afterSonoma

Catching up

Good to hear from you, Steve, and that you want to continue this communication. I suppose that our natural curiosity about one another was appeased somewhat by our visit in NY last spring. We're no longer writing to the person we remembered, but to an advanced version of that person many years on.
   I want to catch you up on some of the projects I've mentioned. This blog works  as a bit of diary in that way for me. When we last talked I had not yet started writing the play the College commissioned. Now I've gone through two drafts and have just sent the last draft to a dramaturg I want to work with. The project has become so absorbing, and the play itself more generally about institutionalization than about Woodlands, the place that inspired it. I am getting most of my particulars from that place, though. Lots of research, including personal interviews and also visits to the archives, reading about the general topic of developmental disabilities. At one point I realized that I wanted to just spend time with people who have various disabilities, as I was writing about characters I had not much experience of. So I've been to a Theatre Terrific workshop, meetings, had coffee with people. That research will continue.
   The play has taken a direction i didn't anticipate, more stylized than I usually write. I hope I can work on that aspect in the next draft. To me playwriting is a series of challenges to meet, draft after draft, until I can't think of anything more to work on.
    Still, I've just taken another look at Casting the Angel, my much rewritten play, and after a break I see challenges I didn't see before. Some good news about that one. A cast of five top Canadian actors will do a staged reading in late January, to benefit the Performing Arts Lodge, which is a kind of social housing for people in the arts who probably didn't plan for retirement and need some housing help. There's a new 100-seat theatre we'll try to fill, and with the cast I'm talking about, that might not be a problem.
   Finally, a tech question. I'm trying to move some iphotos to a house exchange site, but can't figure out how to do it. I'll keep working at it, but you might have something to suggest.
   How are the people in your life, you and Ruth?

Gap

There's been a a long gap in our correspondance, but I thought I'd pick it up to say that I hope the freaky weather earlier this week did not affect you too badly - that you weren't up on your roof, for example, dodging flying objects. Also to mention an artist I recently met, whose work is worth a look. A sculptor, Geoffrey Smedley. When I had a place on Gambier Island, I used to walk past his beautiful house and studio and wonder what was up inside. I had lunch with him and his friendly wife Brigid at Diego and Marlene's last weekend. Here are some images I found on the web. If you're interested, you can find more.
   How are you and Ruth, your father, her sister? Your adult children? NY in the summer, this summer?
   I've been hard at my play, the one I mentioned when I saw you in May. It's a huge challenge. I almost have enough pages to make a play, but it's not a play yet. Many scenes, many undeveloped characters. An interesting style emerging. Questions.

A. Water Tablet, 2001.

                  Geoffrey Smedley, The Numbers

Letters, etc

Yes, a brief time in NY altogether. And then, since I'm aware of how much you and Ruth try to accomplish, and because of Ruth's sister visiting that weekend as well, I was wary of overstaying. We would have spent more time together had I taken you up on your offer to stay, but that would have been disruptive and it was easier to bunk with my former house swapee. She felt she owed me some time, and we wanted to meet anyway (as we hadn't). We got along well, a woman about my age with similar taste in books, movies, plays. I met up with friends from Vancouver on Monday, and she joined us at the 13th St. theatre that evening for a pay-what-you-will performance of God's Ear. Another really stimulating experience. I say another, because The Brig worked that way for me, too. I loved the sheer dramatization of the idea in The Brig. No exposition necessary. God's Ear dramatized a serious subject, grief over the loss of a child, in a funny and inventive way. Loved the rhythmic language, the clever theatrics. A little too much, by the end, perhaps, in a different way than The Brig, which left me feeling brutalized. Funny that while the most expensive ticket of the weekend was for Moon for the Misbegotten, and Eugene O'Neill was probably my first big influence as playwright, I found that script dated. Still beautiful in its use of language and the performances were powerful, and I loved sitting in that beautiful old theatre, yet ...
  The night I returned to Boston I had an email from Annie reporting that she'd had an accident near the California border, actually crossed the border in an ambulance, which took her to a hospital in Crescent City, where emerg staff scanned her head and spine, treated her abraded face, gave her painkillers and let her go. She had slid out on a patch of gravel, going downhill at a fairly high speed, landed on her left side - head, shoulder, knee. The doctor told her she could get back on her bike in a few days, which was the most irresponsible piece of advice he could have given her. She had a concussion, a dislocated shoulder and didn't even recover from the shock in two days, so ended up flying back from San Francisco about five days after the accident, when she still was not feeling any better. The post-concussion symptoms are still showing up, to the point where she had such a bad headache last night I had to take her to the emergency room here, because I worried there could be internal bleeding. But she's ok. Just needs to take it easier.
   So that's been going on, along with a return to work, which I'll talk about in a later post, because I want to comment on your response to the letters I brought you. I think you're being too hard on yourself. We were all crazy in some ways back then. I've always liked your letters and returned them to you because I thought you might appreciate revisiting an old self. I'm sorry if they set you off on a round of self-recrimination. First of all, your writing - in the old letters, in the blogs - feels honest and is engaging to read. I always found the content interesting, even that about your plans to market your art. I liked it that you wanted to keep in touch and appreciated your loyalty in that regard, and still do, because you are my only contact from the Sonoma days (daze), and despite the substances that may have shaped a lot of our thoughts and experiences, that was a life-changing time for me. While I didn't use them directly, your letters, you and Linda, and the times we shared in Sonoma County, all inspired me and informed some of the content of my book Centre/Center. Maybe you'll write your own book someday, because you've always had a lot to say and you express yourself well.
   Borderline? One thing I'm learning as I continue with research for my new play is that one shouldn't use labels to describe people. So it follows that one shouldn't try to define oneself via a label, I think. Again, I'm sorry if the letters shook you. Should I send more, or just keep them? Ditch the idea of contacting Nathan? I think I mentioned that I sent a lot of my papers, including original manuscripts and correspondance, to the University of Toronto library last summer. If anyone is ever interested the the life of a minor Canadian writer, the papers are there for them to look through. One day the collection will include your letters to me, so I thought I would let Nathan know that, at least, should he ever become curious, or have a child who becomes curious. I've been someone who is curious about her ancestors and have had no luck find anything about them. The poor Irish didn't keep many records. But my playwright uncle did, and when my aunt died, I tried to get hold of some of her things, which would have included old scripts of my uncle's. No luck. My aunt's sister kept tight hold of everything there was. So this is where I'm coming from. The lives of individuals make up human history. Letters are an expression of some lives, or parts of some lives.
   I looked into ordering The Diaries of Judith Malina, too, but could find only a rather expensive copy. Let me know if you like the book, okay? I may get it anyway. I did order that book you've been reading, The Singularity is Near, but it won't arrive for awhile. Must be the difference betweeen Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. It will be an unusual book for me to read, but I like to do that in summer. Still, I have so much work to do I don't know how much reading time I'll get. We'll see. One last thing, for this post, I was able to delete files, per your advice, and while my homepage doesn't come up when I hit the firefox icon, I can get to it. Mail doesn't come from other servers to gmail, though. Thanks for the tech help. I always plan to spend time just fooling around on the computer, but by the time I finish my work for the day, I want to get otuside, or just away from my desk. That's sort of the reason for my tardy response to your last post. Also, my server was down for a couple of days.
   Made pesto pizza last night and remembered i was going to send my recipe for the crust to Ruth. I'll do it soon.

Beyond the Borderline

Cinco de Mayo Party on the Roof, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

Sure was a brief visit. A good one, we have so much to follow up on. Let's hope it's not decades until we can next talk and go places together. You have a fun-seeking, adventurous spirit, tho you may be more cautious than I, that's also a good thing.

I got the Judith Malina diaries, used, thru Amazon's marketplace, two volumes: The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1947-1957 & The Enormous Despair - The Diary of Judith Malina August 1968 to April 1969. It seems there are plenty available at low prices. I'll start carrying around the first volume, the one she had at her theater. Probably take me months to read it. I also want to check the Anais Nin 1947 - 1955, to see if Judith was the young woman who so impressed Anais, thinking she was seeing a new type of human -- quick, imaginative, brave and unburdened. If it wasn't Judith, was it anyone else we know?

It was especially significant for Ruth to meet her, since, as Ruth told you, The Living Theater was a main historical reference for the type of performance featured in Ruth's MA thesis. Having Judith's theater so close to us gives Ruth the idea to design a performance for the space. Like she doesn't have enough to do.

Reading my old letters to you which you brought for me was not exactly a pleasure. I've been fairly shaken since. Thru them, I see myself as being so deluded. Not an excuse but a symptom, I was always writing just after smoking a big dubie or a bowl (depending on the decade). I was writing to hear myself write, so-to-speak. I don't know why I thought you'd want to read my ridiculous plans to market my art, each of which saw its last expression in the letter to you. I really don't say anything worth while, don't know how or why anyone, including you or Nathan would value them. The two from Linda were interesting for me to read, Nate would like them.

I scanned them all, it took most of one art day. Two letters, the best two, contained a couple of statements that might cause hurt to people I loved. I threw away those two originals. I'll publish edited forms of the text. The one where I'm concerned about Linda's threatened custody battle over high-school aged Nathan was especially troublesome to me.

In it, I was giving credence to her wild, desperate statements, I remember back then, I thought I needed the protection of publicity. Too bad there wasn't blogs then, I wouldn't have needed to bother you with it. I wanted you to write my story. I guess I've often had that idea. You're a writer, write about me! Like the Somerset Maugham story of people coming to him with their tales, expecting him to write for them, he says something like, "that's a good story, all it needs is 50,000 words".

When I read that letter, I just shook my head, thinking about how crazy I was. This thought has stayed with me, I've too often seen myself out-of-control. As each year goes by, I look back at the last year, relieved I'm not as crazy this year as I was then. Now, I'm accepting that I'm crazy this year and every year. It was always clear to me that my parents had difficult mental illnesses, that my sister's illness has all but killed her, that Linda was crazy, but I've usually thought, I escaped mental illnesses, I got the lucky sane genes. Nathan, when discussing Linda's illness, would never fail to let me know that he considered me just as crazy as her. That made me think he was as crazy as she. If I think people around me are crazy, then I'm probably crazy.

Last night, Ruth was telling me about how difficult it is for them at Fountain House to handle people who have "Borderline Personality Disorder". She's described this diagnosis before and we consider my sister to suffer from it. This time, as she listed the symptoms, I saw myself. The name references the an inability to adequately appreciate where one ends and others begin -- causing the person to keep control of social situations by inappropriately taking attracting attention.

At dinner, at Azul, over a feast of grilled meat and delicious Argentinean Cabernet-Shiraz blend, she assured me that, if I was a "Borderline", I would be the highest functioning one she's known.

The fact that she, the Psychologist, hasn't considered me a Borderline all these years we've been together, gives me relief that I'm not as out-of-control as some others with the disorder. But, none-the-less, many symptoms fit. I have often seen myself saying inappropriate things publicly, to keep attention on me in that moment, though the effect of the statements works against me in the long term.

Borderlines are trouble-makers, we will confound attempts at organization, scrambling the order of others. Though we want to control situations, we fail. We put ourselves in the center of attention, but since we destroy organization, others can't participate with us, and must move on, to make functional systems without us. We will then isolate, thinking others don't "get" us because they're idiots.

This is me.

Thankfully, I can treat some people well, I can be kind and loyal, I can love. Sadly, I lose it with some other people. If they are picky and controlling themselves, they will often get my anger, I will try to hurt their feelings with cutting remarks, I will sabotage any possible relationship with my bristling.

Thinking of myself as a Borderline, gives me another vantage point on my behavior, hopefully it will help me not indulge in BPD tendencies.

Here's hoping you are back to a productive schedule and that you got some of what you hoped for from your New York visit.