Outdoor Shakespeare, Eavesdropper's Heaven, Walker's Paradise

1. From the Times review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare on the Sound, in Connecticut: “The audience’s enthusiasm is particularly infectious when children are present, excitedly feeding off the bouncy moments of comedy. I overheard one thrilled youngster burbling happily about having run into Puck while going on an ice cream run. Perhaps a lifelong theater lover was born in that moment.” Sweet!

2. John and Danielle are on vacation in New York. Maybe they'll get some good eavesdropping.

3. My current neighborhood in Austin has a walkability score of 45 out of 100 –- “car-dependent.” Alas, I agree. My previous Austin address gets a 77 – “very walkable.” Yeah, by American standards, I guess. The street on which I grew up in the Bronx only gets a 78, probably because of low socio-economic standing, but anyone who thinks it’s a mere one point more than any street is Austin is effing crazy; it was a 98 if you ask me. The street on which I lived in Greenwich Village from 1977 to 1979 (scroll down to Ann’s second comment) gets 100 out of 100 – “walker’s paradise.” Extremely true; from that corner you could walk between the worlds. (h/t JAC)

William Blake’s neighborhood, Texas radio, Indian blanket, spilled tea

While the service guys were installing the air conditioner coil, I was in the study writing a lesson on Romantic poetry for high school seniors. Blake’s neighborhood in London, Lambeth, during his ten years there “was already acquiring the characteristics of a peculiarly repellent urban slum with wretchedly built and undrained houses,” according to his biography, and with Industrial Revolution encroachments: “a stone manufactory and a wine factory, potteries and dye-works, lime kilns and blacking factories.”

Finishing a long day in the eighteenth century, I sank onto the couch to bathe deep in one of my customized radio stations, the one with Texas music. Lucinda Williams “Blue,” Tracy Chapman “Never Yours,” Neil Young “Star of Bethlehem,” Carrie Rodriguez “Never Gonna Be Your Bride” which is about Austin musicians, Eliza Gilkyson another Austinite, James McMurtry “Choctaw Bingo,” whose lyrics have the most knowing details of Oklahoma redneck life you could possibly imagine. John Prine “Angel from Montgomery,” which is one of the possibilities I might have mentioned if God had ever offered me the chance to write one song in the whole world. But there are a lot of songs in that group.

Out back, the wildflowers can’t stop blooming. For weeks it’s been deep in magenta flax, and now tall stalks of orange and red Indian blanket stand above them. In the past when I’d tried to sow wildflower seeds nothing happened, but this time I sprinkled one packet of seeds over the little plot and kept the soil moist like the directions said and the sun did the rest. Across the yard, the antique rose bush sprawls untrimmed like a teenager, pink blossoms on every twig, branches spilling over the old raw wood deck almost to the bur oak. Looking at it through the window while typing this and getting up to check the quote about Blake, I knock over the half-full mug of rooibos tea that’s on the coffee table. Fortunately the tea stain is more or less the same color as the jute rug.

That’s at least four beautiful things but I can’t help it.

Research Headache, Cancelled Meeting, Double Saber

Do you know the blog Three Beautiful Things? It’s run by an Englishwoman named Clare Grant, and the idea is simple: every day, she describes three beautiful things she experiences. The idea itself is a beautiful thing, and, inspired by the original, a whole community of three-beautiful-things sites has arisen, people from dozens of nations visiting each other to swap beauty, preserving tiny moments that wouldn’t otherwise have been recorded.

I wish I’d thought of it first. Then I’d never lack for something to blog about. Hey, wait! Do I have to be the first one to have thought of something before I can try it? It would be beautiful if I learned that that isn’t true. So here are three beautiful things I experienced yesterday:

I did so much research for an educational writing project that I got a headache.

I was looking forward to attending a get-together for some people in Austin who do The Work of Byron Katie, but it got canceled because I was the only one planning to show up.

I felt out of my depth learning a double saber form in tai chi, thinking, “I’ll never get this, everyone else can do it better than me,” as I twirled two sabers over my head and around my body in a room with ten other people struggling with the same moves, blades barely missing blades and bodies.

Oh, you don’t think those things are beautiful? I’m certain that if I happen to remember them on my deathbed, I’ll smile at the memories. People work hard and get headaches; they plan and the plans fall through; they try to learn and it can take a long time. We are that beautiful.

The saber moves I can’t do now will become easy habits. I’ll do the freelance project competently and get paid for it. And without going to the get-together last night, I spent two happy hours doing The Work on the phone with one of the group.

You can watch your baby’s head emerge from the womb into its first light; you can sell a novel; you can watch the sun set from a cliff on the Aegean. You can make a plan that falls through, and give yourself a headache, and learn painfully slow.

I don’t know whether I understand something or I just have a particularly fortunate life.

How to Be Ubiquitous

The gym I go to is quite noticeably owned by Lance Armstrong. The guy is everywhere. Against one wall is one of his bicycles inside a glass case. Flanking it are blown-up news clippings, from his first childhood foot races to his cancer to his Tour de France victories, and four big signs covered with text narrating his career, their titles ranging from “In the Beginning” to “The Road Ahead.” In the men’s locker room, the first locker you see is covered not by the usual rattly metal door but by thick glass plate through which you can see a pair of Lance’s racing shoes and one of his spandex outfits. On the rear wall a huge picture of Lance in his familiar crewcut challenges you with an unflinching but not actively friendly stare, and a quote from him:

“I don’t have bad days. I have great days and good days.”

It goes on about how he’s on his ass (his word) riding his bike six hours a day: “What are you on?”

Everyone who goes to the gym is supposed to read that and be inspired to do much more than they dreamed they could, and put in their place by knowing they could never do as much as Lance.

As I write this, I’m listening to Pandora Radio on my computer, and what do you think just came up on the screen? An ad with Lance sitting in shorts and T-shirt (same crewcut, same direct quiet don’t-call-me-arrogant look), recommending that I buy an energy supplement.

I am not going to buy it.

However, I have bought a noncommercial part of his message. I don’t have bad days, I have great days and good days. I suppose it isn’t as true of me as of Lance, but I’m not going to spoil my day worrying about it.

It’s amazing that I’ve come to this. By various means, most of which I’ve discussed in this blog, I seem to have boosted my mood curve so that whereas its peaks used to be slightly above average and its troughs well below average, its peaks are now well above average and its troughs slightly below. A simple uplift, maybe a regrooving of some neural paths. I’m the same and not.

Today looks like a good day. (It’s just before noon.) I have no idea what will happen. Maybe it will be a bad day after all. I’m open to it.

Some days I recognize familiar symptoms: waking up with a sweaty sense of dread; feeling dependent on people I’m no longer in a position to be dependent on; playing movies of grievance and hostility in my head. I recognize them at the moment, and being recognized, they leave. I thank them for stopping by, and I thank them for leaving.

I think I’ll go to the gym. I usually tread the elliptical trainer, but when I want to read a book I pedal the exercise bike. Today I’m going to bring—you can’t guess, it’s too weird—the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The new seventh edition just came out last month, with lots of changes to include electronic media, such as how to cite web pages in your bibliography. It’s for my freelance work, and I’m, yes, I’m excited to read it.

I feel wide and open. The whole visible realm is available to me. I’m here, and to be here is to be ubiquitous.

Stepping on the Toes of the Muse

I’ve taken more breaks than I expected to on this blog and now I’m stepping away again, but this time for a welcome reason. I’m putting most of my creative attention into a new project, something I’m writing for myself that I’m not telling anyone anything about.

I’ve been dancing with this blog when suddenly across the room I see another face, and rudely I break away and stride across the floor and when I get close enough I see that she's who brought me here at the beginning. I hold my arms out and we come together gliding and weaving, and I know I’ll step on her toes and breathe on her and lean on her too heavily and not know what to say. It’s always been like that; I’ll never learn properly. But somehow she wants to go home with me.

Stop by again, guys, we’ll put some music on. I don’t know when -– maybe tomorrow, maybe in a couple of months. Seeya. Love you guys.

I'm Ready for My Closeup

Or to put it another way, I'm headed for Los Angeles. I'll be there ten days starting tomorrow --- I'll be back Monday April 23 (Shakespeare's birthday and deathday).

"What will you be doing in LA, Richard?" Well, not making a movie, I'll tell you that. I'm going to attend Byron Katie's School for the Work, a nine-day intensive program that's a kind of psychological Outward Bound, from what I've heard. Nine days of concentrated emotional and interpersonal exercises developed by Katie as stimuli for transformative change, based on what she has learned through her own transformation out of despair into permanent joy.

I first wrote about Katie in this post last year, and whatever impact the post may have had on my readers, it had an overwhelming, astounding effect on me. You see, Katie learned about me through our mutual friend Dilys at Good & Happy, one of my favorite blogs of yore. Unbeknowndst to me, Dilys showed Katie my post and Katie was so moved that a few months afterward, her husband, the great translator Stephen Mitchell, emailed me to invite me to the School as their guest. Something I had dreamed of saving up for had landed in my lap for free, out of the blue! It is the most wonderful act of generosity I have ever received. And it's typical of this enlightened person from whose magisterially simple self-questioning technique I continue to learn so much.

I hope to tell you lots about the School, but not during the nine days themselves. I'm going as a full participant, not an observer or commentator. To do otherwise would be to sabotage the experience by setting myself at a distance from it. I'm not taking my computer. Katie urges us to have as little contact with the outside world as possible during the School. I'll take my cell phone to call my kids, and that's it. (She also urges us to eliminate alcohol, caffeine, and sugar from our diet two weeks before the School, which isn't a problem for me.) Ten days without a computer -- I wonder what that will be like. And nine days with a random roommate -- a diabolically instructive part of the School experience.

So this will be my last post until April 24, and during that time I won't be able to read your blogs either, or comment on them, a loss that grieves me more than a break from blogging for myself. In the meantime, blog well!

Wrong Turn

Just now coming back from driving the kids to school, it happened for the first time ever: I turned onto the block where I used to live rather than the bachelor rental a quarter-mile away where I'm living now. The lights were off, the shades were down, the car was in the driveway. Well, one time in almost four months, that's not bad. Anyway I was distracted by something else as I drove: I was writing. And as I reached the corner I started writing this.

A Valentine from Richard 6.0

Belatedly, in my 50s, I find that I have all the problems of a gifted child. Transitions and big moments are hard for me. Holidays, vacations, house moves, big purchases — I’m liable to ruin them by sulking or retreating or throwing a tantrum. I don’t know what’s expected of me, and I get angry at those who expect something. When a good time is ending, I’m likely to say something that ruins it, perhaps because I don’t know how to say I’m sad it’s ending.

Valentine’s Day has often been a bad day for me, and thus for those who’ve loved me. I have a big romantic streak but I’ve mostly hidden it, out of embarrassment. I never quite believed that I was supposed to murmur endearments, declare my devotion in impassioned phrases, let myself be swept off my feet; stranger still, I never quite believed that others wanted that from me. (“It never entered my mind,” as Sinatra is singing while I type this.) Only in the past few years have I learned to show my romantic self, and I’ve loved it. And I’ve learned that the best thing to do on a special occasion may be precisely the clichéd, corny thing I always looked down. Buy the flowers, buy the candy, light the candles, dim the lights. You don’t have to feel bad because you’re not chartering a jet to fly her to Paris. Or because you’re not as above it all as you thought.

The saving grace amid my ignorance and immaturity has been that I’m able to learn, and to teach myself when no one else will. There’s a saying, “When you lose, don’t lose the lesson,” one of the many adages, mottos, and slogans with which I cement the rough-hewn stones of my personality.

So I keep fixing the bugs and glitches. I calculate that I’ve gone through at least five versions of the Richard software and have just launched the sixth:

1.0: childhood (a naïve, enthusiastic startup)
2.0: adolescence (a huge flop – almost sank the company)
3.0: first marriage (brought me back a long way)
4.0: bachelorhood (this version didn’t stay on the market long, but earned big profits)
5.0: second marriage (I thought this would be a perennial)
6.0: ?

Whoever gets version 6.0 is going to get the benefit of a lot of trial and error, late-night sessions and working breakfasts. But during the upgrade, I don’t have a valentine.

I’m planning to spend it like any other day. Wednesdays are my busiest evenings, come to think of it: group therapy and tai chi. The tai chi attendance will be light, and those of us who make it will throw each other bouquets of wry half-smiles.

Who will be my next valentine? And when? A year from now, five years, ten? I can handle any of those answers. I have good things to learn from being alone, giving myself time for reading, writing, solo walks, and long, recklessly confessional emails. Evenings and weekends of stepping out the door without a plan, but with a smile.

There are special pleasures, though, in observing forms. So I need to ask someone to be my valentine.

Reader, how about you?