I can say anything.
(from last night’s x restrung cortex)
Category Archives: a propos of nothing
friends from the past
An old friend comes to visit, a writer, another native Californian, an iconoclast, a fellow formalist, a devotee to the goddess of rhyme. We haven’t spoken in over a year, but he finds himself in Los Angeles, as I do. We talk politics – I tell him about my intention to work for the Democrats until the election happens, and he shares with me that he spent a week canvassing in Ohio during the primary.
We talk poetry. I show him some of the stuff I’ve written this past year – one extremely formal, one loose and semi-formal (like a winter dance), one simple and prosaic. The semi-formal one, about revenge, is one I realize I wrote for him and his sensibility even when he wasn’t present. He’s one of my ideal readers. He’s always had a good ear for my work, one of the best, but I am moved, as always, by how he feels the emotion of the writing.
I am proud of these poems. I’m moving towards something with them. And he senses, more than anyone I’ve shown the informal poetry to, the void in the heart of them when they are rhymeless. He knows what that means to me.
Being in LA right now must be the right choice, if things like this are going to happen. I vow, foolishly, to find somewhere in this city to read my poetry while I’m here.
things I lost on the road
It’s hard to lose things when you have so little. Before I traveled the country for a year, I would lose things constantly. I had too many of them, and kept none of them in the right places. Now, it’s hard for me to lose things at all – and the ones I did lose are very clear to me.
Ashland: my apartment, my starbase, my location, my illusions of immortality.
San Francisco: Eight hundred dollars, when I drove my friend’s car, with the bike rack still on it, into the roof of a parking garage.
Los Angeles: My heart. I thought I had lost my watch, but I found it again. (I found my heart later, somewhere between Indy and Portland.)
Denver: a Christmas postcard of the Miner family standing in the rain at Lucy’s soccer game.
Indianapolis: my glasses, which I bought in Ashland. My illusions of my invincibility as a director.
Portland: a yoga mat, a Loteria card from Denver with the inscription “La Muerte” on it that Juliette gave me, and a birthday card my brother sent me with a picture of a little girl trying to roll a boulder up a hill.
Ithaca: The airlines lost my guitar, but they found it again.
New York: my illusions of the East Coast.
Hawaii: my delusions about the nature of work and happiness.
WCX: my illusions of eternity.
What I have gained on this trip would take ten full blogs to recount. And I have lost very little. It was definitely worth it.
let’s get this show on the road
a little less conversation and a little more action.
dispatches from georgia
I went running this morning on the Georgia Tech campus, past the sign on Marietta Street marking the surrender of the city of Atlanta. I did laps on the Astroturf, listening to Cisco’s hip-hop mix, which I got from him at the start of this year. It’s humid here, and my hair is curly. Running reminds me how small everything is, how insignificant – breathing in the rhythm of the grass and the asphalt, and realizing your own life is only a breath. And is mine an exhale or an inhale? When I’m not making theater, I don’t know what to make of myself.
Now Zack is making pancakes while Pam and I hang out. They live by a freight shipping train line, and an endless stream of tanks and armored cars on flatbed train cars is running by their window – going to war.
Waiting for news, undistractable, distracted. Pam suggested I read Pratchett’s The Hogfather, which I did. I begin every Pratchett book loving it and then he loses me stylistically at some point. I want to like it more than I do. But I enjoyed this one, particularly this quote:
“The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.”
A point well taken in a time of needless self-importance. I’m going to write my delayed Texas post now.
good fortune
straight from the cookie:
“Don’t worry about money.
The best things in life are free.”
a time of decision
One way or another, the events of the next ten days will determine my future for the next year – and it’ll be nice to have more of a location forecast. Partly West Coast with a chance of East? As of July, I intend, I vow, to have moved somewhere in this country for an entire twelve months.
I am waiting to hear about a couple of large deadlines. If one comes through, I will go where it takes me. If not, I will go where I feel like going. Where that is is still unclear to me, but it will, at least, be only one place at a time.
In the spirit of this year of travel, I’m going to be in Texas, Atlanta, and Seattle, with friends and loved ones, at the time when these deadlines come forward. One way or the other, I’ll still be seeing the people I love.
One way or another, I’ll be directing two readings in Los Angeles in June – one of a short play by Ron Allen, one of a long and messy play adapted, by me, from the Greeks (all of them.)
And one way or the other, I expect to be very hard to reach for the next ten days – to go into the hermit crab’s shell while I wait for the shell of the wanderer crab to fall off.
C-ya, C-train
Yesterday I moved to a new location in Brooklyn, shaving a good half-hour and one train off the commute. My trains are now numbered, not lettered. I’m staying with friends of friends for eight days or so until I leave on vacation. I had a great time with the Pratt/SVA crew on Taaffe, but it’s so much easier to wake up when you can see light through your windows, and hear birds singing. I didn’t realize that waking up without birds in a basement apartment was part of why I’ve felt so sleepy.
It never takes me more than an hour to pack any more.
My name is unable to stop Western culture. (Or toys.)
Dara vs. Barbie: “…in 2002, Iran introduced its own competing dolls — the twins Dara and Sara — who were designed to promote traditional values with their modest clothing and pro-family stories. But the dolls proved unable to stem the Barbie tide.”
Article forthwith.
Dara Weinberg 