On Editing. And on Chanukah.

Editing is a frightening topic for me. I don't like unedited things. They're sloppy. They're misspelled. They're offensive to the sensibilities, whether grammatical, political or personal.

The one that drives me the craziest, though, is the grammar. When my grammar sensibilities are offended, it's practically sensory. A malfunctioning sentence tastes bad to me. I'm typing slowly right now, because I really want to commit to a straight-on, unedited blog. They take too damn long the other way, and sooner or later I just say "fuck it" and it never sees the light of the internet. Even now I'm thinking "Wait, I was doing something else! I don't have time for a blog!"

I was, in fact, about to light the menorah, ten hours late, and considering the concept of ritual. And wondering what it would be like to commit to the rituals of Judaism for a time, without altering my beliefs and non-beliefs, or even feeling that I'd need to alter them. Then wondering whether such a drastic change, such a clockwork lifestyle, could alter my neural patterns, and I'd become someone who'd want it all to be true, someone prone to belief. It's a bit of an odd feeling; I'll let you know when I sort it out.

So, we'll pause from typing...

Lit the menorah, all nine candles for the last night, as well as the miniature one from Grandma Sophie's house, with little white birthday candles. But I put up the mini Christmas tree first - Hans will be happy to see that in the morning. I'm saving the decorating for both of us. Anyway, I turned the tree lights on before lighting the menorah, so I'd have both of them going at the same time.

Then I looked on Youtube for a Chanukah song. Tonight at the Imp, after the shows, there was a brief discussion about the existence of Chanukah songs other than the one about a clay dreidel. I had forgotten this one:


I always thought it had a beautiful melody, though I never learned it in Hebrew. I love the PS22 Choir, too.


The other thing about unedited things is that trains of thought are left unfinished. I've completely lost my point from where I started. I had several points about the editing, in fact. The hell with it, I'm tired. I'm sure I'll get back to it soon enough.

Thankful.

Thank you, Hans, for alwaysalwaysalways being there for me, even when I'm crazy. Especially when I'm crazy.

Thank you, Mom, for the delicious chocolate torte, and the coffee, and for listening.

Thank you, Grandma Judy, for still laughing when I joke with you, and for letting me help even though it's hard after a lifetime of taking care of others, to be taken care of. And for sometimes reading my mind in that uncanny dementia way, because you've always known the thing to say to make me feel better.

Thank you, Susanna, for dropping our cold war when I really needed you, and nobody but my sister would do. I'm glad we're friends again.

Thank you, Dad and Valerie, for solid advice, ironic perspective, and fun times. I'll visit soon.

Thank you, all of my family, for your love. Thank you, David, Deanna, and Emily, for the way we've been able to work as a team in caring for Grandma.

Thank you, everyone who works at an elder-care facility. You are angels on this earth.

Thank you, Anomaly Orange, for being such a fun and familial troupe, for sticking it out through our growing pains, and for looking ahead with a sense of adventure. Thank you also to former Hypothetical Seven-ers with whom I was lucky enough to play.

Thank you, Roving Imps, for helping me stretch my wings and making me feel welcome!

Thank you to all the improvisers who entertain and inspire me.

Thank you to the knowledgeable and supportive improv teachers in this town. Really, what does Chicago have that we don't? (That's rhetorical; you don't have to answer it.)

Thank you, Lisa, for dragging me kicking and screaming back into opera production! Okay, there wasn't much kicking and screaming. Thank you, Kathleen, for giving me a chance after such a long hiatus from stage-managing anything with a script. Thank you, Shane, for the changeover calls - it really feels good to focus lights again!

Thank you, Shelly, for reminding me about the Pittsburg Library Sale, and for being my running-away-from-it-all destination for so long. Thank you for the books! And thank you for being the type of friend who can go a month or so without a phone call, because I tend to lose track of time.

Thank you, Julia, for landing back in my life, and for being the quintessential Chicago host!

Thank you, Pandora, for coming back to snuggle and purr. I was lost without you.

Thank you, Allegra, for somehow repairing your own endocrine system and sending your diabetes into remission. Good kitty.

Thank you, Mocha and Dylan, for the unpredictable entertainment you provide on a daily basis, and for keeping me safe from the pizza delivery person.

Thank you, people who care about the planet and act accordingly. I could do better at the "act accordingly" part... thank you for setting a good example.

Thank you, researchers, for looking for the cure to any number of horrible diseases from which I'd rather not die.

Thank you, everyone who doesn't go on shooting rampages, for not going on shooting rampages.

Thank you, artists, for holding the mirror.

Thank you, holders of public office who try to do what's right for our country and our communities. Thank you even to the ones I disagree with, when you do it from a sincere desire to do good. Thank you for not playing political games that turn citizens into pawns.

Thank you, religious people who promote love and tolerance. Thank you, irreligious people who promote love and tolerance.

Thank you, everyone willing to speak out against injustice and bigotry.

Thank you, friends who understand that every human has a few contradictions, maybe even hypocrisies, because it's a damn complex world.

Thank you, Leonard Cohen, for smudging the air with your song.

Thank you, everyone who adds beauty to this world in big or little ways.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise & haste, & remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly & clearly; and listen to others, even the dull & ignorant; they too have their story. §§ Avoid loud & aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain & bitter; for always there will be greater & lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. §§ Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. §§ Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. §§ Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue & loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. §§ You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. §§ Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors & aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. §§ With all its sham, drudgery & broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, 1927

A favorite of mine for some twenty years, first seen on a poster at a high-school friend's house. This formatting, as well as the use of "careful" rather than "cheerful" in the final section, is taken from a small framed copy that hung in the back hallway at my grandmother's house. I never noticed it as a child; it was just part of the landscape. It was only when she moved from that house in 1991 that I realized it had been there all along.

My Own Variety of Theism

Before I write a whole bunch of travel stuff and improv stuff, and a little family stuff, I want to clear up an apparent logical impossibility in my previous entry. I said that sometimes I (irrationally) feel I'm being punished for something "by a God* that doesn't exist."

I'm not really an atheist, but my belief in what could be out there, in here, somewhere, as a Greater Thing Than Man, varies from day to day. My spirituality is fluid - not malleable; that would imply that I'm easily influenced, which I am not when it comes to these matters. There are so many possibilities, and I don't take any one of them as absolutely, perfectly True. The experience of humanity changes from moment to moment - so must, to me, the Implied Beyond.

I can tell you a few things in which I can never, ever believe - starting with the concept of a deity who punishes people who do the best they can under excruciating circumstances. If there's Something, it could not be so cruel as to punish us for our humanity and free will.

I don't believe in absolution through anything but one's own heart and that of someone you've wronged. I don't believe in saviors, whether resurrected or not yet arrived the first time. Neither can I believe that any one group of people is more blessed than another, or that the ownership of a piece of land can be mandated... technically at all, but certainly not by some entity that does not make its intentions known to all concerned parties.

I believe in Good and Evil in terms of human behavior. Helping people is good. Selfishness is evil. Joy is good. Deliberately causing pain to others is evil. Nobody is 100% one or the other. Getting things off your chest isn't evil, even though it can be unpleasant. Empathy is good.

It would be comforting to believe that people who live by malice and greed, yet evade repercussion in the human realm, might be punished on a greater level - whether by flames and demonic torture, or reincarnation as a dung beetle - but I just don't see the evidence for it. Besides, a dung beetle doesn't see its quality of life as lacking.

I think it's outstandingly arrogant of humans to assume that there's a god with the same kind of consciousness that we have, or any kind of a plan around which we can wrap our puny minds. No, no. G-d does not speak the language in which you pray. G-d didn't write the rules by which you live. Those are human constructs. They may work, but they are not Divine.

At the same time, humans do seem to have a hard-wired instinct for wanting Something Greater. So when a conscious G-d exists for me, She/He is a scientist (and a hermaphrodite). Earth is a petri dish, and our duty is to follow the truth of our experience, push for further discovery of our own capacities, and make our report with accuracy.




*Style Note: When I'm feeling particularly connected to my Jewish heritage, I follow the convention of not spelling the G-word. It gets typed or written "G-d" in secular contexts and on pieces of paper likely to be discarded. There have been huge debates on the appropriateness of spelling out various Names in electronic media.

Sophia Greenberg Adelman, 1911 - 2009

What I learned from Grandma Sophie was, strangely enough, spirituality. She put up a small Christmas tree every December, and she lit the menorah for Chanukah as well. We're a Jewish family. That's not to say that every member practices Jewish ritual, or believes the same things about G-d. From day to day, I don't necessarily believe in Anything. But in technical terms, maternal lineage, we're a Jewish family. Grandma Sophie was halfway famous for leaving the synagogue due to an argument with the Rabbi about Kosher dishes. She started taking her kids to the Unitarian church. Her favorite philosopher: Baruch Spinoza, one of the few historical Jewish excomunicatees, a pantheist. G-d was not a separate entity from the world; G-d was to be found in nature. Nature was one of the most important things to Grandma Sophie. Plants, birds, her cats and dogs. Her backyard seemed like a tropical, mystical world to me, with the pink tulip tree arching over a gate that led to a creek - which was down a steep eight-foot incline. The point is, it's really all the same... but whatever it is, it's still there and worth acknowledging in some fashion.

She always said she'd watch over us after she died, just the way she believed that her father did, and later her husband, Grandpa Joe. If she would watch over my garden this summer, it might grow something (I'm not great with plants). She has quite a few people to watch over, of course, but even just a little bit would help.

Heaven has nothing to do with what happens to your soul. It's what you want the people you leave behind to think is happening to you.

The Artist's Way

First of all, I'm seeing a glimmer at the end of the "sucky improv" tunnel. Maybe articulating the problems made them start to go away. Not gone yet, but a little better. The extra practice certainly isn't hurting either! And there are ups and downs with Grandma and other family things, but I'm learning to roll with the tide. I like surfing metaphors lately. Maybe I should learn to surf someday.

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity is a book with tools for strengthening or regaining one's artistic side. It seems to me a little more directed toward writers - it's by a writer - but it's a worthy resource for any type of artist, or anyone who wants to live an artistically richer life. It's set up as a twelve-week program, of the personal development type, and in fact draws some principles from addiction recovery. It's heavy on the introspection.

There are a couple of non-negotiable structured activities involved: daily Morning Pages and weekly Artist Dates. The Morning Pages are three longhand pages of writing, preferably stream-of-consciousness, as soon as you wake up in the morning. Every morning. For three months. I didn't hit a perfect record either of the two times I've attempted the course. An Artist Date is when you take yourself to do something that gives you a new reference, knowledge, mental stimulation, all of the above. Going to a museum or concert, sketching in a coffee shop, picking wildflowers.

Oh, yes, the author is sort of a hippie without a grasp on the fact that people have to have jobs and earn a living. But she's an employed hippie, with tons of writing credits and a bunch of books published. She does expect you to be willing to give up everything you know to fulfill your destiny as a creative force in the Universe. "Leap, and the net will appear," is how she puts it. That's an important principle throughout the course. At any rate, whether the whole course suits you, or you just half-ass it and read the quotes in the margins, there is something to it. Even half-assed, it helps shake you out of a drought.

Sometime in the near future, I'm going to open up the book and try the course again. I might make it through this time. If not, no harm done. A few years ago, I started the course at the same time as a group of friends, and we met weekly (or as weekly as a bunch of artsy people can meet) to discuss it. If anyone I know is interested in doing the course as a small group, please get in touch. Here's more information:

Official Website: http://www.theartistsway.com/
View available copies at Biblio.com Used Books

R.I.P., Old Sneaky

I had a fish for a while. He was fat and orange, and he lived at my house before I did. I don't even know how old he was. I don't know if he was put in the pond by the people who lived here before us, or the people before them. He emerged from hibernation this spring, and impressed me with... well, with his ability to hibernate, and I called him Old Sneaky.

I didn't see much of him the first couple of months. He spent a lot of time hiding in the cinder blocks in the unknown depths (3 feet) of the pond. The water was green and murky, and the pump didn't work, but I checked every day, and never saw him float up dead. Sometimes I'd catch an orange flash when the sun was at a good angle, and I knew that he was just fine, and that his ecosystem was balanced enough.

We took in two refugee goldfish from a friend's preschool at the end of May. I was afraid they wouldn't survive in the uncultivated outdoor conditions - or that Sneaky, some ten times their size, would make a delicious snack out of them. To my surprise, the three formed a little gang. Social creatures, apparently.

The white one with the red spot on his head stayed close to Sneaky's side, while the all-orange one was usually a few inches behind. They ate the algae, and terrorized the tadpoles, and they seemed happy (as far as I could tell about non-mammals). They doubled in size, though they were still considerably smaller than Sneaky. And since the water didn't stink, I pretty much left things alone, just topping it off with the hose anytime I could see that a couple inches had evaporated.

The Fourth of July set in motion the turning of the fate of the fish. Would that I ever had gotten a cover for the little pond, that cover for which I was measuring the day I discovered Sneaky. Cleaning up the yard on the fifth of July, I realized that fallen soot had turned the pond from green to grayish-green, and that it was very likely some firework debris had landed there as well, and that sounded unhealthy for even the bad-assest of fish. That was when I resolved to clean the pond.

Hans and I spent two days on that, which was a day more than I'd imagined the project would take. We lost the two smaller fish to the un-aerated holding tank. Sneaky was just starting to look sluggish when we deemed the pond "clean enough." Once returned to his newly-sanitized home, pump working, water bubbling prettily over a slope of rocks (and the Saint Francis statue), he picked up his old pace.

The little ones must have socialized him - now he made sure to swim near the top when he felt approaching footsteps. I planned to get him a new friend or two. We also started feeding him fishypellets, to make up for the lack of algae. He would watch us drop a few on the water's surface, approach slowly, then make a sort of an upward pounce, sucking the pellet into his mouth and descending with it. I talked to him when I visited, called him "Sneaky McSneakerson" and "Sneakalicious." For the first time, I thought a non-mammal might make a good pet after all.

But this week, in the blistering heat, the algae overtook the pond beneath the surface. It choked the pump, which quit again. Hans had been outside early this morning, and the pump was working. I left earlier than usual, without even visiting the pond. Even if I'd known it had stopped, I probably would have credited Sneaky with being a tough enough critter to survive for a few hours while I took care of other things. I hate to think of the agony his final hour must have been.

Hans saw him first, and broke the news to me when I got home. I didn't really believe him. When I first found Sneaky, his alive-ness startled me, even though that orange glimmer was a foot down. Tonight, I know for an empirically observed fact: dead fish float. Their scales dry out above the water, and they don't shine like they did in their reflective dance.

After I had viewed the departed, Hans scooped him up in the net -- how he hated that net! Catching him for the pond-cleaning took the better part of an hour -- and gave him an ecologically useful burial in the compost bin. We will drain the pond this weekend, and cover it for the rest of the year. Maybe we'll try a couple new fish in the spring, or maybe we'll just have aquatic plants.

Goodbye, Old Sneaky. May your scales shimmer in the Deep Beyond.

You Can't Un-Blog

A Rabbi of old - don't ask me which, I don't know my Tarfun from my Akiba - once told a story of a Very Angry Boy. Soon enough, or probably not, the boy's father realized it was time to create a lesson that would get through to his belligerent son. So he filled a sack with iron nails, and hung it on the post of a wooden fence at the edge of his property. He took a hammer from his tools, and asked his son to walk with him to the fence.

When they reached the fence, the father gave the hammer to his son and told him, "Every time you are angry, come to this fence and drive a nail into it. Come to me when the bag is empty." And conveniently for this story, the boy obeyed. In subsequent weeks, he did not shove his siblings or kick the dog or even mouth off to his mother, but the nails filled a long row of slats. When there were no more nails, he told his father.

"Good," his father said. "Now, remove one nail every day, until the sack is full again, and the boards are clean." The boy did so. It took him half a year. With each nail he pulled from the fence - especially the earliest ones, which were more difficult after they rusted in the weather, and the boards threatened to split down their length - he saw the damage it created. He recalled the intensity of his anger, and he saw its temporary nature. He wondered if many of the events that sent him to drive another nail were really worth the consequence. Eventually he became a Thoughtful, Less Angry Boy. When the sack was full again, he brought it to his father.

"Here are all of your nails, Father, and here is your hammer," he said. "I don't think I need them anymore. But what of the fence? The boards are full of holes now. It could fall apart in the next storm." He expected his next task to be a long job of repair, but what his father said took him by surprise.

"No, we cannot fix the fence. The nails are gone, along with your anger, but the holes they created are permanent. There are some things you can never undo. So live your life as a Thoughtful, Less Angry Man, but always remember this fence."