one step beyond.....

Life .

I'm sitting here staring at that word thinking about how to finish the sentence and as I do it looks odd to me, All by itself it looks too small and puny. I mean life is a big deal and I'm not sure those four letters do it justice.

It's like when you get a word in your head and you just repeat it and repeat it until it just becomes nonsense. Don't pretend that you've never done that. Oh, really? Okay, pick a word , right now, and repeat it for 20 or 30 seconds. Do it!

Sounds odd after a bit, right?

Well, that was a major digression, what a way to start. I don't think that I have ever wrote about the fact , that for the past three years I have been the principal care taker/giver, whatever you want to call it for my Mother. Who has dementia/ Alzheimer's, whatever you want to call it.

I would have to have three blogs to be able to even come close to describing what this experience is like. But I just have the one. Which I will admit I use as a refuge to dawdle on the minutiae of my life, I have always been a fan of that small telling detail, that speaks volumes- if you ever meet me in person ask me about Jamie Lee Curtis and the sock.

Tonight I will break with tradition and make a passing comment about my life right now. If you were to ask me, I would tell you that two people live in my house My mother and I. (if you are a completest you can add the cat) Ask my Mother and she will tell you that four people live here- Herself, the Man, The Woman, and then me.

The list order for my mother is not arbitrary, for that is the hierarchy that exists here. I come in a distant third to the Woman and I shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as the Man. The imaginary people outrank me.

I apologize if this sounds flippant- believe me at times it can be soul crushing, but that's a conversation for another blog.

What I will say is that she knows when they are here and when they are not here, she hears them when they speak, she can see them and gets frustrated when I don't.

They are real.

Today I thought back to a talk I heard Timothy Leary give years ago. It was a wide ranging discussion , mostly Leary answering questions from the audience. He was a nut, but a charming and compelling one. Of course the subject of LSD came up, the audience giggled in anticipation, and he gave a long considered response.

Part of his response included the idea that the mind altering properties of LSD opened the user up to other dimensions and that you could see the world in a new way. He said he had the experience many times of being in a room and seeing creatures, not unlike leprechauns, walking among the other "real" people in the room. Often they would play practical jokes on folks, knock a drink off a table or look up a young ladies skirt. He went on to say that the creatures were aware that he could see them and that they would smile and wave at him.

To Leary- They are real.

I draw no conclusion, I just make the observation.

i'd like to speak to the manager, please.....

God bless us, we love to think we are in control- that we can handle most anything that comes our way.

Every once in a while we get a little reminder, a tap on the shoulder, a wink that says- think again.

A tap- Now that the weather has been a bit more moderate this past week, a huge amount of the snow that has been hanging around since Christmas has melted. Hey! I can see my front lawn. As I drove to rehearsal at a local school the other day, upon entering the parking lot I was greeted by two enormous potholes and huge chunks of pavement that were just, mangled. Just Mother Nature reminding us, who's in charge.

A wink- I have always been fascinated by dreams. Our conscious mind takes a rest and suddenly it's party time. Let down your guard to sleep for a bit and, well, something takes over the asylum. The other night , my brother Pat and my Dad and me and Jack Webb(yeah, from Dragnet) flew to Japan. Pat and Dad were in first class and Jack and I flew coach. The accommodations were lovely though , our seats became beds and we could stretch out quite comfortably.

Oh, I forgot my cat was on the flight also, just kinda wandering around.

Upon arrival we went to a Supermarket, that was well stocked from floor to ceiling with brightly packaged food stuffs. BUT, there was a strike and we couldn't do any shopping.

That's it.....what the heck was that all about? I'll leave up to you dream types to figger it out. I just think it's a bit of the natural /unseen world having a little fun and playing around with the toys in our heads.

Years ago I had bought a dream dictionary- it was during a long run of a childrens show and we would take turns "interpreting" each others dreams. lot's of laughs, few insights.

Tonight in Dreamland , I'm sure the cat and I will be exploring potholes.


ps the supermarket in my dream was inspired by a photograph I saw at MOMA a few years back-- 99 cents by Andreas Gursky. If I find a copy, I'll post it.

sleep by bonzo

sleep by bonzo: "Picassohead"


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a fine whine.......

this year marks the 30th year I have been directing. and teaching acting in schools. Hundreds of kids, heck maybe a couple of thousand. Amazingly I'm still in contact with some of them- most amazingly I'm still in contact with some of those kids from 30 years ago.

This morning I'm doing my daily round of e mail and message retrieval and up pops an instant message from a kid who graduated last year. He's asking me how the show went this year, we did a production of "Brigadoon" a favorite of mine, we get into a wonderful conversation about how is he doing in school, he's doing great. How is he adjusting to college life, he loves it, but a kid in his suite is having trouble with alcohol. We get into a fairly serious discussion about the perils of that first taste of freedom. Lots of laughs peppered throughout. After about 20 minutes I tell him I have to be going.

"Oh, that's okay, my class is just finishing up."

Our whole conversation was taking place while he was in class! He's talking to me (and someone else, a graduate from two years ago) all the while he's sitting in class. An Art History class, I think I would have enjoyed that lecture, but that;s not the point.

I have to admit I felt a bit guilty.

It's incredible how the whole phone thing has changed the world in such a short amount of time. We have all become the evil spawns of Alexander Graham Bell and Sputnik. Hmmm, well you know what I mean.

The other day during dress rehearsal for Brigadoon, the full cast is on stage, big scene, lots of action and there are two girls onstage, in costume, texting!!!!

Lights, costumes, orchestra, sets, props and the two of them texting!!!! Who are you talking to!? Is it really more pressing than what you are involved in right now?

I know, I apologize, this borders on Andy Rooney territory, but it is amazing to be sitting here in my horse and carriage watching those Auto- mo- biles go zipping by.

ps it's not just me- during spell check the computer didn't recognize the word texting- it suggested testing.

behold.....

seriouseats.com

Then search for homemade Kit Kat bars.

Sorry, should have included this in the previous post

hey Al, Quibble?

There is a well known definition for insanity- Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different results. This is attributed to all sorts of people, including Albert Einstein.

I will now venture to add another definition- Making Homemade "KitKat" bars. That's right,the candy that can be found at supermarkets, 7-11's, and drugstores all over the country for a reasonable price. I spent a half hour or so yesterday making handcrafted "kitKat" bars.

My foodie friend , Erin, had tweeted the recipe and said that she hadn't made them yet ,but was intrigued. At first ,I scoffed, but as the days went on I became more and more intrigued. So off to the store I went to stock up on the necessaries- chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, creamy peanut butter etc. While i was checking out (and scanning the tabloid headlines, guilty pleasure) I passed a whole bunch of Kit Kat bars, they were right there, turn to my right and boom! candy! lots of it! NO! I was going to go home and make my own.

So I did. I will admit there's not much cooking involved, it's mostly just melting stuff and assembling. The first item to be melted? A half pound, two sticks!, of butter. You can see where this is headed. I mean you could put a half pound of melted butter on an old shoe and it would taste great. Mmmmmm Buttery. It has always been my sister Betsy's contention that nobody really likes Lobster, they like the butter.

I digress.

So all went according to plan, I melted a half cup of this with a half cup of that ,poured the whole thing over some Club crackers, melted even more stuff and poured it over the whole shebang and by Jimminy, after a couple two three hours in the fridge, I had me some "Kit Kat"bars.

I will say that they don't taste exactly like a "KitKat" bar, but that's a minor quibble, cause they taste pretty darn good. Brainstorm! I will from now on call these little morsels, "Quibbles"

Okay, maybe this didn't rise to the level of insanity, but it was pretty darn silly. Don't know if I'll ever make these again , I have so many ,I think I'll be eating "Quibbles" for the next two weeks. It was fun to pretend to be Jacques Torres (great candy maker) for an afternoon.

Insane? No. Although I could probably just put a stick of butter between two Hershey bars and achieve the same result.

ch- ch- ch- changes......

i got an e mail from a young friend of mine the other day- a lovely note, the theme of which was "wasn't it interesting how perceptions change." It is indeed. As someone once said, the only constant is change.

I remember when I was in sixth grade, we took a field trip into New York to see 2001; a space odyssey. BIG screen , 70 mm, the whole deal.

What was I? 12 years old? Needless to say I had no idea what was going on. If I remember correctly in preparation I had read the paperback edition of the book . Still no idea.

Since then I have seen that movie at least 15 times. Big screen, small screen, TV. Each time I see it I'm flooded with ideas. It has proven to be constantly challenging and provocative. In the interest of full disclosure I will tell you that my pal Doc and I went to see it once and I fell asleep, but Hey!, it was a late show and we had worked overtime and then went straight to the theater ...

Here it is over 40 years later and I still have no clue what's going on during the last half hour. It's okay to be confused, not everything should be tied up with a bow and hand delivered. Maybe the next time I see it I'll have some ideas about what's up with that big baby.

There is one moment in that movie that I adore, takes my breath away every time I see it. The apes have discovered that they can use bones as tools , as weapons. One of the apes tosses a bone it the air, the camera follows the bone and then a cut to a space craft in orbit.

One cut moves us from the dawn of man to the future. One moment leads to the next as if nothing in between matters.

Genius.

cut to: the uprising in Egypt, which I will not pretend to understand for a second, Oddly enough I was having a conversation a few months back and we were talking about how amazing it was that Egypt had avoided getting dragged into the most recent mid east horror show. ooops.

I was listening to a report on the radio they were talking about how the protesters didn't have weapons so they were pulling up paving stones and making clubs to use in the uprising.

In the blink of an eye, we can jump back from the future .

long live the king.......

Time marches on.....

I am not a Luddite (nor am I a Ludden) , but as far as technology goes I am not a first responder either. I'll get to it eventually.

I eventually got a cell phone ,about seven years ago. I still have the same phone. I can make and receive calls. I can send text messages (I just discovered that a while back). I can play a game called , Snakes. That's enough for me.

I have an I Pod. - it was a gift. I think it's a first or second generation. When I bring it somewhere, the mean children mock me. When I first got it I downloaded a ton of my cd's on to it. They're all still on there. I don't think I have any I tunes songs on there. (I do have I Tune songs on my computer)

I have a Dell laptop- bought it about six years ago. Works fine, still have it. Still don't know how to do the things most young kids can do.

I was one of the first to have a VCR and Camera set up. (It was a Gift) It was portable. Oh, the mean kids would mock me if they saw it, I still have it somewhere. A camera connected by a wire, to a recorder that you carried by a shoulder strap ,that would connect to a charger that you kept at home. When fully charged the battery had about 30 minutes of power before it would shut down. Portable. I loved it, I remember one of the first times I took it out in public, we went to a Fair at Mac Arthur Airport, crowds gathered to look at the thing, not many people had ever seen one.

One of the first to have a DVD player- first DVD, Citizen Kane. I will say here and now I draw a line in the sand, No Blu Ray, player for me. I can't go thru the expense of building up a library again.

Today as a gift I received a Kindle. I had been thinking about it for a while, going back and forth, but today I was pushed into the new Frontier. I'm sure I'll love it, but I am such a book whore that I am sure i will continue to surround myself, both physically and metaphorically with the printed word.

I will say this about the Kindle, with the flip of a switch you can change the font size , which is a boon to these aging eyes.