Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

…writing when it goes well, is no trouble at all, and hardly deserves the name of work.

William Gibson, A Season in Heaven, 1974

November 13, 1914 – November 25, 2008

A short list. An abridged list.
A list.
In no particular order,
except the first thing.

Sobriety.
People who have traveled before me.
People traveling behind me.
People who travel along beside me.
Deciduous trees.
Frogs.
Water.
Friends, real honest to God friends.
Kind strangers.
Kindness.
People who care about what they do.
People who don’t care what other people think about what they do.
People who stand up.
Show up.
Being teachable.
Justice.
Life.
Music.
A breeze.
The smell of Gardenias.
Storytellers.
Interpreters. All kinds.
Language.
Body language.
Sign language.
Signs.
Clowns.
Performers.
The chipmunk in the backyard.
My cat.
My dog.
Furry things.
Ink.
Paper.
Intuition.
Connection.
Spirit.
Gumby.
The CS Monitor.
Newspapers. Online newspapers.
Books.
Archives.
Archivists. All kinds.
Sand.
Redwood trees.
Family. Whatever sort.
Pondering.
Pillows.
Someone who gets me.
Someone I love.
Her health.
My health.
The roof over our heads.
A comfortable bed.
Blankets, wool or cotton.
Poems.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Begin with morning meditation.
Start up Kristin Chenoweth’s new Christmas album.
Count the morning birds for Project Feederwatch.
Scratch The Cat’s belly.
Give silent thanks to those doing what I cannot.
Imagine the smell of the pumpkin pie I’ll bake tonight.
Read Doonesbury.
Exchange blinks with The Cat.
Pick The Cat up for a little dance to the music.
Decide to play more holiday music.
Post this list without apology.
Pick up the pen and get busy.

Edited 11/27/08 to add:
(Yes, that’s My Cat.)

Something I rarely do I’ve done twice since September: leave a play at the intermission. The first was a play I looked forward to. It was directed by someone of acclaim, and I have enjoyed his interpretations previously. The acting was good, and the production values were lovely. The material left me cold; English class issues with comedic over and undertones galore. I’d certainly seen the same subject matter done over and over again as film. Some of them even great films. What was the point of a play? Just because we can, should we?

Perhaps I was cranky, still recovering from the September power outage that lasted over a week in our neighborhood. The Beloved was unable to hide her glee as I ushered her out at intermission and into the parking lot to escape.

The second play was so awful I could not even listen to the script. The central character in the hands of so bad an actor he responded as though he’d only met each character for the first time on the street despite the dialogue which clearly told us these people had been to hell and back together.

It was the Beloved’s birthday, so I let her make the call to leave.

Both times I sat in the theatre impatiently thinking, “So? Why are we doing this?” There was nothing in either show to suggest why the material at hand required being a play. I wondered why the bother, why all the time, money and expertise had gone into bringing these shows to life. Yeah, well, there’s an audience, yadda yadda yadda, and it’s not me.

I’m bored by narratives well-crafted but not well-written, and so dully un-stage-worthy. Undoubtedly, the reason I enjoy musicals is because there is so much inherent theatricality to them. I am always amused by those who declare, “no one bursts out singing like that.” Well, duh.

I am usually more forgiving about theatre.

I’m restless, and having some trouble focusing.

Pondering the play I have not finished, I feel it has been fun to write, but trivial in scope compared to the new plays nagging at my brain. I want to set it aside and move on from it. I haven’t left a play unfinished… since when? Ten years, perhaps. Is there something to learn in stuffing the unfinished work into a drawer and leaving it there? Or is this a wave of a series of unfinished plays about to take me over? Just because I can finish it, should I?

Yes, overthinking quite a bit. More to be revealed, no doubt.

Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed.

Robert F. Kennedy, Berkeley, Oct 22, 1966

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 1986

This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.

Barack Obama, Grant Park, Chicago, Nov 4, 2008

I believe 1948 was the one year Gallup got it wrong…

Final Presidential Estimate: Obama 55%, McCain 44%

[Edited 11/04/08 7:05 am to remove broken widget.]

Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.

Someone who knew a good story when he heard one.

I think it’s realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: ‘I despair. The world’s no good.’ That’s a perverse idealist. It’s practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That’s very realistic.

Studs Terkel

As portrayed by Anna Deavere Smith: