It has been over a year since I’ve posted. In an effort to begin again I’ve been going over some unposted drafts, and wondering why I held them so close. Here’s an emotional postcard from February 2010. Hopefully there’ll be more soon.
It’s a gray day here in the city and my mind is in a whirl.
My bathtub is draining slowly and my emotions are close to the surface. It has something to do with creation.
My soul is open and grasping but highly selective. Whoever or whatever is minding the gate knows me very well and is only allowing through those works which pierce my soul with their love, sadness, beauty and pain.
It began with Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, the memoir of an English writer and naturalist who, inspired by John Cheever’s The Swimmer, one of my favorite short stories, decided to swim his way across his native land, striking a blow in the process for the right of all to access the simple joy of their native seas, lakes, rivers, ponds, moats and fens. I’m a sucker for old hippies, and while I never met Roger, who recently passed, anybody who spent a good chunk of the seventies living in a van while rebuilding a Suffolk farmhouse, shared the house with whatever animals could find their way in, and frequently swam in his own moat, is close enough for me. It is the story of a man with a great love for the natural world and the simple but valuable joys it provides. There is an added poignance, for just as I stumbled across this mentor to my imagination, he passed, leaving me to find my own way.
From there, fighting the blues and craving the couch, I settled in for a re-watching of Slings and Arrows, which just grows richer on the second viewing. The show itself is a sweet melange of Shakespeare and the lives of the people who perform him. The second season plays the youthful passion of Romeo and Juliet and its cast against the struggle for love and validation amongst the aging cast of Macbeth. In the episode where Jerry Appleby, the balding sad sack understudy to Macbeth, goes on at the last minute and succeeds, gloriously, I sat on the couch, feeding my daughter, and wept like a baby.
Since then I can’t get enough of the show, and today, having had my renewed sense of sexual vigor foiled by Hallie’s stubborn refusal to take her morning nap (she knew something was afoot), and having too small an amount of time to squeeze in another episode, I dug through my music looking for something that could sustain this odd, bittersweet openness. Rodney Crowell’s songs about his own turbulent upbringing fed the need.
And then there’s the wonderful dream I had last night where I introduced my family to my first love, who I haven’t seen in years, and it seemed to bring a peace to the world, and to further extend my family and the love I feel for them.
In many ways it has been a horrific few months. My mother and brother were in a car accident, a week later my mother’s sister had a stroke while standing over her stove and caught fire, burning without ever being able to call for help. And then they found a spot on my mothers lung, two years after her double mastectomy. Thankfully, we got the news yesterday that she is cancer free.
I’ve never understood art. After years of struggling to be an actor I just don’t know what it is. And I know I need to write. But what about? Inspiration floods my body but doesn’t know where to go.
But the landlady is supposed to come over this afternoon and snake out the bathtub drain. Hopefully she’ll work her magic on the hidden blockage deep within the elderly plumbing of our little home. The drain will clear, the water will flow, and, with thanks, and a little less water around my ankles, I will soldier on.
Playing in the City with Trains 
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