Education
I know a seventeen year old who is heady with excitement of reading philosophy and writing papers at a college in an ideal setting. She believes that she can make bad things better. She believes in learning. She feels the beauty of it. She is feeling the soothing pleasure that stimulating her mind conveys to her whole being. The drug. The security of the orderly courses taught by organized teachers. The feeling that the chaos can be controlled, if only it can be studied, outlined, and summed up in a few words—analyzed—and thereby, captured. It’s a roll in the academic hay. Make hay while this sun shines.
I know a ninety-two year old who had that satisfaction seventy-five years ago, not far from the same setting. She recalls that the Smith girls were “sensible.” Now she feels she is no longer of any use. She feels “obsolete.”
The girl was once annoyed by what she calls “dead white males” whose philosophies and lessons she would be forced to learn at certain universities. She is studying those annoying men. The drug. Mrs. T. taught many young women. Men, too. She taught some to be teachers. After she stopped doing that at her university, she taught the wives of graduate students, who were stuck at home with children, some of them, and not much intellectual stimulation. She taught them at her house. Her house is filled with cobwebs now, except every fourth Monday, when a crew of four come to clean. Funny, spider’s webs are woven of silk. Such an elegant material. Natural. Luxurious, when we spin it into cloth. Of course we use the silk trailed out by worms, not the gossamer webs. They are not so attractive. Dust collects on them in houses. The dust and the webs grow mold, and the mold gives out an acid odor.
The wives are gone. The husbands have graduated. The bus service to Mrs. T.’s house has been cut back. It would be difficult for them to get there anyway. The teachers at her nearby university are teaching ecstatic students, some of them. The same lessons, most of them, that she taught, written by the same dead white males, and some still living, and even some written by females. Not much new is being taught. We haven’t learned the old stuff very well yet; it would be foolhardy to learn too much new. It’s hard to tell what will be thought worthy of keeping and following years from now. So it’s a better bet to keep on learning the old wisdoms, literature, philosophies. Histories are useful. They don’t change much, except in interpretation. But they repeat, don’t they? So all you need to learn are a few patterns, and you’ll soon see that humankind is not very imaginative; it just repeats, in different languages.
Mrs. T. is happy that the president is trying to reduce the costs of medical care and to provide insurance for all. The teenager is glad, too. Both support efforts to save the planet. Both want to see all the hungry fed and homeless house. I wonder where the young lady will be when she is ninety-two. Was our world very different in 1918 from this world? Did the learning help us avoid bad things? The teenager doesn’t care. It’s her turn, however it turns out. “I want to try,” she says. “We’ll see,” she says. Sensible.
Nuclear Energy
September 28, 1993
Chicago
Daniel J. Travanti
The infernal internal combustion engine is one of the worst ideas man ever had. Nuclear energy—energy, not just the nuclear bomb or missile—is the more frightening and more destructive.
Prometheus stole fire from the gods and never got over it. He was chained forever—in pain—from an eagle clawing at his heart. He lived. This didn’t kill him, it only hurt him forever. In the 1940’s, we stole fire from the gods again, for real. The parable had done no good. The warning wasn’t good enough, because the pain we are feeling is subtle—not to me, but to too many, obviously—and it will come like the poison it is; seeping over time, centuries, into the earth, water, air, everywhere. The poison is going to hurt us forever.
During the 40’s, films were made. They were awkward, homey, reassuring, messages from “experts” who told us that we had nothing to fear from nuclear radiation. No one could be an expert on the subject. It was too early. Almost nothing was known about radiation. Today, little is known, but still, the experts declare that all is safe. We’ve had Three Mile Island and other examples to the contrary, but still the experts tell us it’s safe. For years now, they have been telling us that “low grade” nuclear waste is safe, because it’s not as powerful. It’s low. That’s the reassurance. No one bothered to ask what the term means. No one understood nuclear energy in the first place. We felt we understood the bomb. That was simple. It was big, it created a huge mushroom, it sent a brilliant light. It had to be dropped on the stubborn enemy, to save lives. It had to be dropped again, just to be sure. It worked. Nuclear bombs were dangerous. But the waste? No one talked about it, yet.
Then when they begin to talk about it, they said it could be contained. Some of the same people, the experts from those first films and new “experts” reassured us again, a little more professionally. They knew more, they said now. Finally people saw the figures. Low grade means that the waste will deteriorate in only about 500 years. That’s all. Nothing to worry about. And it can be contained, in concrete tombs, buried deep in the earth. People who grow tobacco say that smoking tobacco is not harmful to our health. There is no real proof. People who grow nuclear plants say that nuclear energy is not harmful, and nuclear waste won’t hurt you. There isn’t enough proof. Lies we agree to live by. Lies we shall die by.
The parable is not just a warning that might perhaps dissuade some, a lesson, an aid. The parable is a prophecy also. Its prediction is coming true. Not just that humankind will steal fire despite his inability to control its force, but that humans will not care, won’t believe it. Or, if they do, will defy the destruction anyway, willing to pay in pain. But if the pain does not come now—immediately—there is no pain. The future doesn’t hurt, especially if you’re not in it. And if it hurts others, that is only a myth to us now. Profit is now. And profit can be made from nuclear plants. The price is too high. The price cannot be paid. Usury is not a strong enough word to describe the exorbitant cost. Irresponsibility is strong enough to describe what we are guilty of. Insensitivity, too, that’s strong enough. But there is no word strong enough to describe the insanity and ugliness of not facing the truth. Our egos are paradoxical. They are small, bloated, powerless blobs puffed up into gigantic, sickly, overbearing, relentless monsters.
We harness nothing. Not if the force ultimately releases us and lives to kill us all. It’s only a matter of time. There are better ways now, but America seems to have a penny-ante, gimme-some-now-and-we’ll-worry-about-the-rest-later, don’t get in my way, you can’t stop me from makin’ an honest buck-kinda mind.
Unchain me. I didn’t ask for this.
Actors
September 27, 1993
Chicago
Daniel J. Travanti
Actors act. They react. Act, the first three letters of action. We take action. But why? What’s it all about, Alfie? Heaven knows, Mr. Allison. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I do.
In this absurd world—no, in the absurd world of human beings, because the planet is sensible, sensitive, determined, balanced, and eternal, I insist on hoping—the only way I can make a living with a full heart, no regrets, and sometimes even complete satisfaction, is to be an entertainer. I am a creature of delights; a clown, a poet, a buffoon, a villain, a hero, a lover, a dreamer, a pragmatist, a revolutionary, a victim. But when I act, I am all things to all people, depending on the limitations of the play. I operate on three principles: order, symmetry, and control. I will act, play, portray anyone. As long as the world—the little round world I live in as the character—is orderly, symmetrical, and whole. Someone writes it. Real places, real furniture, real trees, cups, and people—but not all substantial, only shadow words—all on an impossibly small space, a page, pages. Pages bearing a gigantic world that can be contained in my mind, in yours.
A person is written. I breathe him. Of course I have nothing to give him, nothing with which to inhabit him, but me. I am he. I believe that so strongly that it is true. All good actors simply believe. As a child believes. It just is so, whatever’s happening. It will be for the audience, too. Because everyone is always a child still, no matter whether she thinks so or doesn’t even realize it. But why in Heaven’s name do I want this? Why does the viewer?
Life is haphazard. At worst, it’s chaotic and painful. At best, it’s unpredictable and pleasant. It is never in my control. It’s never in yours, no matter how much you believe it is. Life—natural life—is poetic. It is always harmonious and satisfyingly clear, pantingly alive and complete. Nature is perfect. Human beings are messy, confused, and scared. But not completely stupid. Human beings long for nature’s order. So they write poetry. They paint pictures. They write novels, essays, histories, life stories, signs, slogans, and laws. They build houses, monuments, workrooms, and even little dwellings for smaller creatures. They map out roads, mountains, boundaries, and borders. They write plays that will include all of the above, full complex characters, human beings, little models to inhabit the miniature worlds of the plays.
Human beings admire weather. We admire it so that we humanize it, as if that were the supreme compliment. We have a word for that—anthropomorphism. We anthropomorphize the storm: it’s vicious. The earthquake is destructive. The wind is unrelenting. The waves are treacherous. The tide is irresistible. The sky is cheerful, the clouds are gloomy, the weather threatening, the hurricane nasty, the cyclone whirling insanely out of control. The breeze is cheery; it’s swirling gaily, it’s soft, caressing, romantic. Human beings admire animals even more. The love birds are romantic. Dogs are faithful, bees are busy, ants are industrious, owls look wise, at least, if they aren’t truly. Foxes are wise, many smaller creatures and even whales are affectionate, dolphins are intelligent (like us, hyuck, hyuck, lucky stiffs), but snakes are treacherous (like some storms and winds are snowstorms, right?) and tigers, lions, wildebeests, and hawks are vicious. Poor, dumb human beings. So naïve, so silly, so childish. No, that’s not fair to children, meaning all of us once upon a time, and some of us still and still fewer of us, namely all actors at least, for all time. We want to belong, we are so discombobulated, so fractured, confused, fearful, and disorderly. So we imitate the storms, all weather, all animals, plants, and even the “restless sands” and shifting, waving seas of grass, wheat, and fields of flowers. The reason we attribute to them our emotions and thoughts, even, is that we need them, crave them, need to claim them in order to feel that we belong to the universe. That’s O.K. But we are confused. The actors—with the blessing of the writers—dispel confusion and bring kinship, harmony, integration, order, symmetry, and control. Out of kilter, out of nature, we want in. So first, we name the orderly forces and creatures after us, as if that will make them family and make us welcome. All of us One. But the wisest of us know that this just ain’t so.
So the writers and actors—all the entertainers—reassemble all the forces. They make plays, skits, ballets, symphonies and play the music, storms and stalkings, mating calls and dances, flights and gallops and swoops, heat and chills, rages and caresses, loves and loyalties, hatreds and compassions, confusions and certainties, in orderly constructions. We actors reintegrate, repeatedly. The reintegration never gets done once and for all, remember. We must reconstitute over and over. We must reorder on a regular basis. People who don’t, go on feeling confused and out of sorts. Out of nature. Lost. Actors find lost people and herd them back, yes, like lost sheep. And maybe actors are the most lost sheep of us all. The neediest. So we do it ourselves because we are desperate for love, for harmony, and the transcendent peace of merely, once and for all, belonging and mattering. Mattering, oh great cosmic force, whatever thou may be, one with the wind, rain, tides, all other creatures, rocks, and EARTH. We take everyone, I mean everyone, along.
You want it too, so you come. Before the ultimate catharsis, though, before the great cosmic ultimate epiphany, what are the immediate understandable attractions of this work?
First, it’s playing. Play acting, I call it. At first, it’s haphazard and that’s part of the fun. At first, it’s very simple and that’s easy. We imitate people we know. We pretend to be someone else we recognize. We have two emotions: happy and sad. WE always start by making people laugh, or scaring them. We like to play villains, but everyone wants to be a hero. Wise and understanding. No one likes to make a fool of himself, except born clowns, and they emerge early. They’re almost always goofy, unstoppable kidders, relentlessly silly. Later, they find it hard to get people to take them seriously. They may be very serious spirits, and that can be exasperating. Everyone likes to play dress-up. Disguises are everybody’s favorite.
The first disguise is a hat or mask. The rest follows. Makeup is a little harder to come by, but lipstick, rouge, and powder are easy. Making faces is better. Real acting will turn out to be an internal change. Faces adjust, flicker, and challenge, please and surprise alternately, scare and attract, according to the emotions that are painting them.
We think we’re being people, but we’re really being emotions. We use words right away, but the ideas come later. WE need only simple plots and simpler stories. Characters are two dimensional at best. Later, all the writing will be more complex. We are heading for the THEATER. Serious constructions. Serious business.
It’s a serious business because it incorporates all the arts. In opera, the plot matters but not so much the words: except as simplistic conveyors of the story and the basic emotions. There is little subtlety of emotion in opera; little shading of motives or actions. The emphasis is on the music—even more on the voice. The sets are important, but they needn’t be as carefully realized as the settings of complex dramas. The actor moves, in a dramatic dance. The actor speaks in poetic prose sometimes, in prose and in poetry, whatever form will best convey the meaning of the play. Lights illuminate the play and paint the locales to harmonize with the theme; the tone of the tale. Furniture is carefully chosen, costumes too. Every prop is selected to enrich the meaning. The actor even sings, a little or a great deal, if the drama warrants it. This is the most human, most nearly universal of the arts. Drama—meaning comedy too, of course—means to be everything in the way of recreated life, but not just human life. It intends to restructure existence as humans see it. Each drama is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying everything. Maybe because we know that it is howling in the wilderness, whistling in the dark, pissing in the wind. It’s a consolation.
A consolation prize? That means something given in lieu of the thing actually wanted. A substitute. I mean, it consoles. It is the very thing wanted, needed. We need to keep understanding. We need to be reminded. We need to keep reaffirming our existence and the meaning of it all. It never comes clear once and for all. So we repeat. To make sense, to make order, to reharmonize, in imitation of nature. We regroup repeatedly, in theater. We reassert ourselves. We distract ourselves with laughs and purge ourselves in tears and anger. We feel less lonely to see others like ourselves. We are enthralled to see others different from us in other, new circumstances. We are transported to other times. We are shown our own times intensified. Sometimes we are shown ourselves as is, and are disturbed by it. But it can be a comfort. And there can be something about a particular actor that soothes. The actor is a combination of qualities that please. The actor emits a personality, an aura, a feeling, feelings, sounds, expressions, tones, a presence: effects that give the viewer comfort. The actor then is all the best that people want and feel, the fullest representation of humankind. Combined and harmonious, not fragmented, confusing, disjointed, vague. To see an actor who appears to be whole is a consolation. It consoles one. And yes, the actor is the substitute for you, perhaps. The actor does is for you, makes sense of it all. That’s entertaining. The actor is essential. The playwright is not. But the actor without the play is not much. The actor is the voice. The playwright provides the song. In order to have a hit record, the actor must have a good song to sing, in a good arrangement.
For the actor, the singing is therapeutic. When an actor is correct, he is exactly and only in this moment. He achieves the ancient goal, being here and now. Undistracted by sounds or other sights, riveted on the truth of his fantasy. It’s peace. It’s clear order. It’s perfect bliss. This rejuvenates and energizes. It keeps actors enthusiastic. It’s this childlike enthusiasm that keeps actors youthful. We think they are prettier and handsomer than they actually are, because they seem joyful. This is one characteristic that is so attractive in them. It’s one reason, I know now, that I felt actors were immortal. They were just too lively to die. They couldn’t. They were too wonderful to end. We end. Sometimes, with a whimper. While we live, we may whimper a great deal more than we like.
Of course, an actor you like is immortal. Like any loved one. But because the actor has touched so many, the actor seems more powerful. The actor endures as a representative of all of us. People make the actor important. The actor agrees to the bargain. The actor needs the bargain. But the actor pays for the privilege. It has always been a curious aspect of the deal, that the public seems to have mixed feelings about the actor. The actor is admired, and even worshipped. The actor is envied, and hated even, by some. The public is ambivalent. We want the actor to shine for us. We want to know the pain the actor is suffering, we long to see the dark side, we rush to read the dirt. We are almost relieved to find out that the life we imagine and envy is ugly, filled with problems. The actor can be our sacrificial lamb, no, human, an Inca dedication to the salacious gods. The actor pays our price for us for seeking immortality, thrilling to immortal longings.
The actor’s price is high. The actor may be the greatest escape artist, who helps us escape. A dual felony. But actually, it’s honest and useful. Some actors know very well that they can’t stand being themselves. One famous actor, a legend, thanked the public and the American Film Institute for allowing him to be other people so successfully, because he had always found it unbearable to be only himself. He couldn’t wait to get to the theater for three years straight to play a hero he admired. The actor’s price for escaping is sometimes failed marriage, failed parenthood, failed friendships. The actor pays the price of humiliation, rejection, doubt, fear, and confusion of playing the waiting game. Patience is trying and promises nothing. Rejection is sometimes the cruelest sort. It’s indifferent, not merely cruel. It shuns. The worst punishment in some religions is shunning. No one knows you. No one even sees you. Phone calls are not answered. Even if you are in the same room with producers or directors and fellow actors—they don’t hear you, if you are out. If you are “in,” you may be praised. You may be respected. But not even respect in an actor’s world is impenetrable, and it’s certainly not immortal.
Our profession throws away talent. To begin with, it’s simply not very good at detecting talent in the first place. Maybe that’s because it isn’t looking for talent, only appeal. Only the appeal of beauty, sexiness, eccentricity, oddness of a milder order, cuteness, “presence.” Sometimes talent is actually recognized and given roles to act that are worthy of it. Often, there isn’t material good enough to match the talent, or too little of it to go around. The actor is seldom a gifted playwright, too. The actor is at the mercy of someone else. The actor does not wish to do business. But the actor is in show business. Still, no actor I know relishes the business work, the making of deals, the scheming that some say is necessary, the bookkeeping. Even when an actor succeeds and makes plenty of money, the actor does not want to be a business person—whether good at it or not. But we are forced to be; to invest, go into debt, to sign documents, make financial decisions, choose business managers, accountants, advisers. We need advice on how to choose advisers. Where do you start? Where does it all end? Sometimes in being thrown away. But we aren’t the only talents to be gotten rid of. In recent decades, our profession threw away half a dozen great film directors who had a great deal to offer, still. We—no, the commercial forces, those indifferent powers that count profit, the only good and youth, the only hope—tossed out the full talent of Frank Capra, Vincente Minnelli, Fred Zinneman, David Lean, Stanley Kramer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and others. Many more actresses were sent home before they’d lost all their charms. Many actors, too.
Should this risk be counted a fair bargain? Considering the prizes, the large amounts of money, the acclaim, the privilege that can be achieved. Perhaps the pitfalls are not too deep, too treacherous. Nonsense. The cosmic price for carrying the fantasy, for bringing one of the most satisfying comforts to the spirit, for this witchcraft powerful enough to attract adulation and acclaim, is usurious. The fact is, few actors make money. Few actors are ever famous. The burden of fame is backbreaking, for the few. The burden of anonymity is carried by most actors; some with resignation, some with resentment, some with relief. Yes, some actors would just as soon work in small places, are happy to be playing the game of escape, disappearing while in plain sight, and making a decent living. They have never wanted to be hounded and recognized, to be business people, to be frightened by the responsibility, to feel like moving targets of the public or the press.
Some of us simply long to play great roles—or at least good ones—in memorable plays or, better yet, in films . . . because they will live longer. We don’t act for ourselves, though we ought to learn. If we wish to have some peace of mind that in the end of all, we do it for ourselves, our own need, and to our own satisfaction. But we do it for the public. We make spectacles of ourselves. We want to be seen by everyone and to be accepted by all, or most, anyway, at the very least. If an actor is frustrated enough in these attempts, he learns to settle for just working steadily for the most part and having decent work to do from time to time.
In this increasingly absurd world, acting is the only thing I care to be doing. It saves me. It lets me go away and come back refreshed. It lets me enter myself, explore my own depths, and see what might frighten me if I could never get at it. One’s unknown demons, the paper tigers, the mysteries that threaten if only by their invisibility, remain hidden from most people. Actors have a chance to look inside. Sometimes, it’s enough to see and know that the emotions deep down there are not ugly or life threatening. Sometimes, it takes exploring them to find out they can be borne. Sometimes, finding them tells us we’re complicated, and that can be useful. People who can’t ever touch their emotions can stay frightened of them forever. Sometimes, facing things inside—that we feared might be horrible—shows us they are not. Sometimes, we experience emotions that were always there, but not erupting—not reaching a full boil—only bubbling and irritating, scaring us with the threat of explosion. Getting in there, we can meet them, have them, know them. Actors learn to make friends with inimical feelings. We use them, consciously or unconsciously. The actor’s talent is for using emotions the actor doesn’t even know are in there. Acting is intuitive. It has a force of its own. It can give more than its own inspiration. Happiness can sleep inside. Some people don’t know it’s in there. The sheer pleasure of leaping into fantasy can make an actor happy.
Passport
September 15, 1993
Daniel J. Travanti
I was confused by the “03” under expiration date on my new passport. The passport is green. The print is strong, neat, and sure of itself. The pages are official, formal, proud. It feels like a serious, demanding document. The number didn’t make sense. How could they have made a mistake; marred the perfect surface? All the way up in the elevator, then I got it. Ten years from now! It’ll be sixty-three. It will be 2003. Two thousand. The year TWO THOUSAND.
The House
September 15, 1993
I’m beginning to see when I’m in my house, I feel that I must work. It’s not a place of relaxation. I’ve joked about being a “prisoner of the house.” When I try to leave, the house breaks down. It hurts and needs me. It cries out, “He’s trying to get out, clog up, pipe, rot, step, break, anything, break so he’ll have to stay.” Here, I can read. Here I can just sit.
Forgetfulness
September 9, 1993
Daniel J. Travanti
There is this habit of forgetfulness going around. Some have just discovered that children in the kitchen with their moms can be enjoyable and edifying. To advertisers.
Take your kids along. Let them help you with “food preparation”. FOOD PREPERATION? We mean cooking, don’t we? Baking, making a casserole, salad, sandwich? Is this new? Were children not always in the kitchen; helping grandma and mommy, fooling around with big or little sister, even in Caesar’s Rome? Have not tribal mothers, village wives, single aunts, and fathers always taken along their children to hunt, garden, and forage for food? We forget. We don’t learn.
We don’t learn, that’s the problem. We learn that meat is harmful to your health. We announce that heart disease is still the number one killer: up to forty-five percept of all deaths are caused by it. We hear that salt is not salubrious. We are told by study groups that sugar is not nutritious; that it damages blood vessels and body tissues in general. We “learn” these things. But we don’t. the people who announced the facts may have learned them. We haven’t.
We don’t believe them, I supposed. We don’t get it. We won’t.
Not only are we unwilling to change, we are unwilling to see that we forget. We knew once that grandparents and grandchildren belong together. We once knew that mothers belonged in the kitchen with their children, in their bedrooms, too, and in their laps. That mothers, grandfathers, and little boys and girls enjoyed being together. We don’t remember.
So we send away grandma and grandpa, early. We feed our children sugar, meat, and salt—lots of it—and we discover that taking our children into our kitchens to help can be fun. Taking our children along. We have taken wrong roads for so long, we can only mislead. We have forgotten so much, that we can only misinform. It may not be too late.
Grammar is good. It helps. Clear speech is good. It helps to communicate. Exercise is not vain; it helps us to move, stand, sit, and think. Nutritious food is not exotic, it’s the best fuel. It’s not dull, it’s tastier than bad food and more interesting. Conserving water is not an imposition, it’s necessary to our survival; so is recycling. Composting is recommended, too, for everyone’s sake. Reading good books strengthens the mind; the spirit too. Savoring beauty can be entertaining as well as edifying. Eating flesh is dangerous to our health. Eating fiber is not.
Pantries big enough to walk into are good. Electric cars are better. Solar cars are best. Front porches are fine. Garages should be hidden. In the best of all possible worlds, they ought to be unnecessary. Shrubs are good. Trees are better. Classical music is not strange and difficult to appreciate. Rock and roll is okay. Bach, Beethoven, Verdi, Benny Goodman, and Ray Charles make it better. None is difficult to “understand.”
May we remember. May we learn, relearn, keep learning all the time. May we regard our lives as complete enterprises, requiring maintenance of mind, body, spirit, and surroundings. May we take responsibility for our own lives. May we pass it on.
Books
When I moved to Los Angeles in the 60’s, I liked the sight of a red barn on La Cienega Boulevard. It was a bookstore. They sold used books and new, old ones, first editions, and rare copies. I went in once and felt overwhelmed. I felt that way when I was a boy and went to the Simmons Library in my hometown in Wisconsin. There were so many books to read that I was frozen. Why even begin when I couldn’t possibly read them all? Where do I start? I loved the idea of books. I read the jackets. I read the quotes on the paper covers.
Books seemed friendly. Books seemed serious, but entertaining. There was nothing frivolous about books. Nothing shallow. So many activities seemed useless. People read badly written dailies, weeklies, and rags. Some books were not good, sure, but BOOKS were nourishing, substantial, reassuring, lasting, warm, protective, and beautiful. They had a way of putting things. They put thoughts in order.
When a graceful paragraph conveys a clear pattern of thought, out of a troubled mind or a happy spirit; when a description of a place is so precise that you are in it; when an emotion comes floating off the page on words buoyant, lithe, and confident as a flying carpet on a certain mission; when a turn of a phrase splashes your face like a cool spray from a waterfall on a hot day; when a conversation is witty and penetrates as deep as a stiletto knife, barely tearing the psychic flesh and leaving an eerily pleasurable wound; when the suspense pulls you around the corner of the next page steadily as the irresistible pressure of a team of tug-of-warriors; when a place you’ve seen seems more vivid dressed in descriptive words; when the book leaves an impression that it was a complete world perfectly ordered and you know that you’ll want to visit again. When you experience all this, you know the thrill of books.
I know it. I read them now. The rhythms of life and eternal complaints satisfy me. Novels are about problems. The complaining complaints poetically put, points firmly made, identified precisely, and in a clear purifying light can brighten the gloom. Knowing someone understands so well that she can put it just right, makes you less lonely. Seeing an orderly account of chaos eases the stress. We are in this together, the writer and me. You and I.
We don’t communicate very well. So we are frightened. Fear makes us angry, and anger makes us do bad things. Books make my day. Books make my nights.
On location in Africa once, I read seven, well, six, and one on the plane and partially near Lake Naivasha. Under the low sky near wildebeest, antelope, hippos, giraffes, acacia trees and birds; books between scenes in front of the camera kept me fresh. I smelled the land; saw and heard everything. My senses were bees buzzing, bats swarming, breezes swirling. Books generated an intense light in my brain. The words felt as natural as the flora and each creature. Their worlds blended with everything on the plateau where we worked. Ants and beetles, pages and words, were equally alive.
Being alive makes my day, but only if I’m not afraid. Being alive means being awake and not dead to the world. In peace. Peace of mind I presume to say is everyone’s wish—well, except odd individuals who say they thrive on turmoil, tension, living on the edge. . . but then, those contradictory conditions may be peace itself to certain mysterious minds. People who write books are obsessed with order. . . and peace of mind.
Writers face problems and deal with them. They argue and manipulate. They set up and tear down. They judge and sometimes condemn. They tell the story out of an unknowable store of thoughts and feelings. This inner grain bin is a jumble. It’s an underground mountain that shifts, runs, spills, and emits from its substantial center puffs of dust. Like a silo full of wheat. You can’t pick out a particular nugget, but the writer doesn’t need to. The writer broadcasts handfuls of words that end in arranged fields. The problems proliferate. The field yields an orderly harvest.
And just as food is light—the sun itself—words illuminate. Books have always been illuminating manuscripts. The calligraphy isn’t nearly as bright as the words. Decorate early texts were embellished, perhaps, but their words bring the light. Books are as nourishing as the sun, but only in good portion; that is, good form, full bodied, richly constituted, the whole grain, not stripped. They nourish the inside, they warm it.
It’s a matter of staying alive inside as well as out. To some people, it’s just passing time. Some people escape into books. Not a bad place to go. Some say it relaxes them. It does that to me, as exercise does. Sometimes it puts me to sleep, but not really—only by way of satisfying a craving—which brings peace and rest. History books are fiction. I know that’s not the official party line. But they’re made up, aren’t they? Who can know what anyone said or really did or exactly how? Biographies are even more decidedly fictitious. I know that sounds wrong. Autobiographies just must be a little more accurate than accounts of hundred year old events by total strangers. Even biographies by a stranger, about someone the stranger knows or talks to, must be closer to the actual truth. The actual truth; there’s the rub.
Actuality is only that. It can’t be written. It can only be experienced. But that doesn’t mean that the person experiencing is capable of telling it accurately. Even if the person starts to tell it only weeks later—usually, it’s not for years that the writer takes it up again—things have changed. The filter has strained the event over and over again. It can’t be the same thing that happened. If you ask two people to write an account, well, the variations will be downright strange because of so many discrepancies. There’s no getting at the truth, if the truth be known. So it’s all fiction.
But fiction is reality. Its own. And not only its own. It is a careful rearrangement of details from the inner life of an observer. It is a serious attempt to explain formally what happens haphazardly. This can make the written account more than just the accidental truth. It can reveal more than the actual even could.
Great Lakes
Chicago
Great Lakes
The lake is long. Lake Michigan is only the second largest but it’s an ocean. From Lakeshore Drive, it is clean and rippled, detritus, dirty wet sand. At the water’s edge, the sand is washed. On the sidewalk there was paper and plastic, jagged broken cups, and white forks are smudged, twisted, grainy, agonized. There’s glass. Glass diamonds—tiny, chunky, everywhere. I imagine the glass gang sneaking out at night just to carpet the concrete. You see it from the bike. You try to avoid it. Avoid the grains of sand, why don’t you? People wander, dropping. Their feet wear sand socks unravelling. They’re carrying dripping ice cream bars and lidded paper soda cups, sipping, licking, and tiptoeing through the glass mine field. The beach seems safer.
It's uneven, gouged, spread out like a wrinkled huge sheet, bumpy, disturbed, and restless. So are the people. Wandering. Some get wet. Many young people are yelling.
It’s quieter across the wide street on your left as you travel north. Lakeshore Drive is a boulevard of the world. Confident brick stone and glass semi-skyscrapers are the castle wall. Inside, some of the youngsters on the beach live next door to people who own the large vessels out on the waves. The sidewalk is clear and neat, the grass is combed, the streets are protected from congestion by warning signs, some doormen wait to help. Trees line most of the way. Behind the rampart is a village world. It’s startling, amusing, and welcoming. There are low gabled hundred year old miniature gothic townhouses, painted wooden carriage houses, and newer brick apartments. Some have neat little front gardens. There’s lots of gravel and rock islands separate evergreens from annual flowers. The wrought iron fences and gates are protective and cordial at the same time. I read many plaques. There are societies, institutes, and offices. They give help or knowledge. Books are visible from many dens and libraries. Drapes are pulled back from high ceilinged parlors. These people live graciously.
Here and there is a clapboard homely relic. The owner won’t sell to the developer. The occupants like things simpler and quiet. These narrower streets are clean and canopied. The trees shelter, guard, and cool their emissions, while they dilute toxic fumes. Garages are in some of the bowels of the elegant retreats. Enclaves within the castle walls; of the counts and earls? This is Chicago. It’s on a Great Lake. It’s the Midwest of the United States of America. It’s Europe, of course. It’s the Old World reconstituted, renewed only a hundred years ago here.
It's a shy place. People seem peaceful, and they help you. Store clerks don’t seem to be anxious to make a sale. Mayb they are, but they’re patient and cordial. It’s Old World charm and security with a modern twist. Proud but modest, I’d say. Is it the security of the wide Illinois plains or knowing that it’s the hub of a universe? The railroads all met here, and the airport may still be the world’s busiest. The crossroads. The world’s tallest building isn’t muscled by other giants. But it’s the leader of a gang of individualists. They’re a mixed crew of triangular, rectangular, circular, twin, skinny, single, lone thick, squat wide and thrusting, stately, demure, graceful, dynamic, solid and whimsical and silly structures. It’s an architectural forest in which you can see the trees. They’re thick-skinned and thin-sheeted, orange, charcoal, silvery, glassy black, gray, white, creamy, tan, sooty and clean.
It's a city risen literally from the ashes. In 1871, they say, a cow caused a conflagration. What I see of the Gold Coast and the Loop grew much later, more calmly after the first rush up out of the flames. The new pioneers. I’m here pioneering a project shot, assumed, recorded and orchestrated entirely in town. It’s a local craft which will tour the world.
When I Was A Boy
Chicago
When I was a boy, movies set in Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin made me sad. I thought I couldn’t watch them. They were dark. Those places seemed very far away. I felt I might be stuck in one of them. The lights were dim. I wanted to turn up the lights, add some, cheer things up. The stories were grim.
Usually, they were about lovers and secrets. Often, they were about spying. He knew, but he wasn’t sure of her. She suspected he didn’t really love her, but only wanted to know what she knew. She’s protecting someone. No, not a lover, but a friend from the past who helped her when no one else would. But why didn’t she just explain? He would have understood. He’s a monster, you know. No, no, I can’t listen to this, that’s not the man I knew. You do love him. Only like a brother. I owe him so much. Think of it this way; even now he is giving me you, maybe the first real love of my life. She’s lying. He’s confused.
I’m confused. I never could grasp what all the fuss was about. WHY DIDN’T PEOPLE JUST TALK AND TELL THE TRUTH?!! Well, there would have been no movie. And why didn’t someone turn up the lights, for Heaven’s sake.
They wore hats. Both men and women. Hats with feathers, hats that slouched over one eye, and coats—especially in the rain. Sounds of rain, wheels in the rain, screeching around corners, and sirens. Those eerie sirens and that Ooh, AHH, Ooh, AHH, Ooh, AHH. I thought, I’m so glad our sirens aren’t that grating and scary. And ours came down brightly lit streets. But that was another thing . . . even in the daylight those cities were dark. All that dark old stone, those old buildings. Courtyards, and those inner lobbies or foyers just off those sooty streets. Someone would ring the bell, a squawky buzz was heard, the door pushed open and you were in a black hallway. Sometimes there was a glass-enclosed “lift.” It was always the lift, not the elevator. There was wrought iron and you could see the cables. Often a door person appeared, partially, from a doorway. A short old woman or a hunched middle aged man; sometimes with warts, wary, toothy, or toothless, dark. Of course, these movies were almost always in black and white, the better to film shadows and make stark effects and emphasize all that darkness.
I would swear these streets, buildings, and apartments were smelly, too; musty. Smell-o-scope would have revealed this old odor, a scent of history, oldness, dank tired Old World.
Maybe that was it. It wasn’t the New World. It wasn’t Hollywood, where even dark stories had a cleanliness, a neatness, and bright lights. Except, there were those films noir. Those angry tales of American corruption. They made me sad, too. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the problem was. If one particular person had only confessed, everything would have been all right. Adults were always in such trouble. I empathized too much. If she was lying, I wanted to warn him. If the lawyers were trying to railroad a guy, I squirmed and throbbed. I wanted to jump into the screen and save him. I wanted to be in the alley when they jumped the guy, and hiding in the closet when the bad guys were coming to get the girl. Oh, maybe the worst was when the good guy was going back to the bad woman. She was seducing him and he was buying it. She wanted to kiss him, and I knew, I just knew, she was going to stab him. NOOOO, I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want anyone to know I was so involved.
So, what do I do? I become an actor.
I was scared. New York was big, bad, and noisy. I said it was exciting. It scared me. I entered small apartments and felt strangled. One apartment, in a new building, was on a corner and I realized too late that the builders had squeezed the hallways to make the rooms. I hurried through to get to my small rooms. They were in the back. I could see a bit of green foliage from the bedroom window, but little else. I had wanted to escape my small town, where the sky was big and grass and trees were everywhere; you could see out of every window other houses, people, streets, and clouds. So I ran to a giant city with no sky, squished corridors, tiny back rooms, and sat there itching to get out. I spent most of my time trotting around the city. The New World sirens were spooky enough.
But I was out, and I stayed out. How could I ever settle here? I couldn’t and I never did. I swam. I charged around. I would walk very fast downtown or across Central Park. One night, I did that and told my roommates (I had them for about a year, the first there) and they screamed that I was never to do that again. Do what?! Walk across the Park at midnight on a snowy night, when it was an icicled, powdery, never-ending moonscape. Never, never EVER do that again. O.K. I would flee my digs and speed generally in the direction of my agent’s office. I looked at shop windows. I seldom went in. I sweated. I arrived at the office and talked to Jane E. Brown Alderman. Janey. She was sweet and bright. She is. I’d bring lemon drops, apples. Then I’d go to an audition in the Village. Afterward, I’d phone her and say I was on my way back. I’d walk. The game was to touch no one. I chose the Garment District route because the racks of clothes scattered all over the place. Bodies flew between vans, cars, racks, and trucks—it was a demanding gamut. I ran it. I touched nothing, no person or thing at all. I sweated. I got back to the office. Janey said, ‘You didn’t walk.’ I did too. You didn’t. You took a cab. Part way. I did not, I walked the whole way from the second I hung up. . . You’d better sit down. No, I need another appointment or a job or. . . I drank every night just to stay down, to sleep. Medicine. Ha.
I did not see those foreign movies then. Not the same kind. I saw THE CRANES ARE FLYING, THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS (which sounded like a train engine sounding its whistle), THE APARTMENT, JULES ET JIM, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (I thought it was pretentious nonsense; some people still think so, but I learned the match stick game from it: well, from “Time Magazine” sometime later, actually. No one can beat me at it—but it is a trick). I wandered around. I was lost.
When I was a boy, Sundays made me sad. It was quiet. Radios played opera music, televisions showed Bishop Sheen or someone like that. I never liked the Comics section of the paper. People went to church, and I felt irreverent. I went, but not whole-heartedly. I went to please my devout stepmother. Or, I left the house and ambled about, letting her think I was in church. I was, on my own. Lately, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to make a movie in Vienna, Munich, or Prague. Warsaw or Berlin might be fun.
Chicago
I suppose I ought to be flattered that some people think of me as a dapper, controlled, smooth, strong, reliable, orderly man. This new fellow is off-the-rack neat enough; volatile, rough edged, reliable, organized, but loose with not dapper diction, but a plain Midwestern flat homely tongue. Both men have twinkles in their eyes, but the new guy smiles big and easily, and looks for the jokes. Some people will be happy to see me this way. Will they too think that I was born this way? Or will it be apparent that both men are creations out of me?
This is a time of changes for me.
I’m demonstrative, not docile. I will be relieved to show this looseness to many at one time. Maybe professionals will see, at last. Maybe they’ll put two and two together and get one, me, who can act anyone. Maybe they won’t. I know. That has to be enough.
A thunderstorm came slathering through about any hour ago. It licked at these high windows, clattered and soughed. I kept thinking that the building was shaking, or should be. It was so insistent. The sensation was erotic. So I took off my clothes and typed. I am pornographic, but safe.
Three hotel signs atop three tall buildings are very orange. I wonder if they’ve seen washed vivid. I’ll bet. Other signs on many rooftops and thousands of windows seem glittery. Cleaned up. I’ll clean myself up soon. Before getting naked, I went to the gym one floor up and sweated. Now I’m cool, dry, free, and worldly. It’s a kick.
Tomorrow I’ll play scenes. I’ll think the thoughts: What am I hear for; what do I mean to say; say it, and move on. I’ll have the words in my head, but I’ll speak the thoughts and be believable and interesting. Better be. Someone else does that. I’m always relieved he knows how. I don’t worry about it. I expect him to do it. It’s so pleasing. It’s complicated and simple at once. It’s nothing and much. It’s entertaining and edifying. It’s a thoughtful thing. It’s all feeling, mostly intuition, actually. It’s a microworld I control. The writer has encircled it. I operate in it. It’s complete. Perfect. Satisfying. I like it. It’s like a glass snowball—a scene in a bubble, hard and clear—in weather that starts suddenly and clears fast. The scene is always there. Exact. Safe. Perfect? It can be repeated, moved about, shipped, returned, stored, duplicated. Forgotten and resurrected. Fantasy. But real as real can be.
Last night I dreamed of a white empty hospital. Everything was white—so glaring that I could hardly see the doors and the corners of the rooms. Some rooms were small, too small to be closets. People were looking for me, but they never showed up. Still, I kept running. No way out. White. White. Nothing.
I’m still here.
This concrete and glass tall box will not let me open a window. The wind once tore open the ceiling of this room during a rain storm. The housekeeper told me. The air conditioning keeps the apartment cool, but it assaults my sinuses. I must remember to close the windows.
At least, I can come and go.
Undated Entry
Have you noticed that pessimists don’t get equal time? Objections don’t say casually. Oh, so you’re a pessimist? I’m not an optimist myself. So, let’s talk. No. . . they say “Ooh, you’re so pessimistic.” That’s a dismissal, you understand.
To build your inspired piece of writing, you need five tools. Good grammar, proper syntax, clear expression, accurate punctuation, the rules of language are five tools for the intuition to use.
You want to know what he’s afraid of? Listen to his jokes. There’s a great deal of hostility in jokes. We are hostile to what we fear, especially when we’re joking about it because it’s fearful, all right, but it’s not present, and this joke will get a laugh (he expects), so things aren’t gloomy right now. Besides which, the laugh will get me sympathy, support, and validation of my anger *maybe even my hatred. Listen to the jokes. You’ll learn plenty.
Jokes
Daniel J. Travanti
Hey, Buddy, whata you so upset about? It’s only a joke. That means, I don’t really mean it. I don’t say what I really mean in jokes. There are jokes, and there is the truth. WRONG, mister. Do you want to know some of a person’s innermost feeling? Listen to his jokes. MY, my, well, that’s a philosophical way to look at it. Or, You certainly have a philosophical attitude about that. That’s just wonderful. This means, I know you’re devastated, but you’re shining it on, and that’s all right. You have this way of covering up what you really feel, and if that sustains you, well, Okay. There are your true feelings, then there is this ruse, this pretense, that you speak. You can be realistic, or you can be philosophical. Philosophical is not practical. Only anger, desolation, despair, consternation, catatonia, or suicide could be constructed as practical. Any reasonable response, any measured emotion, any moderation in this matter is certainly not reasonable or USEFUL. It’s being philosophical, meaning “his way of coping; by telling himself this lie.”
Remember
I do forget. I mustn’t forget. I have been feeling that somehow I have been abandoned by my profession, but there is no such thing as an entity that is the Profession. I am alone. Everyone is, but once a number of people have recognized your ability you feel that at last they and others will not forget you; and they will seek your services. That is not how the process works.
Remember that this is only entertainment.
Remember that I enjoy doing the work.
Remember that the one benefit of being found is that you will work if you will take whatever they offer you.
Remember that Olivia DeHavilland had to fight to get the role in “To Each His Own.”
Remember that Bette Davis fought to get many good roles that others did not want her to play, including Mildred in “Of Human Bondage.”
Remember that Frank Capra, Fred Zinneman, Vicente Minelli, David Lean and Billy Wilder, all among the greatest film directors of all time, couldn’t get work for the last twenty years of their lives.
Remember that entire generations have already forgotten Alice Faye and Louis Rainer, George Arliss, Frederic March, Carole Lombard, Marie Dressler and so many others.
Remember that most people have never even heard of Katharine Cornell.
Remember that few ever saw Alfred Lunt and Lynee Fontanne.
Remember that you are God’s kid.
Remember that your life goes on whether you are known or not.
Remember that you are growing old.
Remember that you must keep your own house in order.
Remember what matters most: health.
Remember to take good care of yourself.
Remember to take good care of your friends.
Remember to take care of your pets.
Remember to love.
Remember to show your love.
Remember to give and receive love for free and for fun.
Remember to love and care for your family.
Remember to protect the Planet.
Remember to keep the harmony the best you can.
Remember to provide for your future needs.
Remember to enjoy this moment.
Remember to celebrate the Earth.
Remember to be grateful for what you have.
Remember to remember what you have, not what you don’t have or can’t get.
Remember to take material things lightly.
Remember to respect others.
Remember to respect their things.
Remember to be honest.
Remember to keep growing while you are growing old.
The Thinker
October 13, 1992
Daniel J. Travanti
It’s painful. I suppose other actors realize this, too; maybe most do. I must deliberately concentrate my thoughts on the few people who like my work and think of me when hiring.
But I am preoccupied with the thought that most producers, directors and networks are rejecting me. I know that the nature of my work and the normal condition for an actor is rejection. This weighs on me. It hurts. I can shift the weight off, if I remember to remember.
That there are only a few good roles available ever, at any time or at any stage of an actor’s career is not consoling me. It never was. I don’t see that there are so many more talented actors than me that I am rightly passed by, in favor of them.
There is no reason, in the strictest, analytic, objective sense, why I am rejected and someone else is accepted. There is the fact of the selection each time, or of the acceptance. That’s all. The reasons themselves are victims of circumstance. The reasons producers give are not necessarily the reasons why they make their choices.
Everyone wants to believe that his reasons are in his control and are good and will bring success. Every actor wants to believe that there is a logical reason, each time, why he is taken or not. Such thinking presumes or at least wishes that it is in charge. It needs to think that it controls itself. It’s one of the myths human beings agree to live by.
The thinker himself is a victim of circumstances. The thought is not separate from the thinker. The thinker is not separate from his world or its influences. When my world does not please me, I say it is wrong. Or I feel it is. But I’d rather feel that it is correct. There is no pain in that.
My only assignment is to take care and obey.
There is a circumstance that would be more pleasant for me: to be free enough not to have to care about being accepted. I can be free enough if I have enough money. Soon, maybe.
Museums of Our Lives
September 22, 1992
Evans Road
Daniel J. Travanti
Some days, I find the pretense almost unbearable. I am reading Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved. Naturally, any other considerations after his accounts—of the importance of a life lived normally—seem trivial. Yet, Levi himself would say, I believe, that my life is no more trivial than his, certainly, or anyone’s. I now know that pretending is an important part of the ritual of survival. It is a ritual, it really is. I establish patterns, change them, reject some, acquire new ones, and perpetrate my illusion on a grand scale.
Every day I ask—either directly in my mind, out loud, or tacitly by my actions—what it is I shall be doing today, and whether it is worth going through with. I move things around. Paper and strange objects like luggage tags given to me by my former agent. Silver circles with my initials engraved on them, but without the “J,” which annoys me, but which I can’t bring myself to throw out because they’re sterling and each has a genuine leather strap attached. These are valuable, sort of, or at least not ordinary junk. Even though I have no use for them, (Why would I need to identify my own luggage with initials alone, as if I don’t recognize my own property, and with an incorrect, or at least incomplete inscription? An address label is useful, but not this redundant semi-informative bauble) I can’t bring myself to eradicate them as I do used up scraps of paper. And you know, so many things I have are of this same nature.
A friend of mine calls houses and apartments the museums of our lives. Correct. Like most museums—almost all I’ve seen, actually—the contents are poorly catalogued and haphazardly collected. Either badly displayed, exasperatingly hidden, or lost behind some door, in some box or drawer, and of minimal or questionable value. Junk. Is this true? A museum of junk, representing my life? This then could mean that life, or at least mine, is merely a junk heap. I have suspected as much for many years now. I’ve joked about it. I’ve complained about badly arranged museums, though. I must complain about my own junk heap.
I arrange and rearrange. If I toss out, I must replace the thing. Sometimes, I plant flowers. We talk of “spending time”, “passing the time”, “killing time”, or “wasting time”; or we ask, ‘What are you doing with yourself these days?’. We are probably doing little with our own selves, except turning our selves loose on all the “stuff” around us. Is this a primary function? Is this a basic need, this activity, these things to push around? Are they even better than pets, because they are even more pliant? I move things. I move myself about moving these things. I could fairly call it exercise, I guess. This arrangement might be necessary. It might keep my body ticking; my mind and spirit groveling. A dictionary says this is “to give oneself over to base pleasures.” Could be that this shifting things around is a base instinct, like masturbation, or lolling in warm water? Maybe it’s not a trivial pursuit.
Most of the flowers I plant don’t grow, except for the bulb varieties. They keep coming back. It’s almost impossible for me to plant an annual. It seems such a waste. You have to keep replacing them. But I’m sick of stuff; sick of moving things around and replacing things. I want every thing to be a perennial. I don’t mind that flowers come and go. At least they’re organic. I can recycle them immediately. I used to clean up the garden. I even let my gardeners gather up leaves and twigs, bag them, and lug them out to the garbage pickup spot. Something told me this was redundant—downright stupid. Then I received permission to do it my way. A gardener—a real gardener, not just one of our rakers and leaf-blowers—on a B.B.C. horticulture program looked at me and said, fervently, “Just turn this all back into the soil. Let your garden feed itself! Don’t muck about in these twigs and rotting leaves, just kick and rake them back down into the dirt and make this lovely natural compost” (pronounced as the “O” in “off”). The man was positively giddy. So was I, at last. I thanked the television screen and came back to instruct everyone who went into my gardens to leave natural debris on the ground.
I wish I could do the same with the less destructible stuff. I do recycle clothes, appliances, and books, but they still replace themselves. They’re perennials, I guess, like the bulbs; they just keep coming back.
Animals
No human being is as beautiful as a peacock, a parrot, a deer, or a butterfly. No human being sees as well as eagles and cats do. No person can run as fast or smoothly as the cheetah. Travel as far on foot without water as a camel. Swim as well as a dolphin. Is as strong as a gorilla. Is as faithful as a wolf or to its mate. Can leap as far and high as a kangaroo or an impala or bears as well as an owl. Can smell as sensitively as a dog or can climb as efficiently as a monkey. Is as dependably tender to its babies as a lioness or a chimp or a robin. Can fly like a hawk, or is as neat and well-organized as the ants. Yet, when we praise other creatures, we say they seem so human. Why do we demean them?
Handkerchief
September 24, 1990
Daniel J. Travanti
Ironing a handkerchief so that every edge is flat, seeing the cotton turn from dull soft to shiny slick under the hot plate, pressing the tip of the iron firmly into the corner to unfurl the hem and warm it down, as if forcing it into submission, looking at the once wrinkled scrap now a large neat vast pure expanse ready for action to be crumpled in service to wipe your nose or rub away wetness or grime or food from your hand a humble but bold cloth tool. This common enterprise excites me. Yet, on second thought, it is a thrill not experienced by many. To housewives it is a chore. To we it is recreation.
London PreMatinee
London 3:45pm
Far down a long road! Thanks. The next play will have to hold great attractions, before I’ll give much of myself again. The theater is all-consuming.
______________________________________________________________________________
I want to be with my animals in the garden, to walk around the house. I have renewed appreciate. My gratitude has grown.
______________________________________________________________________________
Jeni and Robbie please me. They care, they are aware of living sanely. Jeni inspired Rob, but only while they were together. She is enchanted right now in Venezia.
Oh, to travel light to Kenya! To be paid for it!!
Love
Erich Fromm and C.S. Lewis go on about the kinds of love people feel. There’s love of a mother and father, lust which we call romantic love, charity, etc. I’m sure this view confuses a much simpler issue. Love is a feeling. This feeling gives pleasure, sometimes great pleasure; on occasion in fact—overwhelmingly welcome—we call it ecstasy. I know that when the tiny baby appears from around the corner in the arms of its father, the mother feels a surge of delicious joy. In the reverse situation, a father would be just as thrilled. I say this feeling is the same as the pleasure the mother felt when her lover would appear at the door, and may still feel every time he reappears.
One can have this feeling for a brother, a friend, or a forest. Inside the body, the juices are released; adrenaline, tranquilizing agents which we know exist, extra blood flow, and the rise of temperature which causes blushing. This surge we have all felt. All of this is the same process whatever might be the stimulant. When it feels this good we call it love. I love the feeling. I just love that I love you so! I love it. I’m in love with you (which probably means—beyond the pleasurable feeling I’ve described—I am obsessed with you, and jealous; neither of which responses is love, though we mistakenly call them, too, love).
So how can we keep on saying that there are kinds of love? I believe what we mean is that there are, after the feeling occurs, various kinds of responses, as a result. Hug the baby and you’ll feel the thrill. Hug your lover and you’ll feel the same thrill. Embrace the forest on the pristine meadow, or watch your friend disembark from the plane after a long absence, and you’ll feel a surge of love. Love is love is love—and it always feels good. Fear is its counterpart. Fear of losing a lover to someone else brings jealousy to a romance. Fear of any kind of loss of a lover leads to anxiety. Jealously and anxiety can make one impatient and testy, then anger comes. Fear of injury of a loved one can make you fearful. Fear of the destruction of the planet itself, an object of your love, can hurt your feelings and make you angry. Angry people hurt others and commit destruction. Some people don’t love, but are obsessed. If you are obsessed with someone, you are not loving. Obsession is stronger than love and overwhelms it. It is also dangerous, because it is the cause of disturbing acts that limit and even destroy life instead of promoting it.
So, when we talk of love, we mean the life-enhancing emotion that feels good. Other emotions that may accompany loving can be destructive. We say they are part of loving. No, they are apart from loving and destructive of it. But they are not mandatory when you love. They too frequently accompany love, so we believe they are part of love. Not necessarily is this so.
The Fence
Rennie Court
Whenever I chose to climb over the fence, I’d find a broken board. Either completely separated from its post, or splintered at the spot where the nail secured it originally. About every fourth time there would be a large ripped end, there was bare wood like deep flesh glaring out of the white plank. It seemed hurt and poignant, even sometimes dangling like a horribly wrecked limb—jagged and abandoned—too agonized anymore to scream. For one whole week in October five years ago, I noticed that the fence was intact, no matter where I approached along more than its two-hundred foot length. It made me feel whole again and happy that order was restored. It was neat and reassuring, and I guess I needed that in the aftermath of my trip. Don must have fixed it.