Great games of basketball and tennis yesterday with G, then a turkeyburger on pita bread at Barney's, and today a long hike up in Tilden Park with C, followed by a lovely session of singing and playing with his new toy, a machine that you sing into that automatically creates different kinds of harmonies (and even corrects your pitch so that you sound AWESOME,) as well as some more good loving and eating and back on meds and I feel much better.

Carla said, "Yeah, you seemed really tired when you were over my place." That's how I used to be ALL the time, just dragging my wagon from one place to another--barely.

My sister, who is very understanding, said she wished she didn't need medication to prevent migraines--that is, she wishes she didn't get them in the first place--but she's glad the medicine is there. There's less stigma with migraines than there is with depression, but it's basically a similar thing--debilitating brain farts that fuck up your nervous system and zap energy and zest.

So, thank you, all the people who pioneered medication and tested it, and came out of the closet about using it before I did, because that helps to create a climate in which it's possible to be a person with this kind of vulnerability and still have a good life in the world. I wish this for all people with mental illnesses--that good drugs and real healings take place.

Elsewhere in the news, I just got a phone call from Michigan--my play had a staged reading in the festival of new plays and got a good reception, although the audience (composed mostly of older people) argued fiercely about the ending. I don't mind that although I had the impression that the director did. I like the way the whole country has been fiercely debating the end of The Sopranos this last week. I think it's fine not to tie things up too neatly with a bow.

But I also heard from the director that I need to rewrite one long monologue--the stand-up comedy routine that Lydia performs in a dank little basement--modelled on Val's Pizza parlor and underground theatre performance space in Berkeley. I agree that the monologue needs to be rewritten--it was always a weak spot, for one thing, she's supposed to be a comedienne, and it's not really funny--but the prospect is daunting. It's like trying to go back and redo part of an oil painting when the paint has long since dried. I already tried to rewrite it several times and didn't get any improvement--in fact I think I made it worse. But I owe it to the play, and to the fact that finally there is a real production in the offing, to try and try again.

Meanwhile, C and I had so much fun singing into his new voice machine, tinkling along on the piano, and researching the musical we are writing together by watching a governement-ssued video called The Selective Service and You, aimed at eighteen-year-old men--scary!--that now I want to write a commercial hit song with him so that he can quit his day job and we can just create art and music and theatre all day long. We have the summer to do it--but only until the end of July, so I better get cracking.