blakeisnomadman

A lot of brilliant people battled depression.  Dorothy Parker (who coined the phrase “what the hell”) attempted suicide twice.  Several of the brilliant and particularly the funny have left us, and of course there are those unlike David Foster Wallace or John Kennedy Toole who killed themselves by attempting to mask their sorrows in drugs and alcohol (which is a lot like saying Cars and Sedans) but the question that comes to my mind, is did they just forget?

When Virginia Woolfe wrote The Waves and put together such beautiful sentences in such a musical style, when Parker quipped and quipped again and sang her song with such vibrance and grace that some of her phrases make me stop and catch my breath at the wonder of my existence.  Did they not appreciate their own (divinity misses the boat, particularly for my agnostic or atheist friends) perfection though… for certainly in moments she, Poe, Thompson, Hemmingway, Belushi, so many others were so very wonderful in who they were.  I have compassion for them that they could so beautifully express themselves such that they enriched our lives and yet not rejoice in at least their own splendor if not ours.  Though I have to open my heart to their decision not to.  Some perhaps, chemically inclined toward destruction, others just eaten up by their own stories, cannibalizing their own soul.

Jim Croce on the other hand died because of a pecan tree.  His pilot didn’t see it because there was fog.    You don’t tug on superman’s cape, you don’t spit in the wind… and you don’t take off with a pilot who can’t see what’s in front of him.  Why oh why wasn’t that on the list?

I haven't until this moment enjoyed much of where I live.

The place isn’t mine and it carries little of what I value in it’s contents.

Even my own room consists of several pieces of furniture I picked because of their near utility instead of for any aesthetic value.

Part of this is because my surroundings have always been a kind of placeholder.   I never expected to live anywhere forever.   This apartment, in particular was a temporary solution though I promised when I moved in it wouldn’t be for just six months.  I've now lived here over a year and I can't stay because it's convenient to do so.

My life, and my boys' childhoods mean more to me than that.

Though:  Living with such little overhead has had it’s advantages.   Some of those advantages are now gone because I’ve taken the kind of job that requires at least a reasonable amount of commitment to maintain, the exact level of commitment I would need to put into a job to afford a nicer place.

So this is one of those differences that make no difference.  I might not have the overhead to need to make money but staying at my job requires me to make money anyway.

Yes, I could change jobs tomorrow, or more things in the world can change and I’d be forced to.  

However all of that becomes moot in the face of:  I’d rather be somewhere else.

Though not just anywhere else.   Not just another random place with more random furniture.  I’ve done that too often and it sends the wrong message, not to others but to myself.

I’m not going to just jump ship.   I’m going to look, I’m going to prepare and the next place I move into is going to be someplace I want to live.

I don’t have to move next month or the month after.  Hell, the longer I stay the better position I can be in to move.  I have many an I to dot and t to cross before I leave.

So I ‘m going to get to it, for once with an eye to the future and for now, welcome myself into the present.  Savor what's here.  I am after all, in theory at least, living with one of my best friends.

Going to pick up my son, Zachary I was just a few minutes early.

My youngest is a bit of a wiggle worm.   He’s on track to be my height (6’7”) but unlike his brother he’s under weight for his age, which is not to say he isn’t healthy, he’s just slender.

Watching him Play handball by himself, brought back memories.  I wasn’t particularly popular in school, particularly elementary school and spent many a day entertaining myself cause I just didn’t have anyone to play with.

While my son seemed perfectly content he was the only child playing by himself.

So my intention was to give him a hug.

About ten minutes prior to this I pose a question to one of my best friends in an email about something I won’t disclose here.   It’s not something I need an answer on and my intention is to just ask and forget about it.  Let them answer in their own time.   :P   I put the email out of my head as I’ve got my boys with me.

When I went to pick up my son, my balloon idea of being huggy dad were shot down with a piercing shriek.   “I want chocolate.”  He cried.

I was stunned.   This was something new, didn’t make sense.   I hadn’t even said hello yet and already I’m being hit with a tantrum.  

During this time I’m getting emails from Lea Anne about the project due.  Homework.  She’s concerned about the writing I’d done for my oldest.

So as I discourage Zachy from chocolate he instantly starts a new mantra.   From my perspective I see a giant close up of my son’s screaming mouth…  “I want a BEACH BALL!”

The look of disconnection and terror on my face must be satisfying and he presses his advantage.

“We have to get a BEACH BALL daddy!  We have to we have to we have to!”

I tell him we are most certainly not going to get a beach ball if that’s how he’s going to ask which creates more wailing.

Now:  He knows he’s not going to get what he wants this way.  He also knows that if he approached me differently I’m not the strictest parent in the world.  A ten dollar toy is not something I’m likely to refuse especially if we strike some sort of bargain for it.   He does an extra couple of pages of reading or the like…

But this isn’t occurring to him, or perhaps it is and this is an easy way to commandeer the evening.  Whatever his unconscious motives however he is in genuine pain.  Crying tears of frustration at not being understood and not getting his way.  “I want a beach ball.” 

“Let’s not talk any more about this beach ball.”

“But why can’t I have one!”

“Because of the way you’re acting!”

“But that’s not fair!”

Text from their mother:  “Don’t forget to write eight sentences.”

And Cyrus “Daddy, Can we go to Jamba Juice?”

“No.” 

“But we never get to go to Jamba Juice.”

“That’s because he’s the worst Daddy ever. That’s why I can’t have a BEACH BALL!  Can I at least have a cookie?”

What the stench?  No, he can’t have a cookie before dinner.

I take a breath… unaware that I reached a boiling point after a difficult ‘day at the office.”

I now find myself in an unrelated email argument.  One of the worst I’ve had with this very close friend.

The email argument escalates so Zachy seems to settle down.  He notices my anger and attention have somehow been redirected.

Indeed they have.    I’m screwing up a friendship that I’ve had for years over something intensely miniscule because I don’t know to keep things about what they are about.

I come home drop the boys off.  “Uncle Robb” is home.   I go back to my car and return to find uncle Robb has taken upon himself to give Zachy a cookie.

I think Robb was surprised at the cool reception I gave this weird act of twisted parenting.  I was only gone five minutes.  You gave my son a cookie?  You don’t think maybe I want a say in this?

But I let it go.  I work on my sons project.   The email argument hits an apex.  He tells me what essentially what I can do with my project.  

And so I’m now still simmering.  

Finally it’s bed time and I go to tuck the boys in.   The alarm clock is unplugged.   I storm into Robb’s room and blast.  “You unplugged my kids clock again?’  He looks at me.  “I told you not to unplug that clock.  All you have to do if it goes off when I’m not here, is turn the volume down.”

He’s about to say something.

“Don’t you say a word.  Not a fucking word.  I’m going to reset my boys’ clock.”

He shuts his mouth.

I reset the clock.  Put the boys to bed.  

Ten minutes later Robb comes out of his room.  “Is it okay to tell you that I didn’t touch the alarm clock now?”

Everything clicks into place.   I wasn’t mad at Robb.   I sure wasn’t mad at my friend who lives out of state.

I had been lashing out at someone for something they didn’t do.

I’d done this before.   I’d likely done this my whole life.

Two days later at the premier of the Horror of Barnes Folly I am presented with a gift to give my character the childhood he never had.    A big red beach ball; A permanent reminder to keep things about what they are about.    An angry red planet made for a big child.

This gift also reminds me, because it’s associated with The Horror of Barnes Folly of one of my favorite life experiences, so I can’t look at that ball and feel bad about myself, but it is a constant reminder to keep vigil on where my emotions are coming from.

They are about to shuffle me out of here so my typing must be fleet.   I haven’t decided what to write, so I’ll write what I see. 

Two men with wool worker caps and plaid shirts cause each other to roll their eyes, snicker and periodically throw their heads back in laughter.   They look like they just got back from central casting for 1940’s cub reporter.  They are enjoying each other’s synergy in a decidedly platonic way, each reluctant to recognize just how scrumptious they find their connection.

Behind them converses a serious group of four people.  A guy dressed like a cat burglar complete with knit cap and black leather gloves holding court as the other three contemplate him as if Ghandi was his unenlightened disciple.

To my right, under the copper foyer a boy-man attempts to impress his date with  too much of himself and won’t understand why she moves on in a few weeks. 

Then there’s the trio who keep talking about the industry and not a one of them has stopped smiling my entire time.

Lastly there’s the fellow (in nearly every Los Angeles coffee house) with the macbook writing on Finaldraft what is obviously the Great American Screenplay. Laughing at his own jokes  and occasionally clapping his hands as if to show that what Shakespeare lacked was enthusiasm.  This guy is writing on Sunday night because tomorrow he gets up early for what is probably a sales meeting.   Oh wait.  That last guy is me.

I guess I fit right in.

It started interestingly enough.   I decided to go to an opera.  I decided to take an opera singer.  I sort of charged in, swept her off her feet and practically started a relationship without her.  I knew I could, I saw what she wanted.  I also knew I wasn’t really that but I was lonely so kept that piece of information close to the vest.

The weird thing is, is that I’m on my way to becoming something akin to that but still not quite what she’s looking for.

A short story I wrote when I was twenty or so began: There are two kinds of people with whom you fall in love, those that meet your ideal and those that complement you, when you meet someone in the second category, you know it.

Turns out we were neither category for each other.  What we had was great big gobs of commonality; Oodles of it.  She was beautiful, I was seductive.   I decided to play the role because she was lovely and she decided to let me because she was a romantic. 

Neither of us ever got to unkind.  Neither of us ever quite got to bliss, either.  It was way beyond mediocre but far short of Nirvana.

It was, in short, good.  

And isn’t it lovely that that’s not enough for either of us?

So our first date was decent seats at an opera followed by steaks at Mortons on me and our last date was Circue Du Solei, amazing seats on her.   And once the dust settles I know we’ll be wonderfully supportive for one another and to anyone out there who is curious, she’s one of the most considerate, loving, thoughtful and gracious people I could ever hope to know.

And I want her to know, I’m ready for her to move on, with a loving heart, and a public declaration of undying friendship.

When I was nine I saw an episode of Bewitched.   Elizabeth Montgomery was playing her own evil cousin, Sabrina.   She was wearing a curly black wig and a short psychedelic skirt.  She did a little dance, her hips moved.

My body thought the dance was only for me.  My response was significant, even at nine.   In that moment I understood.

“Oh no!”  I said.  “This is going to ruin… EVERYTHING!”

I had plans, you see, plans that didn’t involve a seismic response to every attractive girl in a skimpy outfit. 

Now that I’m in my forties my criteria is different.  I’m interested in women who are interested in me, have intelligence, talent and can sharpen my brain when we converse, AND look hot in a miniskirt.  Never-the-less, I’m just now beginning to wonder (after two kids and a whole lot of mileage) was I right?  Of course it hasn't ruined everything, but maybe it's time to focus a little harder on my goals.  (so to speak).

In other words I'm considering giving up dating for Lent.  Pacino was right... first you get the money, then you get the power... _THEN_ you get the women (woman).  So, maybe I'll just take a break from dating and see how it goes.

Of course the last time I said that I met my next (last) girlfriend the next day.

The last few weeks have been a tsunami of activity and have left me bereft and beached on a deserted island without a coconut tree.

For this reason I’ve decided to stop and regroup and look at what is going on.

I’ve made three decisions. 

The first involves how I sometimes begin things.   I’m ten minutes late, so I grab what I think I might need and rush out the door.  My mind is a blur, there is no checklist and I really hope I didn’t forget my keys on the table because if I’ve locked myself out of my apartment I’m screwed.

I’m smart (or so I believe) so I can make it up as I go, right?  I have for years. 

In short:  Nuh uh to all of the above.

This aint my first rodeo so at the young young age of 46 I determine now and forever that not taking the time to plan is like not taking the time to train for a boxing match.   I’m going to get my arse handed to me if I don’t do something different.

So the first, oh so insightful insight is:  plan. Plan like I’ve never planned before, except with more experience than that.  Become known as the plan man.   There are worse things.

That’s what I have to say about beginnings.   Choose them, don’t let them choose you.

My next piece of self and god help me advice is this…

My mind can travel.  I can find myself coming to in the middle of my day (regardless of what I suppose.  And I have no recollection of where I’ve been.  It’s like I awoke from a dream. 

So yes.  The power of now.  Today is a gift.  Etcetera, etcetera etcetera.

Cliff notes:  The middle = being present.

And lastly…  end of day, or activity.  Leave everything where it is, take off.  I’m busy.   In a hurry, (ten minutes late, remember?)  Where the hell did I put my keys, I’ll do it later.  Notes in the computer?  Forget it, I’ll do it later.  I’ll do it all later.

The future me is way more organized than the (not) present me.  The (not) present me has shit to do and is still doing damage control for the last thing I didn’t plan, wasn’t paying attention to and didn’t finish correctly.

So the end, in short is to take a moment.  Tuck in.  Everything has a house.

And if I can write a journal entry a day, and give up bread (sugar, rice and potatoes) then I can do this.

Course the former involved my midlife crisis.  Maybe I can convince myself this does to somehow.  Maybe it does.

I know this, as a side note and I’m writing this down for anyone who may have had similar circumstances in their upbringing.    Love my mom, but she did sometimes have to leave for months at a time leaving me to fend for myself ‘cause I was such ‘good’ kid.  My dad was out of the house when I was six and my brother just a year after that, so as role models go I was pretty much on my own.

And my mom, (and she’s wonderful in many ways) isn’t one for routine or patterns, and that includes teaching me how to set up for my day or any of that noise.

So I usually don’t tuck under.

But I will now.

And be present.

And plan.

That’s all I got for now.  

When Hemmingway shot himself, did that mean that he abandoned his quest for one true sentence or was that perhaps it? 

And while I’m almost on the subject, does anyone know if it was Becket or Brecht or Albee that wrote the play about the baby carriage that drifts across the stage?  I’ve lost contact with the guy who told me that story.

By the way, the way to be invisible in the modern world is to have a name like Eric Johnson or James Smith.   Such monikers are the only anonymity in our culture of spiders and webs.

Allow me to connect these seemingly random dots.   Actions are more honest than words (and no, I’m not even slightly suicidal) and one of the clearest illustrations of this was that play, that has not a word of dialogue, that I’ve alluded to.  It’s a stage action that more clearly makes the playwright’s point than hours of musings.  Lastly, the guy who told me about that play is impossible to find, because his name is too common to search for.

As “The Bruss” used to say, “that was like driving up to Yosemite on  a full tank of gas only to find out it was closed.  

Still, I’m glad to recover the banner that has “I write a weekly blog” on it, even if it’s a bit recursive today.   So be it.   I’m tired.   I’m calling this one a win and will aim higher next week.

Hemmingway, it’s said was after the one true sentence.

Plato shunned even fiction for its dishonesty.

But dishonesty can be subtle.  It can be an honest choice in one moment that we don’t agree with later.

It can be capitulating out of hesitation or at least once in my life harkening to The Truth in a moment and then over thinking what the next step is and missing it with disastrous results.

Truth isn’t complicated, though, and miraculously it isn’t evasive.   When we’re centered, when we listen, things are more clear than we are sometimes willing to admit.

I made an acquaintance recently whose honesty floored me.   My reaction to it was decidedly dishonest but if it’s not too late to take a feather from another’s cap and put it into my own glorious wings… I’m snagging that particular feather if possible.

I realize this may not make great big gobs of sense to anyone else.  Or maybe it does, I can’t tell.

But Hemmingway was wrong in my opinion.  There is no one true sentence.   (And for the record, for me, Plato was also wrong as there’s truth in fiction in my estimation.)  There are gradations of dishonest but maybe not gradations of honest.   Maybe we know the truth, as a dear friend of mine has pointed out, if we listen to an idea we can tell if it’s true or not just by asking ourselves if it is.

At the risk of being recursive, when I ask myself if this is true the answer comes back “Mostly”.

Because some forms of honesty doesn’t involve words.

It’s late.   I’m missing a part of this, but this is my second shot at an LJ and it’s four in the morning.

I’m sticking with this one, and the level of truth that it entails.

Because when I ask myself if I want to still write an entry once a week, the answer's clear.

I really don’t have time to “go out” more than once a week.

I’m a dad.  I write.  I have a demanding job which I enjoy.  I take Muay Thai and at times I've the organizational mind of a tornado in a junk yard.

So, the older I get, as I want to hold things together, I find it’s important to (for those of you who A) read and B) recall my New Years Resolution(s))  plan things out and think them through.

If I don’t, I live my life with only one shoe wondering wear I put my right eyeball.

So: I decided to go out on fewer, better dates.

Friday we went and saw Cleopatra, CEO. a modern dance experience directed by Heidi Duckler.   To say it's a good production is like saying that Godiva is a good chocolate.  To convey the experience needs telepathy and not words but what da heck: I’m a gonna try.

I suppose there are SPOILERS so if you’re going to see this dance, just please do and skip this entry.

It was literally upstairs of the corporate office of my “day gig”.  Telepacific is the (45^th, 46^th ) and 47^th floor at 515 S Flower and the performance was on the 51^st floor.  Which drums home my current experience of savoring all of my life including my job.

Anywho:

It’s a walking performance.  You follow the dancers from room to room in this spacious, beautiful art deco, empty corporate floor.  The audience is broken into the Greeks and Romans, if you’re a Greek (like us) and not a Roman, you begin the walking performance shuffling into an office looking at a the back of a woman in business clothes who stands on a platform staring out at  the city almost like a manikin in a very high store window.   If you’ve ever seen the view from the top of the Bonaventure at night, this is the same view. 

After several minutes she begins an interpretive sign language translation to a comical musing, lamenting the insanity of the role of women in the modern world. Funny, but and not the dance experience expected: and into the next room to an identical office space to look at the back of a woman in business clothes who stands on a platform staring out at  the city almost like a manikin in a very high store window.  This time, when a very different woman turns around she’s a CEO named Cleopatra auditioning for the part of Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s play and I’m beginning to wonder: What the hell is this?  I thought there was going to be dancing!

Then they shuffled us, all of us, into the main conference area where:  Amazing neo acrobatic modern expression de jour exploded around us.    Diminutive and tall, heavy and light, people of all body types became a moving, pulsating, Egyptian tableau.  

Then the actors grabbed ores and transformed these office style cubicles into Egyptian long ships shown from different perspectives with their movement and dance.  The ores had clip boards on the ends of them because: there’s the CEO / royalty metaphor throughout. 

The dancers were extraordinary.

Emerging mummified in gauze Cleopatra (the lead dancer) was unwrapped to a brilliant cover of a woman singing Hal and Oats’s Maneater and walked across the shoulders of men. Caesar was a chunky (superb) hip hop dancer and his relationship to and with Cleopatra was expressed in a duet.

Cleopatra could move like her legs were not attached and expertly puppeteered by someone else.

Then past bald evil looking Shaolin martial artist menacing the audience with a knife from a ladder.   This was Octavius and wonderful foreshadowing.

Into another expansive office; hardwood floors, an art deco fireplace and the city as our backdrop to a ballet with briefcases comically conveying  the experience of the corporate man.  At first they all, on phones jibber in mock latin mirroring the din of a stockbroker boiler room and then another ballet with Caeser the CEO musing over a blueprint and directing his employees.

I won’t describe every room but I did make an assessment, and possibly an erroneous one about the (brilliant) choreographer. She’s likely single.  (I have no idea) and her experience with men has been a disappointment.

Mark Antony comes on all boast and swagger (appropriate) and his attempted seduction of Cleopatra is portrayed with him attempting to lure her but instead gradually being seduced by her.  This interplay was very reminiscent of the way it usually works.  :P 

Then the dance becomes hot and heavy, and they do fall in love, but… there is not a sustained dance of them being in love.   Antony goes from swaggering braggart to sex partner to eventually being worn down by Octavia (in more yummy genius choreography… at one point the audience is lined up in a hallway like a Soultrain dance line to the dancers battling it out complete with some matrix style slow motion special effects) but Antony slowly gets beaten and we get the sense that Cleo (through dance) is almost a victim to Antony’s defeat… She has to carry him.

So Cleopatra seems at affect of the men in her life and Antony never transcends passed the profane.  This makes me think the Duckler is disappointed in a man or two and probably isn’t in a very happy relationship at present.

This last is pure conjecture but you knew that.

Okay, enough of this.   Forgive the length of this post but I don’t have the time to write a really short one.  :P