the Vietnamese call The American War--
who said that on the day before he left for duty,
she wanted to smash his hand with an iron skillet,
breaking his bones, so that he could not go to war.
Later, someone says "You would be amazed
at how many would go when their name is called."
The train lurches forward, shudders, continues on.
"People you thought you knew."
The whole world is of warnings.
Generations of foreshadowing, so delicate
and deliberate that only the very old can see it.
What is left, then,
after everyone has said "I told you so?"
There is only the lingering weight.
Of boots on sand and marsh.
Of children on the actions of landmines.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Hot Hot Heat
This always happens in New York in August--the heat arrives, as if no one had expected it, as if we had forgotten what it was like this time of year. Con Edison fucks up some neighborhood--in this year's case, the north part of Astoria, where some customers were without electricity for eight days--and then makes apologies in the news and in the papers.
I splurged yesterday in taking a car service to Jennifer's house--not so bad, only $18 with New Enrico's, my car service of choice for the last 8 years--because I had to transport 5 pogo sticks to her loft, but also because, as I later saw on the light-up sign at the bank that flashes the time and temperature that it was 1:42pm, and 106 degrees. Nuff said.
I'm also battling a sinus something-or-other. Congestion, mostly. I'm not sure if it's allergies, actual sickness, or just my body revolting against the constant hot/cold of going from air conditioner to outside and back again over and over.
Tomorrow, Sam Champion says, we'll be in a better "pocket of air." It sounds so much like space travel.
PS - Don't rush out to see Miami Vice. It sucks.
I splurged yesterday in taking a car service to Jennifer's house--not so bad, only $18 with New Enrico's, my car service of choice for the last 8 years--because I had to transport 5 pogo sticks to her loft, but also because, as I later saw on the light-up sign at the bank that flashes the time and temperature that it was 1:42pm, and 106 degrees. Nuff said.
I'm also battling a sinus something-or-other. Congestion, mostly. I'm not sure if it's allergies, actual sickness, or just my body revolting against the constant hot/cold of going from air conditioner to outside and back again over and over.
Tomorrow, Sam Champion says, we'll be in a better "pocket of air." It sounds so much like space travel.
PS - Don't rush out to see Miami Vice. It sucks.
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