School’s In – For Now

One class down, 14 more classes and 9 courses to go.

Such is how paralegals are made.

Norwalk Community College, my home-away-from-home for the next few Wednesday nights

Yes, I survived the first meeting of Introduction to Paralegalism, and quickly remembered how long it’s been since I’ve taken a real class. Sure, there have been many workshops, and one graduate class in playwriting that I audited. But this is the real thing: A syllabus! Homework assignments! Tests! Papers! A grade! A disgustingly overpriced textbook!

And, not surprisingly, the first class stirred Crisis-like thoughts. Do I have the commitment at this age to do the work, do it well, while trying to stay on top of the other parts of my life – work, playwriting, blogs (which have suffered greatly as of late, both here at C?WC? and over at the History Nerd; but look for a scintillating take on historiography there soon!), marriage, some semblance of a social life? I do not know.

I was reminded there is no shame in taking the course and deciding not to stay in the program, if I don’t really think I want to be a paralegal. But there would be shame aplenty, and perhaps a boot in the butt, if I bailed without even trying to finish the class. So, for once, I will not take the path of least resistance. I will give the work my all, no matter how silly some of the text material is (“Keep a list of your most frequently used URLs in a notebook.” Uh, ever hear of browser bookmarks?).

The students are a diverse lot, with some from foreign countries and some mere tykes taking their first college course, so a little hand-holding and stating the obvious might not be out of line. Easily half of the 22 students, though, seem to be over 40. Several are over 50. Many, like me, have a BA. Others have graduate degrees and one guy has a J.D., though he has not practiced in years and never in Connecticut. These folks are looking for a career change, just as I tell myself I am (though sometimes I am not convincing. I don‘t want to stop writing; I just want to write about different things. For better pay).

Everyone can use a paralegal, even ESPN is hiring

One guy can no longer do the physical labor he did, so he seeks a desk job. A teacher who moved here from CA is sick of the classroom experience. Another young woman has burned out after a few years doing drug-rehab work. Others fear changes in their industries that will leave them jobless. A few have already gotten the pink slip and are on the fast track for completing the certificate program. They don’t have the option, like me, of being wishy-washy or half-assed about this endeavor. And for most, the law seems to offer challenges they think they’ll enjoy and the chance to tap skills they’ve already cultivated. Or, at the least, a decent paycheck.

Our instructor says she enjoys the varying backgrounds of the students in the evening classes. She’s given up what could have been a high-powered law career to teach full time at this community college. (One previous gig: working for Rudy Guiliani back in the days when he prosecuted the Mafia in New York.) The adults looking for a new line of work bring a wealth of career and life experiences that often shed new perspectives on the issues she teaches. So, of all of us in the classroom, she may be the only one who truly enjoys her current job.

What do you mean, an F on my final?

In the weeks ahead, I know there will be moments I will dread: working in small groups, presenting to the class, writing tests neat enough for someone else to read. (I’m already having trouble reviewing my own notes; I can’t imagine the prof deciphering more than every fifth word of a test unless I take about four hours to spell out each letter two inches high. I need those lined sheets we used in 2nd grade to learn penmanship, with the dotted line for the small letters running between the two solid lines.) And then of course there is grade anxiety, in case I do stick this out. Imagine the humiliation of passing an intro undergrad course with, say, a C-?

Oh, there you go again, worrying about what could go wrong. Just take it for what it’s worth – an exploration of a new intellectual endeavor. Enjoy it, if you can. And remember that after Wednesday night, just 13 more classes to go.

More Theater Nightmares

She woke with a start from her solid slumber, feeling the arms tightening around her. As the bear hug deepened, she heard the words, sliding out of a mouth fueled by a demented mind.

“It’s all too hard. I can’t take it!”

The barely coherent ramblings continued, until her accoster slid his arms away, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Ok, perhaps not as dramatic as this...

She, of course was my wife, and naturally I was the crazed midnight hugger. Actually, it was more like 2 am. She, woken so suddenly, unpleasantly, has a vivid memory of it all. I thought it was part of  just a few words we exchanged when we went to bed, or the half-formed recollections of a dream. No, a nightmare; another theater nightmare.

What was I going on about? We had just watched the taping of a staged reading of one of my plays, my “Quaker play,” which I’ve alluded to here before. The reading itself was not so bad. Some places felt a little talky, sure, but other times I heard a phrase I liked and thought, “I wrote that? Not bad.” But then there was the talkback, the actors and scant audience ripping into my words like so many jackals on a dead gazelle.

Hyperbole here, natch. My critics were not dripping blood, and their intent was to help, not devour. The script, admittedly, had nowhere near the grace and speed of a gazelle. But still…the process of putting your thoughts and emotions out there, and having others find so much fault – never pretty.

There were some positive comments, though not nearly as many as the other kind. And many of the suggestions/critiques had my head nodding in agreement. I like my writing, but I‘m not so arrogant that I don‘t see the flaws and room for improvement. But part of me certainly did feel, as I wailed in the darkness of our bedroom, “It‘s so hard. I can‘t take it anymore.”

That brings up a question for myself as the 50th birthday approaches, one I have wrestled with so publicly here at C?WC? How long to keep trying to write plays, to get them staged, to get better at a craft that, at its essence, seems to allude me. I have thought about taking a long break from the process: no more writing, revising, sending out scripts, or even jotting down the random ideas that fill sticky notes, tiny fragments of paper ripped from envelopes, blow-in cards from magazines, and which are scattered across bureaus and stuffed in folders. Some of these ”ideas” unfulfilled go back more than 20 years! Pretty good bet you won’t be developing those anytime soon, eh? And with some that could be worth my time, why keep scratching down the new ones?

The latest offering from my Chicago theater buds

The DVD feedback session came after a rather up-down-week, theater wise. Found out I would not have to self-produce a short play tapped for a festival in NYC – yea! If that route was the only way to get it staged, I would have found a way, despite the bad memories of the solo show. Got two outright rejections – one for the Quaker play – and one sort-of rejection: a full-length not picked for staging, but designated as an “honorable mention.“ Great. That and 5 bucks will buy my next pint at a New Haven bar of my choice. Then, today, one more small glimmer of good: a production of a new play by my Chicago buddies at n.u.f.a.n. ensemble. I am never quite sure if they really like my stuff or just feel sorry for me…

Abandoning the playwriting might take a while, if I’m serious about this sabbatical. (That’s what it would be to start, to see if I could stop the writing and thinking and sending that has defined so much of my life for more than 20 years.) Workshops coming up in NYC, one next week. The various productions that, assuming I see them, will remind me of the high I get hearing my words spoken, my characters presented, and hopefully drawing the appropriate response from the audience. Then there’s that writing retreat during my birthday week, seven days of isolation, my brain and computer alone, hoping to produce something new and worthwhile.

The birthday does seem to hover over much of this. 50 years old, and what have I accomplished in this chosen endeavor of playwriting? In life? I went to the 50th birthday celebration for a good friend this week. I saw a successful man, a man loved by his wife and children, who despite his demons (oh they are there, for all of us), seems comfortable in his own skin. Me? I’m not sure where this skin came from: imposed from outside, or something I cobbled together out of experiences, expectations, DNA, memories and unfulfilled wishes. But not something that feels inherently mine. Me. I thought the playwriting helped shaped that sense of identity. Now at times it feels like a burden, one that leaves me clutching for comfort in the middle of the night, scaring my wife with the desperate words and cries for it to end. For something to end.

I guess I should start sorting through those scraps now. Must be some I can easily ditch. But you never know…but that’s after I take a look at the pile of contests I could be submitting to this week. Maybe sending one out won’t hurt. And those ideas for revising the Quaker play; could take another look at them. None of this is really writing. Though there is a 2/1 deadline for a contest I’d like to enter, could sketch out some ideas for that. Yeah, I can’t take it. It’s hard. But I don’t know how to let go. Or if I should. Not yet.

Maybe the answer will come in a dream. A quiet one. With no bear hugs.

A Giving Fix

I did something selfish this week.

And it felt so good.

I suppose most of us have always known, deep down, that when we volunteer or give money to a good cause, our motivation may be mixed. Yes, the efforts help the charity, the less fortunate, but we get something out of it too. Maybe it’s public recognition, which we secretly – or not so-secretly – crave. God knows when I gave to various theatres a few years ago, I scanned the programs to make sure I was on the list of donors.

Maybe the good deeds will bring accolades from a boss, or are just an expected part of one’s duties. Gotta have the right public service to climb up the corporate ladder, hmm, and what high-school senior expects to get into a good college these days without some demonstration of altruism on the application?

Then there’s the sense that doing a good deed is its own reward, but one that also makes us feel good inside. As one health philanthropist recently told the New York Times, “The most selfish thing you can do is to help other people.”

As the Times article noted, recent research has shown that we are seemingly hard-wired to get as much of a kick from good works as from champagne or cocaine (if only Cole Porter had known…). In a study (one actually a few years old; more on it here), test subjects were told to think about giving money to a poor person. Scans revealed that merely thinking about the charitable act stoked the parts of the brain “that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.” Of course, those two “pleasures” are basic to our survival, and so maybe altruism is too. Evolutionarily speaking, we are doing something beneficial for the species with our small acts of kindness.

(The Post article cited above suggests this too, though it came to me before I read it. Makes sense, yes? Of course, it might also make the religious among us a little perturbed. You mean it’s biology and not Godly directed activity? Again? D’oh!)

An RFBD recording booth; for some reason, I loved editing the recordings.

I had done a steady volunteer gig in Chicago, recording books on disc for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Since coming back to CT, I’d been looking for another outlet for my altruism; beyond helping others, it’s also a good excuse to get out of the house and end my daily isolation (ah, so another selfish reward). I found a local charity that dealt with one of my big concerns: food, or specifically, getting enough to everyone who needs it. I’d been involved, if only tangentially, with the macro side of the issue when I served on the board of the Hartford Food System (recounted a bit earlier at the Crisis here). Now, I would get a taste of the micro, at the West Haven Emergency Assistance Task Force (WHEAT).

I discovered WHEAT this summer when a local organization held a food drive for it at our neighborhood Stop & Shop. One of the principles of the sponsoring group was Phil Liscio, who gives countless hours to several organizations in town. A real mensch, as my wife might say, if she were prone to going around spouting Yiddish. Phil put me in touch with the head of WHEAT, and I had my first afternoon there this week.

No oatmeal, damnit!

The work, like a lot of volunteer work, is not glamorous. WHEAT has several tasks, but its main function is running a food pantry. I and a few other volunteers stacked cans and boxes of food, prepared bags for the patrons, and found time to gab a little as we worked. We were in a large room filled with cabinets and shelves, while another volunteer manned the front desk and distributed the bags. While I couldn’t see the people coming in, I heard them. Some of them had dietary requirements that the back-room vets quickly scrambled to fill: formula for infants, a no-sugar item for a diabetic, a different kind of meat to replace the pork someone else couldn‘t eat. And switch out the oatmeal for this one because – well, he just doesn‘t like oatmeal.

My co-workers took some of the items out to the lobby, sometimes exchanging pleasantries with the regulars who stopped by. One man, they told me – “such a nice man” – was homeless. They made sure he got his own bag that took his special needs into account: pop-top cans only, and nothing that needed to be heated or mixed with water.

Results of a food drive - every little bit helps.

The pantry is part of a large network that tries to help as many people as it can. The government provides funding and local banks and grocery stores drop off cases of food. Boy Scouts, churches, and school classrooms run food drives to fill the shelves, and at times local residents haul in bags of groceries, two or three at a time, holding a mish-mash of canned fruit and pasta and maybe a cake mix for some kid’s next birthday. It all helps.

A soup kitchen in New Haven is also part of the network. It sometimes receive packages of food, rice say, in individual one-pound bags. WHEAT might get institutional-sized bags. The two groups swap, since it’s easier for the pantry to have the smaller amounts already packaged, and the soup kitchen, with its large daily needs, can easily cook up a 25-pound bag of rice or whatever.

Philanthropy at the micro level, I learn, has its idiosyncrasies. The volunteers never know exactly what will go into a bag, though certain staples are assured, in one variety or another. The meats change, the exact type of canned veggie or fruit changes, some items are out one day, while others overflow the shelves. The recent holidays brought huge donations of gravy and cranberries, as people figured the poor must want the fixings for their turkey dinner too, right? But the donors were too generous; right now, WHEAT has enough gravy and cranberries to feed several armies. Ah, well, I say, you’ll have plenty for the holidays this year. But of course, fresh donations of those year-end staples will keep the surplus never-ending.

My first shift went by quickly. It felt good to be on my feet, being active, talking with people in the community. The walk to the pantry was good too, an easy stroll from our home. My god, this was selfish on so many levels! I had several thoughts as I made that walk home. Once again, I pondered how insane it is for the richest country in the world to have so many people who can’t afford enough to eat. I’m sure the number now is inflated by the recession, but we know the need will not disappear when the jobs come back. (And what kind of jobs will they be: CT continues to lose manufacturing jobs, and even in the “good ol’days” of the past, some West Haven folks faced tough times.) Then I thought about the generosity that keeps the pantry’s shelves full. Some of that generosity is now focused abroad, as Haiti tries to pull out of its calamity. It’s right to help those overseas who need it. But there is a daily need here that we should fill. A constant chance to get that kick that only selfish giving provides.

Eating, Old Style

Can the carbs! Eat all the meat you want! Maybe even kill it yourself, but no worries if you don‘t – you can get a fridge just for those organ meats and deer ribs someone else dresses for you! No legumes, either, or potatoes. Lose weight, curb your hunger, improve your health!

A new fad diet? Nope, just the oldest diet known to Homo sapiens sapiens, enjoying a renaissance.

Lost in the supermarket, circa 10,000 BC

The Sunday Times featured the cavemen (and some women) of New York, mostly younger folks who have adopted the paleo diet, long championed by Professor Loren Cordain of Colorado State University. He and other promoters of the paleo approach to dining say modern humans screwed themselves, dietwise, when they domesticated plants and animals and switched to food based on agriculture, rather than hunting and gathering.

I had a couple of immediate reactions as I read. Some of these guys seem a little smug in their certainty, as some vegans can be in defending their choice (yes, I know, the latter argue from ethics mostly, not health or doing what is “natural” for the species. It can still get smug in some circles). Then I thought, “Hey, different strokes and all that.” And finally I got my dander up a bit when some paleos (or the writer speaking for them) referred to vegans as a “rival, misguided tribe.”

OK, I don’t think whatever eating habits, or other habits, I happen to share with fellow humans makes me part of  a “tribe.” And I certainly don’t feel like a rival to guys who think it’s hip or smart of whatever to fast for 36 hours, because our paleo ancestors went for long periods between kills, or frequently donate blood because “various hardships might have occasionally  left humans a pint short” (leading some, perhaps, to speculate that the modern cavemen who walk among us are short of something too, but it ain’t a pint of blood).

But that word misguided…hmm.

Careful with that grain, Eugene

I admit, I searched the net, albeit only briefly, to find research undercutting the health benefits of the paleo diet. We’ll see who’s misguided. Not much luck. The only criticism came from the folks at the Weston Price Foundation, who advocate their own food fetish (More dairy and eggs! Soy is poison!). So, darn it, maybe on the health score, I am deluding myself by thinking veganism is ok. Or by thinking grains are ok, since they seem to be a main culprit to the cave folk. Maybe evolution will eventually equip our bodies to better handle carbs not found naturally, like the wild fruit and veggies eaten in ancient times. But for now, the neo-paleos say, they are anathema.

Of course, I didn’t hear any of the NY cave people vowing to eschew all the social and material benefits that came with the development of agriculture. You know, like cities and high art and such. And cities, of course, give the young paleos all that they want within a short distance, so they can walk, as the cavemen did, providing exercise and another health benefit. Though I would like to point out to one caveman quoted in the article, he needs to leave his cave more often; New York is hardly “the only city in America where you can walk.” Proof, again, that eating so much meat does not do much for one’s IQ.

Of course, diet is not only about health. It reflects social and moral realities too. And the reality is, most vegans I know don’t want animals to suffer, as they do on factory farms, or even the supposedly more humane family farms that provide some meat and dairy. Some cavemen go for the grass-fed, free range meat, but in the end, it’s still dead flesh, killed for human consumption. Vegans say there is a way to avoid slaughter and maltreatment of any kind in producing food.

This caveman eats raw meat and avoids tomatoes, since they didn't grow where humans first lived. Don't you want to be him?

But, the article makes me think, are we healthier for it? Well, perhaps not. Though the paleo diet is so new, this time around, and not really that well studied. Who knows what its long-term health benefits or drawbacks may be (especially for those especially macho cavemen who eat their meat raw. Uh, dudes, they did have fire, you know). So, I may not be healthier, but I feel like I’m being true to my sense of what is right and wrong (while being the first to admit, as I have here before, that I can be a bad vegan). And as I write this, I feel that smugness creep in that I bemoaned above.

Food can be so difficult.

Must...have ...chickpeas!

So I come back to the different strokes. I would prefer  more people become vegetarians or vegans (maybe then I could find a vegan pizza in CT that didn’t come from my own kitchen). I know most will not. But probably many won‘t go paleo either. I suppose for most people, just eating healthy, with any diet, is the first step. And lord knows economic issues can make that tough, though that‘s a subject for another day. But for now, I will eat my pasta and roast my chickpeas. And walk past that first paleo restaurant when it invariably opens in the wilds of Manhattan.

Take Me on a Sea Cruise

What does the word cruise conjure up for you?

(I mean in the sense of sailing on a large ship, not searching for one-night stands or other denotations.)

A cafe on the doomed Titanic

Images of old movies perhaps, with bon vivants sailing in luxury from New York to Southampton, at times huddled under blankets to ward off the salty chill of the North Atlantic? The Titanic brushing that berg on its way to on icy end? Or maybe a modern image appears, of megaships and fun cruises with constant activities, more food than any person should eat in a month, never mind a week, and the  media reports of occasional collisions and mid-sea cripplings, mystery viruses and missing persons, men and women overboard or victims of crime.

For me, cruise means different things, because I’ve experienced cruises at different times in my life, starting with my first when I was just 10. But forty years later one thing remains constant: Approaching a pier and seeing those funnels, or watching the wake roll away from the stern of the ship as it cuts through vast ocean waters, with no land in site, still fills me with awe and a sense of excitement.

A recent Garrison Keiller op-ed piece stirred these thoughts. Keillor can be a tempered, Midwestern Mencken when he wants to be, skewing American foibles and excesses, and I expected something like that before I read the article. But no. Keillor saw what I see on the ships – people seeking to get away from daily drudgery in a way most working-class stiffs couldn’t image 50 years ago. And he did what I always do: find a quiet spot and read. Then read some more. But he also found time to interact with the other passengers, who form an instant if somewhat artificial community merely by the randomness of choosing the same ship for the same week of their lives. He called it a village. And wonderful.

I immediately contrasted Keillor’s take with the one I remember reading years ago in Harper’s by David Foster Wallace. Don’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but that article always soured me to Wallace, despite his obvious talents. It seemed like a predictable cheap blow: Academician/intellectual/aesthete takes pots-shots at what admittedly can be a hokey adventure, one too-often punctuated with excess and predictability and now, more than ever, crass commercialism.

As the Brits on board said, the "Zeh-nith"

[To be somewhat fair, I went back and re-read parts of his piece. Near the beginning, he talks about a sixteen-year-old’s shipboard suicide, and Wallace described his own sense of despair on his cruise, the wave of dread and thoughts of death stirred by sailing on the ocean for the first time. And maybe whatever demons drove him to his suicide rode with him on the Zenith (a ship I’ve cruised on), which he dubbed the Nadir, and colored that experience surely as they did the rest of his life].

You see, I read the Wallace piece knowing all that was dumb about cruising, all the too-easy put-downs the “elite” among us could make, and even the snide comments I had thought about my fellow villagers and the too-cheery staff. But those things don’t matter. What matters is, when I’m on a ship, I have fun. And on my different cruises, I have built some of the best memories of my life.

Ah, the classic, sleek lines of the Michelangelo...

My family first sailed on the long-defunct Italian line, which took sleek vessels designed for transatlantic crossings and put them in the just-emerging Caribbean market. They were named for great artists  – Michelangelo, Raffaelo, Leonardo Da Vinci. At 10, I barely knew these names, and I didn’t care about the men honored or whatever splendor the ships showed. All I knew was, I could eat more pasta than I ever imagined, along with tiny pizzas served in a darkened lounge at 2 am, and my new shipboard friends and I could run the hallways and decks for hours without parental supervision. We were free! That freedom only grew in my teen years, when I would sneak into a doorway to smoke a joint, and relaxed attitudes at sea meant I could order my own beers.

...versus the boxy behemoths of today.

On those first cruises, I met kids of all ages and different backgrounds; some are still friends today. I met Jessica Katzowitz, a skinny, funny girl from the Bronx, and briefly tried to conduct a long-distance relationship when we returned home. That consisted of a few letters and one visit to her high-rise apartment, where she sat on my lap and we kissed while Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” played on the radio, and I frantically searched for the nipple I knew was somewhere under her shirt. She did not resist my hunting and did not really respond when I finally found it. I wonder if she’s still so skinny.

At dock in Bermuda

As an adult, I hoped to recapture some of the excitement of the childhood cruises, even if no groping resulted. I still have the same wonder when we hit the high seas, though the reading tends to replace running around. One later cruise came just weeks after my surgery for cancer; I vowed to go no matter how limited I was physically. It was a good enough time, colored more by my relationship with my on-again, off-again girlfriend, who became my fiancée, briefly, before it was off again forever.

The next cruise was solo, the recuperative trip after a divorce. I don’t recommend cruising alone, though I did make a shipboard friend, just like in the old days. I remember vividly how we met. I saw her the first morning out, eating breakfast by the pool. At 6 feet tall with short, severe red hair, she was hard to miss. I assumed she and the couple she ate with were traveling together. Just a few hours later, maybe less, I saw her in the bar. Ah, well, morning drinking isn’t that unusual on a cruise; it’s a vacation! Cut loose! But then when I passed the bar in the afternoon and she was still in the same spot – that is not pleasure drinking. I stopped to chat. She was smashed. I offered to help her to her cabin. She was traveling with her mother, who was mortified by her daughter’s condition – or the fact that I had seen it first hand. I later learned the mother was dying of cancer, the cruise was mom and my friend’s last trip together, and daughter was not taking it well, hence the morning libations, repeated often.

For the rest of the cruise, Red and I talked and laughed and drank. We went our own way by day and were inseparable at night. No, no, nothing happened, though post cruise we wrote and visited, just as I had done with my Bronx babe (the only pleasure I, a diehard Red Sox fan, ever got out of that borough…). Nothing ever came of it. But for that week, we gave each other needed companionship. That was a special cruise.

Leaving the pier in NYC

The next one was for my honeymoon, with my current honey. We kicked butt in the trivia contests and read and ended the week feeling the most relaxed we’ve ever been. I could stay up till 1 or 2, doing my share of drinking (in the karaoke lounge, all the bartenders knew my poison), then wake up at 7 feeling refreshed. Must have been the sea air. My father, an old Navy hand, always touted its healing powers, especially when seasickness struck. The motion never bothered me as a kid, not even when we hit a storm that sent 40-foot waves over the bow and furniture sliding from side to side with each pounding roll. Drawers flew out of their dressers, plates refused to stay on tables, passengers – the ones still able to walk – lunged and lurched and tried to grab emergency ropes strung through the hallways. My sister and I just laughed and enjoyed what seemed like an amusement park ride. Today, I would not be so sanguine. And I am much more sensitive to the sea’s agitation. I want to look out and see no white caps, the sea, as Dad used to say, like glass.

We repeated our honeymoon cruise soon a year later, and one of my childhood dreams came true – the cruise did not end on schedule! We got an extra day on the ship! Strong winds and a tricky strait kept the ship from leaving St. George, Bermuda, for about 12 hours. The delay upset the folks who had flights to catch back in the States, and food began to run a little low, but I was in heaven.

This year's floating village, the Zaandam

Cruising is on my mind not only because of the Keillor piece. In a few months, we’re sailing from Seattle on an Alaska cruise. That trip officially confirms my middle-aged-into-AARP-land status;  the demographics for those cruises tend to be much older than for Caribbean cruises, the pace a tad slower. Who cares? The scenery should be spectacular, we will have a taste of the Alaska adventure we hoped for and then scotched when the Crisis began, and it’s been six years since the last one. I’m ready.

Ready for the instant village, despite the inevitable irritants some of the residents will provide. Ready for the hassles with food, given our vegan status (probably worse will be the comments from our tablemates, which I know we will endure graciously, no matter how old they get). Wallace said the atmosphere on his ship was “nearly insanity-producing”; again probably as much a reflection of his internal state as the cruise itself. A cruise is what you make of it. Don’t expect perfect food, top-notch entertainment, scintillating conversation from others aboard. Don’t take things, or yourself too seriously. Have fun, and maybe build some memories.

I can’t wait.

Success (or Not) by the Numbers

Can raw numbers tell the true story of “success” in the subjective world of art?

a. Oh, don’t be such a philistine.

b. Of course.

c. Both of the above.

I belong to an online playwrights’ group. At New Year’s time, some members tally up their submissions and successes (“hits”) for the past year and share them with the group. This is usually depressing for me, since my hits always seem to fall below the numerical average or don’t carry nearly the same prestige as others’. For that reason, and the general disinterest my fellow playwrights show in my postings, I don’t publish my scorecard.

Ah, New Year, new opportunities...

[An aside - Yes, I am vowing to start 2010 with more confidence in myself as a writer and a person, but my experience at the Yahoo group sometimes leaves me frustrated. It’s not just seeing others’ constant success in the midst of my fail — ah, not that word. My less-than-successful submissions. It is, as I mention above, the sense that everyone slaps everyone else’s back and offers heartfelt comments in our little virtual community, except when I post. Yes, I admit, I am mostly a lurker, but I have responded to others at times, offered a few submission possibilities, posed questions. It’s like my postings vanish into the ether. Or else I have somehow mastered the art of mass alienation without even meeting any of the people involved. Weird.]

But since I am amongst friends at C?WC?, I thought I would post the results here. Thinking maybe seeing them in black-and-white will either spur a redoubling of my efforts as playwright or convince me to throw in the towel once and for all.

A scene from Bob's Head, one of the scant productions of 2009 - Wishbone Theatre Collective, Chicago

I submitted to 160 theaters, mostly community theaters, small non-Equity companies, or programs affiliated with schools. I had a grand total of three productions and one reading. Two more productions came from plays I submitted in 2008. Another play was chosen for production this year but will not be staged until 2010. None of the plays produced was longer than 20 minutes. Three of the productions were for one night only.

This is not the scorecard of a playwright poised for great success in the coming year.

As depressing as the batting average was, and the meager quality of the hits achieved (more like squibbers and Baltimore chops than stinging blasts to the alleys), the year was not a loss. OK, I didn’t start a new full-length, as I vowed so often to do. But I wrote a good number of short plays. More importantly, I like most of them and feel they exhibit some improvement in my craft. One of them, a short based on the structure of Schnitzler’s La Ronde, was chosen as a finalist in a Valentine Day’s-themed contest sponsored by my Yahoo group. It may never be produced, but I felt like I was in good company.

I was also inspired to think about new creative avenues for the coming year. I hope to start work on the book for a musical, based loosely on the band I briefly worked for after graduating high school (and leaving college, and losing my virginity – all topics explored in the last full-length I actually completed, my solo show). If this project happens, I’ll be collaborating with a talented Chicago friend, which I hope will give me more excuses to visit the city.

2010 also has several workshops on tap, and a good chance for a weeklong retreat on Block Island to do nothing but write (all mentioned here, I know: “I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat –“). And for some reason, despite the bad numbers for 2009, something in my gut tells me I’ll have more productions this year. As Liza sings, “It’s gotta happen, happen sometime, maybe this time….”

No, my musical - if ever finished - will not be like this one (no Nazis, for one)

(Strange how such an optimistic sentiment emerges in a movie detailing the rise of Nazism. I’m not sure what that means…Irony, perhaps?)

Anyway, my track record as a prognosticator is about as good as my production average, so best not to put too much faith on the hunches. But at least I start the New Year knowing I will write, even if it’s nothing others deem produceable. And in the back of my often-addled head, the idea of self-producing again sometimes scurries about like scared vermin. Of course, haven’t told Samantha that one yet…and in my heart, I know that’s not the kind of staging I want.  Right or wrong, I still think outside validation of my work is the true gauge of success – if not personal fulfillment. But perhaps I can at least be less number conscious – and less worried about what other playwrights might be producing.

Taking Stock, Looking Ahead

A year-end pondering:

Is the Crisis over?

You don't even have to fork over one of these for my thoughts - for now

The thought struck me recently as a I chatted with a friend, lamenting the paucity of postings this month here at C?WC? It seems when I have posted, it’s been a reporting on something I saw or did, not the angst-ridden explorations of middle-aged yearnings and failures. So maybe the Crisis has passed.

Nah.

Maybe I just have less of a need to spill out all the kvetches and existential claptrap that flit through my brain. Or see the dangers of beating a dead horse and then wading through the bloody, pulpy mess so publicly, for all to see. And maybe a touch of holiday laziness has set in, as the happenings at the History Nerd have dwindled this month as well (though I hope to rectify that this week).

A recap, for my own benefit, of why I started this almost 18 months ago: At 48, I had just come off what I considered a theatrical failure, the solo show, even as I gave myself some kudos for taking the risk. The production did not lead to further stagings, as I hoped, and if it is ever performed again, it will have a different name and “fictionalized” content, thanks to the threatened lawsuit and actual legal agreement wrung out of me by someone not keen on being mentioned in the play (even though he/she was honestly and I would say fairly depicted. But perhaps he/she, like me, has regrets about some things of the past…).

And since then, the theatrical endeavors have been sparse and minor, on the whole. I also had to leave the small theater community I had finally tapped into to come back to CT (the other major part of the Crisis), where I feel totally removed from the making of theater, the discussing of it, the learning I felt I was ongoing in Chicago. To remedy that in 2010, I am taking some workshops; spending a week in isolation on an island retreat, where I will, I hope, work on an idea for something completely new, a musical; and I will ardently pursue my latest goal of getting at least one of my play published. All while still debating how long I can do this, write new work and send out old ones and call myself a playwright, when I still feel a bit of a fraud. Or at least an inadequate writer.

The move/resettling aspect of the Crisis need not be rehashed. I am here. I would rather be there. Yes, being close to friends is great, but at times it seems like getting together on a consistent basis is no easier than when I was 800 miles away. Ditto with family, except for my mother, who is perhaps the one person most glad to see us back here. I know there will be more calls to visit and help out as she gets older. 2010 is a milestone for her – 85 – and as active as she is, as much as other relatives marvel that she hasn’t changed a bit, aging goes on; the signs show.

Oh, joy...

Indeed they do, even for a youngster like me, quickly approaching my own milestone in less than 3 months. The spectre of 50 haunted me even as I turned 49; now, the proximity really scares the shit out of me. Oh, Burgan, grow up, it’s just a number. But when I look in the obits and see guys younger than me dropping dead unexpectedly; or read about the increasing knowledge of the dangers of CT scans, and think of all the ones I endured during my bout with cancer, and perhaps even more after as I wrestled with the fear or some new “noma” striking; or simply grapple with the growing list of chronic pains, unexplained and never-ending, I feel like 50 is pretty fucking old and I should really do more to overcome the fear of death that has plagued me for almost 25 years.

One day I'll get a real standing desk

Even now, the latest inexplicable pain has brought a change. I type this while standing, using a jerry-rigged system that includes a CD rack, a large metal clip, my netbook, and an extra keyboard. All because of the newish pain in my hip that sitting exacerbates, and which is probably muscular, or maybe nerve-related, or could be bursitis, but there are lymph nodes around there, you know, the doc tells me, and when you talk about funky lymph nodes, well, it could be….Even lying down to sleep brings no comfort, and each day I wake wondering how much worse the pain will be, and what new ones will have crept in to join their friends.

Maybe someone will say that about me in 2 years...

Oddly – or perhaps not – I can write about the all the pains and failures without a negative frame of mind. Really. Mostly I accept the situation, or else pop the occasional Ativan. The cries of anguish, to myself or to Samantha, are not as frequent as they used to be, which I partly attribute to a new supplement regimen (SAM-e and ST. John’s wort, in the right balance, seems to be doing well for me). And I look forward to some things for the new year, like starting a class at a local community college so I can become (drum roll please): a paralegal. All right, stop laughing. My own ennui with the work writing and the bleak prospects for the industry as a whole told me I should try to find some other work, as a backup. More about this educational path as it unfolds. I also have that writing retreat I mentioned earlier, a trip to Alaska for our anniversary and my birthday, and I hope some volunteer opportunities in our fine town. Something to get me out of my head and remind me that many others face much more real struggles every day. I’m hoping 2010 also brings Samantha new joys, as she gets back into theater and explores her own volunteer gig. At least one of us is happy here.

So, the final verdict – a mixed bag. Things could be much, much worse. They could always be better. And there should be enough interesting events to keep the blog rolling, if not the Crisis. Oh, who am I kidding? There will always be plenty of elements to fuel the Crisis. If I can be bothered to write about them – still – is another question.

Don’t Look Back

I knew this was going to happen.

Random Chicago scenes

It’s like an addict who finally goes clean and understands, reluctantly, he has to avoid the places where he used to use and stop hanging with the old drug buddies. Because once you let back in the familiarity, the comfort, of the old patterns…

You are doomed.

from our five years there

So for these past five months and 12 days (but who’s counting?), I studiously avoided all things Chicago. Shut off all the emails I regularly got about upcoming plays, music, events. Wiped my bookmarks for favorite Chicago sites off my computer. Tried not to think about what might be going on during the weekends, and ignore, as much as possible, that I was basically a prisoner in my home when Samantha took the car for an extended period.

A prisoner, you say? Oh, come on. More of the usual Burgan hyperbole. And you’re right. I could walk down to the corner bar, where the Bud flows freely from the one tap, and too many guys seem to spend too much time from about 1 pm on. Or I could stroll to the video store less than a mile away. You know, that famous purveyor of media, Red Box, where 250 titles await your perusal. Why would I think I was missing anything by not being in Chicago anymore?

Most at Millennium Park, for no real reason

Any notion that I had gotten over the Windy City was all-too-easily demolished this weekend, as I made my first trip back. I hated being there as a tourist (or to be kinder, a visitor), and not a resident. Although I immediately felt at ease at O’Hare, where one of the people movers was not running. Nothing’s changed! Later I rode and walked amidst the skyscrapers of the Loop and smiled. Until I remembered it was only a visit.

Though a fine visit it was. Great hospitality and conversation with some of my theater buddies – the folks I was just getting close to before we left. Meals at some of our favorite old haunts, including, of course, the Village Tap, our neighborhood hang-out. Vegan options and 24 brews on tap – and not one of them Bud. How would someone from West Haven stand it?

except I always had a good time there

But I am not from West Haven. I am merely occupying space there for some unknown length of time. Trying, still, to find the positives, as I’ve outlined here before at C?WC? Trying also to forget what I loved about Chicago in particular and city life in general. Of course there is New Haven just a stone’s throw away, and that’s just like Ch – ah, no, don’t even jest about that. And New York is not so far, everyone reminds me. No, not in miles, but in the time and money it takes to, say, go see a show at a black-box theater – it’s not quite like the last-minute decisions I could make in Chicago to see a play just a neighborhood away.

and there sure as hell isn't anything like it here

And odds are, I’m not going to run into anyone I know at that theoretical NYC black box. I have no contacts there, and building them from this distance, at a time when I wonder if I can even continue to sustain this dream of theatrical success – the odds are not good. But last night, going to see a production of one of my short plays (a total serendipitous event, that the show was running while I was in Chicago), I saw folks from the producing company I had worked with before. I went with the star of my solo show, and he unexpectedly knew someone in the show. I knew another actor, from my stint  helping out on The Real Thing right before I left. The theater community is large there, yet not so large that you can’t run into people you know, or people who know people, at almost any play you see. Not to mention my attending the Chicago Dramatists’ Saturday afternoon reading and seeing fellow playwrights I knew from my time there, including a very talented writer/performer/filmmaker who was in the class for learning to write a solo show.

(Boy, did deciding to take that class lead to lots of changes/opportunities! I had been debating between that class and another, and a friend with “intuitive” talents encouraged me to take the solo class. I knew in my gut that was the one I wanted, too. So maybe next time I ignore the gut and the friend? Nah, taking the class was for the good, despite the disappointments. And legal hassles…)

or like Navy Pier at night

The trip this weekend highlighted what I always knew these past 5 months and 12 days, but tried to bury: I miss Chicago, I miss the friends I met, I miss cultivating the fiction that I have a chance to do something with playwriting – still. The fiction that becomes a cruel torment in my isolated state in West Haven. Give it time, friends there and in Chicago tell me. I will. I have no choice. There is no going back to Chicago, except as a visitor.

There was something of any irony here, this reaction to returning to Chicago. It came just scant hours after this conversation: Of course I’ve adjusted to being back in CT (if not totally happy about West Haven). No, I don’t miss Chicago, primarily because I don’t let myself think about it. I accept being here. I am an adaptable person. I have adapted.

A lie? The kind of denial the addict struggles with when the time on the wagon is not so pleasant? I didn’t think so then. I meant it, in that moment. But then other moments came, when I was walking around the old neighborhood, seeing the familiar sites from the L, taking in the Loop skyline from the new rooftop bar of the Wit Hotel, watching talented actors and directors throw together a night of entertaining one-acts in just a week. And in those moments, the pre-trip assurances of my adaptability did not seem like a lie, exactly, but something that needed to be said, for my benefit and others’, to try to smooth the rough spots in the transition to life in CT.

So, now I am on the train back to CT from Grand Central. Chicago is…back where it belongs, geographically and in my psyche. Distant. Would it be too self-tortuous to already begin planning the next trip? Or should I go back on the wagon, cut off all the thoughts and emotions, and once again try to immerse myself in the positives of Connecticut?

Yes, and yes.

But when that next trip comes, as it will, another relapse of an addict who never really wanted to abandon his preferred drug, the immersion will seem false, as it did so many times this weekend.

The Taxman Winneth

Generic city hall council chambers - nicer than ours, I think

For an hour or so last night, I got to see democracy in action – or more accurately, republicanism in action. The elected representatives in my beloved new home, West Haven, met to discuss what has become a contentious issue in town: Should the current tax collector’s position move from being largely ceremonial, with a salary of $7,600, to a full-time position with a salary over $50,000.

As in everything political here, Democratic Party infighting infused the debate. The current collector, an elected official,  is a partisan of the faction loosely tied to the old mayor and united in its opposition to the current one, John Picard. Not surprisingly, Picard and his supporters opposed the creation of a full-time slot and called for a professional tax manager to run the office, as the council had approved more than two years ago. Since then, however, the tax collector and Picard could not agree on a candidate or even who had the ultimate power to fill the manager’s position.

I know, this all sounds a little trivial, and surely irrelevant to anyone outside of West Haven. Hell, a lot of people who do live here probably don’t care, as long as the taxes are collected and nobody screws up their payments. But that was a large part of the debate: The incumbent collector had not rectified past problems in the office, and some people at the meeting suggested things had gotten worse.

NOT our tax collector, and NOT a medical courier

I was fascinated as the evening unfolded. A few citizens and council members spoke eloquently. Others talked like they were getting ready to turn a boozy bar-room argument into an out-and-out brawl, perhaps highlighted by the woman who called the tax collector an idiot. In his defense, the gent said he was a “go-to guy” during his 32 years at Sears, and a “pit bull” when given a task. Commendable, and perhaps proof he is not an idiot, but also maybe not an argument that he is qualified for the full-time position, as the Picard partisans repeatedly denied.

(Fran, the tax man, also took umbrage at newspaper reports that called him a “medical courier.” He is an independent subcontractor, he asserted, a businessman. Whose business happens to be shuttling around medical reports and test samples. You know, kinda like a medical courier does… I also loved it when one council member asked if he was prepared to work full-time hours for his proposed full-time salary, as opposed to, say, conducting his like-a-medical-courier-yet-not business. Absolutely, he said, and I was ready for him to punctuate it with “Cross my heart and hope to die.”)

Along with the name-calling, there were multiple rude comments from the audience, some sotto voce, some less sotto. Two council members seemed to impugn each other’s character a bit, and one guy burst into a singing birthday greeting to another council member. At one point, I wrote in my notes, “Is this Mayberry?” and I wondered if all local government is reduced to these moments of tomfoolery, or if my new hometown is unique.

The other thing that hit me: The bad blood and backbiting were between members of the same party! It’s no wonder the ideological divide in Washington between conservatives and those-who-are-not-conservatives leads to the dirty politics and gridlock we’ve seen the last 15 years. Then again, maybe the familiarity found in what is basically a small town, no matter what the Census figures say, breeds its own kind of political contempt.

I vowed, before the big move back East, to get involved in local politics wherever we ended up. Maybe even run for office. I think last night soured me pretty well on the latter. Even without the acrimony, there is this fact, brought up last night: After doing a day job, local elected officials put in long hours to keep the town running, with only a meager stipend to compensate them for their time. They obviously are not in it for the money. But the local intraparty bickering shows some of them are in it for the power, real or perceived, and at times the chance to reward their friends. (Though some of the council members who supported the tax collector said cronyism had nothing to do with their votes. Most, however, said nothing.)

So, did republican democracy work? Hard to say. During the time I was there, everyone who spoke opposed making the position full time. The final vote was 7-6 in favor of making it full time. But some of the council members’ arguments for that stance were stronger than I had thought going in, when I had largely taken the Picard faction’s position. So, mob rule was thwarted, perhaps for the good. Our representatives, at times, do look at a bigger picture we might not see. Or else the anti-Picard forces just had the simple advantage of numbers, as they will again when the new council is sworn in next week.

I might go to future meetings, just to see if last night’s was an aberration. I hope so. Of course, the average citizen is not privy to what goes on in the back rooms, where it seems – at least here – many deals are made. Maybe the public comments are just a formality (one almost undermined last night by a last-minute switch in the starting time from 6 pm to 5). Even so, I will be less inclined to bad-mouth local pols, as I have in the past, unless they do really stupid/harmful things. Most of them do seem to care about the town. Some of them might be in over their head, but at least they’re trying. You might want to go to a meeting where you live some time, just to see your officials in action. Or run for office yourself, if you think you can do a better job. But please, keep it civil out there, willya?

Galileo’s Finger, and Other Plays

You want a play featuring an excerpt of Oedipus Rex as written by David Mamet?

Mamet and Sophocles, together on the same stage! Sort of...

Got it.

What is the mystery of Galileo's finger?

Or maybe one about Galileo’s finger? Two plays with kiss in the title? Various slightly warped Christmas plays?

Got it, got ‘em, and got ‘em.

I have been somewhat prolific of late, writing the plays others tell me to. Well, that’s not quite right. No one puts a gun to my head. But as part of the ever-expanding trend of theaters doing an evening of one-act plays, many of the troupes are requesting plays on very specific themes or in specific settings.

Over the past few years, I’ve written plays set in a funeral home, an attic, a coffee shop, and on a brown couch. There have been plays about addiction, Valentine’s Day, anything relating to Rochester, New York, or foster homes (though not in the same play, thankfully), shoes, and the various senses. During December alone, if I choose, I can write about the 1920s, eating, a Shakespearean sonnet, any activity on the Staten Island ferry, and peace. And coming up in March, one of my favorites: A theater wants plays that have something to do with J. Edgar Hoover (the not-so-subtle suggestion is that characters in drag would be great, but aren’t required).

I understand, I guess, why theaters go this route. They like to see how different playwrights will treat the same theme. And when the theme is tied to local geography/history or a holiday, it gives the company a built-in marketing hook. But at times, when I see a call for scripts and there is a detailed suggestion about what I should be writing about, I balk a bit.

Thalia, my muse honey, was it something I said?

We playwrights are the creators, damnit. Let us go where the muse takes us. On the other hand…sometimes she’s a cold, distant bitch who won’t return our calls or even open our emails. In those bleak moments, having the prod of a chosen theme is a plus. And if nothing else, taking on the varied themes, no matter how foreign (what do I know from Rochester?) is the chance to learn something new or take a “here goes nothing” approach to experiments in form. The plays become exercises that keep me writing, not a small feat when tackling a full-length my play, my ultimate goal as a playwright, seems so daunting. Still. More than two years after I finished my last one, the ill-fated and almost-litigated solo show (the lawyers should be almost done with that agreement…).

What’s funny to me is how often I write one of these thematic shorts for one theater or competition and it’s rejected, but I can get it into a festival that doesn’t set the theme, or else rework it a bit to fit somebody else’s requirements. The attic play has been produced several times; ditto the addiction play, which explores our inability to let go of stuff, the commodities that sometimes define our existence. The requirement to write about anything relating to Galileo led to a work ripped from the headlines, as they say: two fingers and a tooth stolen from the scientist’s dead body more than 250 years ago were recently recovered. Oh, what fun you can have with grave robbing and the confrontation between the secular and the religious! (No word yet, though if that one has been selected.)

Of course, some of the themes are so obscure, if my plays don’t make the cut the first time, they never see the light of day. Case in point: an updating of the proto-Surrealist classic Ubu Roi, set during the 2008 presidential campaign. But even though it didn’t get chosen, it was such fun to portray Bush II as the dim, profane Dub-U Roy. The Oedipus-cum-Mamet snippet was for a Mamet festival in Chicago. Although rejected there, I was able to send it to a NY company seeing theatrical “smash-ups.” They told me they want to stage it – yea! But that was more than a year ago. Still waiting… (I offer it here for the curious).

I’ve learned I have to pick and choose when a spate of contests come out, all with different themes. Writing something about food for the December contest seems doable; the Shakespearean sonnet less so (unless I can combine them, which I’ve been known to do before). There’s one on the sense of touch and another on “perfect10n” (that’s how they spell it), both due January 1. Perhaps another twofer is in the offing. Or I can recycle something old. But the real goal for the now not-too-distant New Year – choose one of the many ideas I’ve been kicking around for a full-length and start writing it. Just to see if I still know how to do it. I’ll keep you posted.