Sunday I spent six hours in the company of sixteen other women learning how to beat up a very patient man in a padded suit.

It was fun.

Actually, it was more than fun, it was a little scary, slightly nerve-wracking, challenging, intense, fascinating, moving, and brought up a lot of stuff. During those six hours I found myself recalling all the small and large assaults in my past.

There was the old guy (well, I thought he was old--he was probably forty,) who operated the sandwich shop at the bus depot in Arlington where we changed busses from lexington to Cambridge. I used to come in there with my mother all the time. Once I came in there alone and he grabbed me and kissed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I was soshocked I didn't know how to respond. His wife was right there!

There was the hairdresser who cut my hair when I was a teenager and used to press his erections against my hand as I sat trapped in the chair, unsure and unwilling to believe that he was actually doing what it felt like he was doing.

There were the grown men who stopped their cars as I walked to junior high school and offered me rides.

There was the drunk guy in New Orleans who grabbed my breasts and squeezed them so hard and so fast as i walked down the street with my husband on one arm and my best friend on the other. He took his grab and then was gone, reeling off into the crowd, again, so quickly I couldn't react.

There were the two times I was mugged when I lived in Miami, when my handbag was grabbed right off my shoulder.

There were innumerable comments and offers and stares as I walked around the cities where I have lived. There was the boss at the Haitian Refugee Center who kept offering to come over my house and keep me company in the evenings.

There was the naked guy outside the window who stood there quietly masturbating, while I paced inside with a cast-iron skillet in my hand waiting for the cops to show up.

There was a rape.

I don't think I'm unusual in this regard. I think most women run more or less the same gauntlet, depending on where they live, how their physicality is read by others, and how good their boundaries are.

I had no boundaries. That's a tough way to launch into the world. It probably helped make me a poet, the membrane was so thin, and it certainly led to a lot of adventures, but if I had a daughter, I'd try to teach her more self-protection than I had. It would pain me to do so, but I would teach her that there are in fact bad people in the world and it would behoove her to watch out for them.

I was moved by the courage of the other women in the class. There were some tears. Only a few women cried. I think no one wanted to be "that person" who was going to be the identified victim reliving her trauma. We were all there because we wanted to be tougher, after all. But merely to be there, and to acknowledge what we had been through--and to hear, between the lines of what was said, all that was left unsaid...There was a box of Kleenex that got passed around. There were women who could hardly say "No!" much less shout it forcefully as we were instructed to. There were tiny women for whom the guy in the big padded suit with the huge helmet was truly an intimidating figure.

I was less intimidated by him than I had feared I would be. The first time he "mugged" me--grabbed me from behind--and I felt his arms close around his waist, felt him lift me off the ground and bring me down, I thought, "Oh! It's just a guy." There was something familiar in the strength of those arms. I twisted my body into position and kicked him in the head as hard as I could.

I was fascinated by the theory behind the teaching; since any assault will produce "an adremalized state," their aim was to put us into that state as they imprinted the moves into our bodyminds. The hope is, that if we are ever assaulted in the future, the training will come up automatically; we will fight instead of freezing in fear.

There is a delicate tightrope the teachers walk between getting our adremaline up and creating in us the confidence and self-worth needed to fight off an attacker. They are careful not to re-traumatize sensitive women but flashbacks and some disassociation are inevitable. This material is radioactive.

I personally was not so aware of feeling traumatized (typical--I usually go numb in the face of any difficult emotion.) But I found I was spacey and had a hard time memorizing even simple sequences. So many layers of my brain, body and psyche were being worked on all at once, it was overwhelming.

I liked the instructors and felt safe in their hands, including the male "attacker," who was probably the hardest working person there. If we felt exshausted fighting him, imagine how he must have felt, receiving repeated kicks and punches from sixteen women to the head and groin. (Granted, you could find guys in San Francisco who would pay good money for that kind of treatment, but I got the feeling his motives were more noble.) Occasionally he took off his big helmet to help us re-position our legs or scooch our bodies into better alignment in order to deliver a more powerful kick.

I could tell I was properly adremalized because for the life of me I could not remember three simple commands. At the end of each fight we were told to shout and enact: "Look!" "Assess!" "No!" before running off the mat to a chorus of other women shouting "Get help!" Not difficult. Yet each time I fought, as soon as the guy grabbed me I found everything we had just practiced flew out of my head and I just wanted to tear his head off. After I'd knocked him out I would just stand there unable to remember the simplest thing.

I, um, learned that I have quite a fund of innate aggression to draw upon should I ever need to. I guess that's a good thing.

I learned that I really enjoyed the knee to the groin move. "Run right through him!" our teacher coached, and I did, I ran right through the space where the attacker had been standing. No, I exploded right through the space. The other women cheered wildly. I've been applauded before, but never for fighting, never for acting aggressive, unladylike, and not nice.

Of course I have no idea how any of this would work in a reali-life situation. I hope I never have to find out. (Okay, most of me hopes that. there is a small James Bond-esque part of me that hopes that some idiot is dumb enough to attack me so that I can beat the living daylights out of him and save a whole planeload full of terrified passengers and then the President will offer me the Medal of Valor which I will turn down in order to make a political point. Yes, i do have those fantasies.)

It's a good feeling to be learning the skills. It's good just to have overcome my initial fear and resistance to taking the class at all. The hardest part was signing up for the class and driving myself there. I just wanted to stay home with C peacefully reading the Sunday paper and drinking coffee.

I had seen a friend's graduation from a similar class about twelve years ago. She was quite tough and strong and they put two assailants on her. My heart was in my mouth as I watched her fight them off. "Not me," I remember thinking at the time. "This looks too hard."

It took all these years, but I'm finally doing it, right on time. I was afraid I'd be the oldest woman in the class. I'm not. There's a woman there who is 62 years old and training for a mini-triatholon. There are also younger women in the class who have injuries and vulnerabilities; youth does not convey invincibility. I was afraid I wouldn't have the strength or stamina to make it through six hours of training. I do. (Although I was exhausted when I crawled home and into a hot bath which C had already drawn for me; I am the luckiest of women.)

It's amazing to me how he's encouraging me in this foray into power--that he likes the idea of me being physically confident and capable of defending myself. This goes against all my old conditioning and I love that. I'll be doing it next Sunday and the one after that, and the one after that. I like to fight. Who knew? At least, I like to fight in a controlled environment where nobody, including me, gets hurt. I don't see a boxing career in my future.

Most of my friends are taking or have taken Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Comminication. How strange that I'm finding an exploration of my own capacity for hysical violence to be so liberating. How moved I am at the idea of all the women in my class-especially the little ones, the scared ones, the ones who don't have much of their own voice yet--fighting off potential attackers, fighting hard. How visceral this empowerment of women goes, deep into the body.

A while back, Carla published a Participi-Blog where she invited people to write in and share what makes life worth living for them, the small and large things that light up their days. (To see it, go to www.carlamuses.blogspot.com . I wish I could figure out how to add links on this blog--I have had two friends, both much smarter about computers than me, try and come up stumped--there might be a glitch in my Blogger account.)

Anyway, I got my sister's and my nephew's permission to publish this letter from Eli, age 8, which rocked me with joy before going up on the refrigerator door. Here it is, original spelling intact:

Dear Ant Alison,

Here are pictures of me with teeth missing. Come soon. My mom is an Alein my real mom is on Mars you have to take care of me. Now I lost 4 teeth, 2 on the top 2 on the bottom I can't chew.If you played Boggle with Mom when she was a kid shes awesome! [Editor's note: this is a true fact. My sister can slay all comers in Boggle.] I'm not as good but I can do 2 letter words. Love ELI

For the past two days I've been hunched over my computer like Smeagle fingering the ring of power, obsessively looking for theatres to send Kaddish and the Hot Tub play. I'm trying to do a smarter job of targeting likely theatres than I did last time with Kaddish when I sent out about twenty copies of it and received two yesses (that's actually not a bad return--ten percent.)

This time, I'm calling the theatres first to make sure they accept new scripts, and checking their web sites.

Doing this makes me feel all knotted up inside--it's the administrative part of this job, rather than the creative one (which makes me feel insecure and vulnerable too, but in a different way.)

As a distraction, I made chicken mole last night. I had never made any Mexican food before, other than mashing up a few avocados and dumping some salsa into them, but this time I followed a recipe. Onions, garlic, a tiny bit of very dark chocolate, a half cup of strong coffee, two tbsp of smooth peanut butter, a little chicken broth, crushed chili peppers, cumin, cinnamon, kosher salt...stir, stir,k stir until it thickens into a paste. Pour half of it over the chicken; cook, covered; take it out after almost an hour and poour the rest on. It came out rich and spicy and smooth and dark. C all but licked his plate.

Maybe I should be a cook rather than a playwright.

G is coming over soon to drag me outdoors for a tennis game, because if I just stay here doing this too long I will lose my mind and start cooking a bouillabaise or something. And after that, who knows?

In the last week I've read two great novels, both English: The Other Side of You, by Salley Vickers, about the relationship between a woman, her dead lover, and her psychiatrist; and On Chesil Beach, by Ian MacEwan which I swiped from Carla when I was over there.

Both books deal with unconsummated love. The woman and her psychiatrist achieve an intimacy he has never experienced with anyone else. The man in On Chesil Beach loves a woman so intensely that he drives her away. On Chesil Beach is the first book I've ever read which takes for its theme sexual ineptitude and ignorance. Reading them is helping feed and water the seed of an idea I have to turn the hot tub play into a novella.

Both books reinforced something I've been thinking about lately--what a big deal ignorance is, how constantly we misunderstand each other. C makes a point of teaching his kids in Juvenile Hall basic math and money counting because so many shootings occur when people feel they've been shorted in a drug deal. Literally, people lose their lives over errors in addition and subtraction.

How many more break-ups and rifts in relationship occur because one or both parties lack the right words to explain themselves--or don't know how to make the crucial gesture at the right time? Of course the question remains, is this ignorance innocent or willful? For example, I can claim that I don't know exactly what is going on in Iraq, in Darfur, all over the world. And that's true. I don't know exactly, there's an overwhelming amount of information out there, too much to sort through, and plus which I've got an absorbing private life to attend to.

But do I not know enough, or do I not care enough? Do I not care enough to take the effort to get to know? Not only world affairs, but the problems which occur between people. It's easier to remain ignorant. It's harder to work to see it from someone else's point of view--such hard work that it makes my head hurt sometimes.

(As I write this blog, five new email messages have come in; each from a different environmental or political group urging me to do something, write something, etc. If I responded to each of them I would never get anything written. So--true confessions--I delete them unread.)

Reading these books I felt how impatient with them I would have been ten years ago. "Just do it!" I can hear myself yelling at the page. "Just reach out and grab her--grab him, for God's sake!"

I remember how, in college, I threw Portrait of A Lady across the room--I had to read it for an English Lit survey class. I was so pissed at Isabel Archer for being such a naive wimp, and so pissed at Henry James for naming the only kind, competent woman in the book Henrietta Stackpole, which I thought was a way of making fun of her. Now, I'm not so sure. After all, Henry was the author's own name. Hmm...someone should do a research paper on this. Or better yet, name a press Henrietta Stackpole Press. Henrietta Stackpole Productions.

I got to spend some sweet quiet time with Carla yesterday. We got to just sit in silence together, on the couch, just being.

I remember a therapist telling me, years ago, when I was in my twenties, that I needed to learn about subtlety. At the time, I was so emotionally frozen and yet desperately hungry for contact, for feeling, that I needed great dramatic gestures to show me that something was real: wild love-making, sobs and tantrums, big risky adventures, like hitch-hiking across Canada.

I think my true nature is quiet and peaceful enough to appreciate subtlety, but at the time my desires were louder than my essence. It was as if I couldn't understand anything unless it were shouted in my face, or delivered to me in a crushing blow.
I couldn't have been with C then--he would have run from me in terror. And I would have made up some big tragic story about it. And it all would have been a huge misunderstanding, and very sad, because we are so well-suited.

I'm grateful he came along when he did, when I was mature and tired enough to stop the drama because I realized it was killing me. I'm so grateful I had the wisdom, finally, to appreciate what is quiet and good and real between us--the undrama of daily life, making a good meal, a small considerate gesture, lying in bed reading our separate books, a look or a touch that says more than words.

I did go to Tirzah's memorial at Kehillah Synagogue, and was surprised and pleased to see many old friends and acquaintances from the East Bay Church of Religious Science there, including my old pastor, Reverend Elouise Oliver and my prayer practitioner and friend Sharon Cross, and my old friend Michelle Jordan, who sang "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills" as a pure divinely channel.

Tirzah sat on the border between a couple of different cultures, a richly alive and sometimes challenging place to sit. Ask me how I know. That was why I went to her memorial, even though we were only acquaintaces; as two of the dozen or so Jews at East Bay, we shared an intimate understanding of how both religions contrasted and complimented each other.

It was right and fitting that at her memorial both of those religions came together in love and respect--Reverend Elouise took turns with Rabbi Burt and Rabbi Diane in conducting the service, Jewish prayers sung in Hebrew alternated with "Wholly, Holy Love" sung by the East Bay Choir, and testimonials from different people in Tirzah's life. When her 80-year-old father, who had flown in from israel, led us in saying Kaddish was when my tears came. That prayer of praise, issuing from a broken heart.

That's what Judaism is for me. It's real; it's broken. The shattered covenant, the truth of our mortality and our suffering, the unknowability of God. All clothed in the most beautiful music and poetry, minor melodies so gorgeous they take my breath away.

Religious Science is the other side of that coin; joy and triumph. God is not unknowably distant, God dwells inside us, intimate as our own breath. The African American gospel songs, so direct, so confident in their knowing. Michelle's lovely voice swooping over and under, emphasizing, declaring, affirming truth.

I need them both. Tirzah did too, and I was happy for both of us, that they came together so beautifully at Kehillah the other day. Rabbi Diane told a story about her--on the day before she died, Tirzah struggled, in her bed, to describe the wonderful flavor of a certain kind of freshly-pressed juice. Rabbi Diane said she marvelled at a person so connected to life that she could recall and want to share this life-affirming experience even in her last hours.

Our party turned out small and intimate. There was an adorable baby who crawled around, giggling and clapping and just being gladness itself--we all kind of ate up her radiant baby aura. C made his peerless meatloaf, both with and without mushrooms, and I made my brussel sprouts with slivered almonds and lemon juice and Parmesan, which is awesome, and everyone ate a lot and drank some and sang some.

Then last night we went to see Stop-Loss, which was one of the strongest movies I've seen in a long time. It's about the war in Iraq and the position many veterans are finding themselves in--after coming back from a tour of duty in Hell, prepared for discharge, they are told they have to go back. We went to see it in part because of the play we had conceived together about military recruitment, but walking out of the theatre we both felt humbled.

"I'm not sure I should even try to tell a story like this," C said. "I don't think it's my story to tell."

"I know what you mean," I said. "I'm not from a military family. I've been spared this whole ordeal. How could I even talk about it." We walked a little further. "But we are Americans," I said weakly. "This war is happening to us too. Or people like us. Even if I can't relate to the soldiers' experiences, I can imagine what their parents are going through. I think I could say something about that."

"I'm sure you could," C said. "I just feel like it's not my place."

We left it like that, unresolved. I hate to abandon a project mid-stream, especially since I've got some good pages, and characters I like. The thing about war and violence is I believe it has infected every aspect of our culture--I am a violent person as well. Maybe I don't act it out physically--and I know that for people who come from homes where there is really full expression of violence it's another order of magnitude--but still.

Gertrude Stein said "Nothing human is alien to me." Was it Gerturde Stein? Whoopi Goldberg said, "I'm an actor. I can play a man, a woman, or a speck of dust." My favorite artists don't let themselves be limited by race or gender or class--or lack of experience. In fact, I was very proud that this movie about war, Stop-Loss, was made by a woman, Kimberly Pierce, who is not a combat veteran. She gets so deeply inside the minds and hearts of her male characters, and gets such fierce, physical performances from them, during an ambush and a firefight, that my credulity was not strained.

(I don't think it was a perfect movie. Some of the scenes seemed s bit cliched to me. But it was strong and imperfect and political and gutsy.)

I am mulling over this question of chutzpah and writing. How dare I? How dare anyone represent anyone else's experiences? I have a good friend who believes white people should never write black characters, men should never write women, etc. I challenged her, "Does that mean that Tolstoy shouldn't have written Anna Karenina? What about Shakespeare's Othello?"

"No. They shouldn't have. Black people need to write their own experiences. Women need to write their own experiences."

I understand her point. And yet, my experiences spill over into other people's experiences. Their experiences spill over into mine. I have been writing about Carla a lot of this blog. I don't, at present, have a physical disability. I'm not living with ALS. There is one level on which I can't know what she's going through until I go through it myself.

But on another level, I am connected to her, not just by friendship, but be enrgy, which knows no form or boundary. There is no Carla. there is no Alison. there is just this all this energy swirling through the masses we know as "our" bodies.

And, to be a bit less woo-woo about it, there is, was, and has always been imagination. Shakespeare was neither a beggar nor a king, yet he wrote both of them--and queens and fools, and witches, and soldiers too. Some of the most satisfying, fresh, surprising writing I have ever done has been when I took on a male point of view. One of my favorite playwrights, Lorraine Hansberry, an African American woman, wrote beautifully and movingly about a Jewish man in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."

Kimberly Pierce did a phenomenal amount of research for this movie--research that is available to anyone with Internet access. There's lots of blogs and Youtube clips about soldiers' experiences during this war. I'm glad I'm intimidated by the movie--I should be intimidated. The topic should not be undertaken lightly.

If C decides not to go ahead with this project, we can find another one to do together; I'm not worried on that score. But for myself, I'm thinking I'm still in. Humbled, yes, intimidated, yes, thinking this may never see the light of day--yes. But in. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. If I fail, I fail, and if I make an ass of myself, so be it. It won't be the first time.

And today, we went to the dump. Yep. Got up at a reasonable time, drove to Berkeley, rented a U-Haul, drove it back, and filled said U-Haul to the brim with crap.

Remember the Y2K hysteria that some people went through in the final months of 1999? My old co-owner and housemate was one of those people. She bought pounds and pounds of lentils, sea salt, tahini, brown rice and other foodstuffs that no one has eaten lo these past eight years. I'd managed to give away the closet full of canned goods she had hoarded years ago, but we found more...and more...white plastic buckets full of moldy buckwheat, fermented Tamari, and spoiled tahini..is there no end to this?

Old coils of chicken wire, old appliances, two old mattresses and their box springs, an exerciser bought by my housemate Danny years and years ago which has been rusting out in the backyard since at least the last century. More boxes. Boxes of every shape, size, weight and color, from dozens of people moving in and out. A big plastic mystery dollhouse, all broken down and grimy.

We got rid of pieces of wood, old broken plastic chairs, the old toilet,(C installed a new water-saving comfortable-for-tall-people one yesterday--all by himself!) metal doo-dads, bits and pieces of old windows, trash, trash, trash. Drove it all to the Berkeley dump.

The dump is basically Hell. Here is where capitalism and consumerism come to die. The great happy hunting grounds for scavengers and vermin. Seagulls circle, squawking, over mountains of garbage. We opened the back of the van, put on nose-and-mouth masks, and stood there pitching stuff onto the trash heap that was about three stories high. The noise from nearby bull-dozers was deafening. Every once in a while, the great dripping maw of the yellow dozer ground next to us, scraping and pushing the garbage up higher. The smell was intense. I was glad C had had the foresight to buy masks.

The dump is Hell on two counts. One, the obvious: every single sense is assaulted with ugliness. It looks hideous, it smells terrible, the sounds are harsh. You want to get away but you can't. The second way it is hell is psychological. You are looking directly at the results and consequences of all our heedless acquiring. Here it is, folks. The bubble-wrap. The exerciser you thought you'd use but never did. The bad ideas, the expensive whims, the greed, the waste.

Standing there, sunglasses covering the top half of my face to protect eyes from flying bits of dust and splinters, mask over everything else, I thought of several things:

* Poor people who have to live near dumps and scavenge through them looking for food and clothes and shelter in the Phillipines, in Brazil, elsewhere.

*Ghandi, who died owning only his loincloth, his glasses, his food bowl and a copy of Scriptures.

*Death. I don't know how anyone can visit the dump and not think of death. In my case, I hope I get enough advance warning before my death that I can give everything away. I don't want to die with a house full of junk that someone else has to cart off to the dump.

We ground our way out of there, returned the van, then collapsed at a pizza place. Ate two slices each--C had a couple of beers as well--then crawled back home and into bed. Flop. Nap. We were completely done in.

I confess: I've never before been jealous of C's previous wives or girlfriends. I know he lived with several women before me, and I know some of them had fine qualities. But I was so proud of myself for being such a rugged stud-muffin, able to haul and tote and stand the dump, that when I asked him "Did you ever do this with any of your other women?" and he said "All of them," I felt crest-fallen. I wanted to be the spunkiest bad-ass he had ever partnered with.

Tomorrow's the party. We've still got plenty of cleaning of the home space to accomplish, plus shopping for food and booze and cooking. I was shocked to receive a notice from my synagogue that Tirzah Aggasi had died. She was Martin Buber's granddaughter, a peace activist working towards better Israeli-Palestinian relations, and an acquaintance. I liked her. She was spiritually eclectic, an artist, a filmmaker who nused the medium to promote dialogue and understanding. I believe she had something to do with the film Paradise Now. She looked like she was about my age. Her memorial is tomorrow and I want to take time out from the party prep and go to it.

Having the house to ourselves these past three days has been a miracle. Space. Time. Drinking coffee in the morning, looking at the paper, knowing no one else is going to come barging through. Hearing C play piano fully and joyously, without fear of being overheard. Sun coming in the window, or cool gray fog. No one else using our bathroom. Going to Goodwill and getting rid of a carload full of the detritus left by ten years' worth of housemates (there is still more to go!)

Today I feel small and tired. I want to protect this space, this time, our home, but in a week and a half the real crunch of teaching work hits, and the housemates who are now on vacation will be coming back. The thought of it makes me want to cry.

This house was always too big for me to hold alone. I bought it with someone else. Many many other people have lived here with me--too many to count. I get exhausted just thinking about it. Their rents helped pay the mortgage. Some of them improved the space and were a joy to live with (that would be you, John and Val!) Some of them were a pain in the ass. Several drank too much; one was polyamorous and had NO boundaries and way too many lovers who would drape themselves all over the kitchen and talk about different kinds of orgasms while I tried to make tea. For some I was a counselor, or a surrogate big sister, for some a friend. For some I became The Enemy.

It's hard living with people when you are not related to them. (It's hard when you are related to them.) It's not like I didn't get something out of the deal--I was able to afford to stay in the Bay Area, one of the most expensive places in the country, while essentially working part-time as a teacher and part-time as a writer. That's a lot.

But this space and this privacy we're experiencing right now are precious beyond compare. There is a level of relaxation we can touch as a couple, knowing we can kiss or argue or talk about intimate things anywhere we want without fear of someone walking in or overhearing us. It's a luxury we haven't had as a couple, a luxury I discounted because I didn't realize how great it was.

I was always scared to be "just" a couple. It reminded me too much of the nuclear family I came from, an arrangement that seemed isolating and stressful, especially for the mother. When I lived with my ex-husband, our first four years were spent in a communal house--we had great rent and were a five-minute walk to Harvard Square. It wasn't worth it. The stress it put on our relationship was damaging. You would think I'd learn.

I've learned that luxury resorts doesn't do that much for me. I've been in fancy hotels and eaten in great restaurants and seen Europe and it's fine, but if I never see it again, I won't be sad. I like just being in my own home, dancing with my honey in the kitchen.

The truth is, I am feeling spoiled and happy and guilty and scared wallowing in the simple pleasure of just being alone with C. Being two selfish artists, making as much of a racket or demanding as much silence as we need. The guilt is that the paradigm of the couple in their castle doesn't serve the world. We have more space than most people and we still want more, more more of it--all to ourselves.

The fear is that C will die and then I'll be all alone in this big house. Who will be there for me then? Will I drown in the silence and the space? Will I be punished for putting up some boundaries? Will the punishment be isolation?

We are reveling in having the house to ourselves; the whole house!! All roommates are gone, and we have gloriously spread out--art supplies, Sunday Times. We've been lounging around indulging ourselves with the simple pleasures of privacy and quiet--it doesn't take much more than that.

I have signed up for two challenges--one, a self-defense class that involves getting attacked by and having to beat up a guy in a fully padded suit. Women are encouraged to kick and strike as hard as they possibly can, to learn how that feels so they will have muscle memory to call upon should they ever be attacked. It's a group called IMPACT Bay Area which sponsors and teaches the classes, held in an undisclosed Oakland location.

I was attacked years ago and still wake up with screaming nightmares every once in a while. I'm hoping this will help lay some of those ghosts to rest, and more importantly, make me able to walk through the world--wherever in the world I want to walk--without fear. I hope there is travel in my future, to places like Mexico, maybe India, maybe back to Haiti, or Europe again. I want to be able to work in an orphanage and go to out of the way places and be able to take care of myself.

The other challenge is a conference of the Association for Jewish Theatre which will be held in Detroit at the end of May. Conferences can be bigger challenges for me than having to fight hand to hand. I get easily overwhelmed by logistics, airports, hotels, and lots of new people. I'm not shy exactly, just easily overwhelmed. At heart I'd rather stay home cuddling on the couch with C and watching videos, but that's not the road for optimum growth. I think it will be challenging and incredibly educational to learn about Jewish Theatre, both in the past and now, and of course I'll be able to network my play.

I'm trying to push myself to do one scary thing a month. In April, the self-defense class, in May the conference, and in June I think I'll get up on a bicycle again, maybe a tandem. Approaching fifty, I've got to keep stepping outside my comfort zone, just as a matter of principle. When I was young I used to do crazy scary things like hitch-hike across Canada, but I was afraid to take small sober steps towards developing a life for myself. It was more like I would throw myself off of cliffs in an effort not to be stuck. I survived each time, and got some great stories out of it, but I was still basically stuck. Now I'm looking for challenges that make more sense, that build upon themselves, and open up and flower into big projects.

On the work front, I completed revisions to the essay I intend for Modern love and sent it off--I hope not prematurely. And I spent the weekend making revisions to the Hot Tub play and sent them to Tim and am waiting to hear from him. If he okays them, then I will do one more comb-through, print it out, and send it to twenty different theatres--that's what I did a few years ago with Kaddish. And then wait. that's the rhythm--work, send out, wait to hear back. Turn attention to a new project, work, send out, wait to hear back. Repeat as before.

Carla called and we had a great conversation this morning about a lot of things; among them the issue of giving vs. "taking." A big giver all her life, now she's in the awkward position of needing help from others. It's so much more comfortable for most of us to be in the role of the helper rather than the helpee.

I am interested in the internal gesture of becoming receptive. Receiving is the feminine principle and doesn't come naturally to us in this culture. We are so oriented towards "doing" and as women towards "doing for someone (else.)"

I think all of America needs to learn to receive.

Not to take--we take enough, God knows, from the earth and from the labor of others. But to truly receive what we have, to open to it, to make a space around it, to welcome it in, to appreciate it, to savor it--we could use more of that. Without that receiving quality we're all just a bunch of hungry ghosts, clamoring for "more, more, more" while piles of unopened gifts lie scattered at our feet.

I talk as if I knew how to do this. I don't. It hasn't been until C that certain kinds of intimate receiving have become comfortable--or even possible--for me. It's because in receiving we become vulnerable and I trust my absolute safety with him.

I know that if there's no receiving, there can be no relationship (perhaps this is why we are so lonely.) It's like what Alice Walker wrote in The Color Purple (I'm paraphrasing here.) "I think God gets pissed off if we walk by the color purple and don't even notice."

Carla, you notice. Artists always notice, but now you notice more than ever. Now I see you opening up and receiving. Not just the colors of flowers, but the colors of the souls of the people who surround you. May you continue to receive that more and more and more. May you be blessed to receive all the colors of the subtle vibrations of this world, the intentions, questions, love and heartbreak as well as the amazing natural phenomena that surround us. And when you receive us, you gift us. You give us back to ourselves. It's what we always wanted.

Today is my mother's Yahrzeit. She's been dead for seven years. My sister called me early this morning and we said Kaddish together as we have for the past seven years.

I was thinking about Mom yesterday, the fifth anniversary of the current Gulf War. If she were alive, she would have been standing out in the rain protesting the war, as my sister did yesterday. She was ferociously anti-war her whole life, and a poster hung on our front door stating "War is not healthy for Children and other living things" for many years after the conflict in Vietnam was officially declared over.

My mother was fierce and at the same time very vulnerable. She is like a glowing wound inside me.

C and I watched Jarhead last night, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx. Wonderful acting, great script. It showed things about the hell in Iraq that I never wanted to see, but need to.

We'd struggled for a couple of days with continuing adjustment and adaptations--I don't blog much about that part of things, but of course it's there. Two middle-aged people finding each other and moving in together quickly--it's been wonderful but not without its challenges.

Sometimes he calls this place Ma Luterman's Boarding House Shtetl. "Come to me ye huddled masses, pull up a chair and have a chocolate chip cookie, a glass of wine. What, you want to move in? Fine!"

He needs space, order, some degree of predictability and quiet so that he can play and compose music and recover from his intense job. I need community, kids, dinner guests, and yes, a certain amount of chaos sometimes in order to feel fully alive and flowing.

Those needs aren't as totally contradictory as they might seem at first glance because neither of us is 100% stuck on them. I need quiet too; he loves being hospitable and opening our house up for parties (after he's made sure it's sparkling clean and we are well-prepared.)

But sometimes we come up against the differences in our temperaments, cultural backgrounds, and assumptions and it's rough. Our negotiations over the last few days felt akin to the work of Inuit women chewing on a tough piece of buffalo hide. We softened it with our saliva, chewed and gummed and chewed and gummed until our love was a supple garment once more.

My Writing Salon Personal Essay class this session has been particularly stimulating--thoughtful people raising wonderful questions. The other night one of the students in that class talked about not wanting to write her experiences so that they could be "consumed" the way Americans consume everything; memoirs by third world people; photographs of exotic foreign beauties, or suffering children; women with bundles on their heads; works of art; cheap labor, etc.

Since I work at shaping my experiences into a form that can be sold in the marketplace of publishing, I was intrigued and a bit chagrined to reflect on the ways I might be whoring out my personal experiences. The question is relevant.

It's true we live in a consumer culture, a capitalist economy in which everything is bought and sold, and advertized and "spun." It's hard for things to be just what they are: a rock, a tree, a baby, a face. That's not glamorous enough. As a poet, I can take that rock, that tree, that face, and spin words around it, make it special, and sell it. The selling it part comes from the economy we live in. If I were in an African village, I would just tell the story as part of my social currency and go on hunter-gathering or midwifing babies or whatever else it is I would do. But since I'm a cultural worker in a capitalist economy, my job has become trying to spin gold out of the straw of everyday experience, and sell it to the highest bidder.

One of my students in the Writing Salon class is a historian; another is an anthropologist. What these disciplines have in common with journalism is the pretense of objectivity: there is a truth and I am going to find it, interpret it, and hand it over to you, Dear Reader.

In truth, there is no one Truth. But how do you spin and sell that?

In the last several decades, there has been a movement afoot in academia as well as in journalism to acknowledge that absolute objectivity does not exist, that everything is filtered through the lense of the person who views it. It's the Heisenberg principle; observing a phenomenon changes the phenomenon, and so you have to factor that in, and while you're at it, what about the observer. Who is s/he and what brought them there?

As soon as I could get away from "straight journalism" (I published human interest stories in The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald back in the 80s,) and into personal essay, I went for that form with great relief. Whereas grinding out "objective" stories in which I erased my presence, my tape recorder, and all the relevant, colorful, real information of the encounter between myself and the subject felt false, being able to use "I" and own my own responses felt more honest.

Of course with personal essay, you run the risk of seeming--or being--self-indulgent. In many ways it is a self-indulgent form, just as confessional poetry can be. But whether a pice is self-indulgent or good art depends on a subtle adjustment of weight on the part of the writer. If you have an axe to grind, are just confessing your personal failings or desires, then it's like writing a diary--a great exercise in self-expression maybe, but what use is it to the outside world? But if are seeking a larger truth (without being grandiose) then real value is created.

The ethics of selling that value to glossy magazines with corpoorate sposors--or even selling it to The Sun, which is not glossy or corporate, but which does serve a particular viewpoint and a set of individuals--are debatable. My only defense is that I need to make a living, and that, for better or for worse, this is my best skill. I'm a mediocre waitress, I can't work in an office, and although I'm a good teacher, I lack the stamina to do it full-time. What I can do is be a conduit and a commentator for these stories which seem to seek me out.

I'm speaking about all this as if it were just an interesting intellectual dilemna, but it hits me where I live, in my most intimate relationships, in the things I am at liberty to write about and those things which I should and do keep private. I'm speaking as if that disctinction were always clear. It is not always clear to me.

My student was reluctant to write about her personal experiences because she feared being self-indulgent, and more than that, she did not want to just create another pleasing product--"Oh, that's a good story! You should send it to The Times!" that could be consumed in our common marketplace. She did not want to objectify herself or her experiences.

But these twin reservations are inhibiting her from writing the piece for the audience who most needs to hear it--herself. And perhaps, someday, others like her, who have gone through similar difficulties, and who would be comforted or illuminated to hear about her experiences.

I was thinking the other night, just as I was falling asleep, that we should do our work, our writing, our whatever, like children building sand castles on the edge of the shore. Knowing they will be washed away, yet completely absorbed in the process, enjoying the sun and the squeals and shouts of our friends, and our own creativity as we line the castle wall with pebbles, or stick a big stick in the center of the turrets where a bird's feather flag may be flown.

The tide comes in; our work is washed away, made irrelevant. Shakespeare stays, impervious to time, and a few others. Most of the rest of us disappear. When I was a teenager, this idea devastated me. Whjy create anything if we only die in the end, and if our creations die too?

Now that I'm older, I am more at peace with it. We go home after an absorbing day of playing all-out, we're in our beds, sunburned, tired, and dreaming. The purpose of the work was to grow ourselves up. Maybe the real work comes afterward, in the dreaming.

I finally saw Carla last night, first time after her return from Mexico. She looked gorgeous and glowing despite having spent all week in the studio laying down vocal tracks for her next album. She told me it was a hard day--a hard week. Even though she still has amazing technique, a gorgous tone, and a style nobody and nothing can take away from her, she noticed that her diaphragm is not as strong as it used to be, making it harder to control the intonation. Big leaps and little glissandos of notes no longer come easily on the first take. Some of her upper range is not as powerful as it used to be.

She can still sing the hell out of the songs, with a greater depth of feeling than before, and a richer sense of the story she wants to convey. But the technique she used to have at her fingertips is no longer so accessible and it was hard for her to be with that, to be in that, day after day, in the studio.

She told me, and her eyes filled for just a moment, and I felt a surge of fear in my gut that I'm sure she had experienced also; what does this diaphragm weakness mean? is it just fatigue and stress and medication, or is the ALS advancing more quickly?

I felt so honored just to witness the bare reality of the moment. I know what an artist she is, how more than anything else, singing comes right from her soul, and what a perfectionist she can be.

"I don't know how much longer I'll be able to sing the way I want to," she said bravely, looking right at it.

I said, "It's like you're freezing your embryos now." She nodded.

When I went home, C asked me, "How's Carla?"

"She's okay," I said. "She's freezing her embryos."

His face registered shock.

"Not those embryos. I mean her songs. She's laying down as many songs as she can while she still can. It's hard."

And it is. Life is hard but beautiful.

C and I went out for an expensive and luxurious dinner last night to celebrate that I won the Kalliope poetry contest, and got a poem accepted into the Syracuse Cultural Workers Calendar for 2009, and that MORE magazine took the latest essay I sent them. A triple header, all the good news coming in one week. We drank half a bottle of champagne between us, and the waitress let us take the rest of it home.

Meanwhile, I keep plugging away at revsing the hot tub play--I got the idea for the title of the play this morning as I was rushing around getting ready for school: The Hot Tub Defense. That's it--that's the right title. I also scribbled down some additional dialogue that will make it work. That play has been pure pleasure. I feel like I know the characters inside out, and am thinking about maybe writing a novella based on the play--a la Shopgirl by Steve Martin.

I'm still reading the second part of Neil Simon's memoirs. How incredibly prolific he was! It sounds like he was just chanelling the plays--like they were pouring through him so fast he was just taking dictation. He says that afterwards he couldn't even believe he had written them.

I had to say good-bye to my third graders today as I'm moving on down into the second grade next week. It's always poignant with the little ones, who throw their arms around my waist and say "Don't go!" Trust me, that never happens in high school where I will begin my residency in one more week. I'm trying not to dread it. Sometimes you encounter really sensitive smart kids in high school. It's just that the ones who don't want to be studying poetry know for a fact that they don't want to. I wish it were an elective at that age, and that I had only students who wanted to be in class. But I'm thinking of trying out some rap lyrics with them this year; that might yield more fun for all of us.

Friday night I went to a production of Corpus Christi (sp?) the Jesus play by Terrance McNally, which was in town briefly. It was at Grace Cathedral; Diana, Phil, Jonathan, Scott, and Leo all came too. The acting was strong, especially Jesus, who was tall, thin, with a heart-shaped face and a sweetness that shone through every moment--he really moved me.

In the production I saw of this play in Edinborough eight years ago, the cast was all-male, and I think the script was slightly different. In this show there were five or six women now playing male apostles. A lot of gender-mixing. The actors were all incredibly sincere, and as we were in the front row, I saw many real tears being wept onstage.

The problem was their tears shut down my own.

After the Edinborough production I remember being hit with so much emotion I couldn't move. I was weeping and shaken to my core.

This time it was the actors who were having the experience, and the audience was witnessing it. Diana stayed with us all weekend so we had a chance to discuss it. Apparantly, this is a well-known fact among theatre directors (I just am only now discovering it.) If the cast is sobbing and crying, then the audience doesn't get a chance to. In the stage directions for Rabbit Hole, for instance, the actors are instructed not to cry except in certain very specific places--just once or twice. The tears belong to audence.

The next day, Saturday, Diana went off to interview the actor who played Jesus as research for a book she's writing on the effect playing these roles has on the actors.

It is an interesting question, how an emotion can be shared, or not, how it can be passed around or "put on" someone else. Not only in theatre, but in life off-stage as well. I remember several difficult relationships where I felt like I was "carrying" the depression for the other person.

What makes the difference between sharing an emotion or putting it on the other person? In close relationships, why does one person often assume the mantle of the strong together character while the other partner acts out the fear and vulnerability and grief?

In my relationship with C now, it feels like we take turns being strong or being vulnerable. We have both been both. In my first marriage I was the identified patient. When things got rough--abortion, suicide, chronic illness--I collapsed in grief. My husband buried hikmself in work and didn't cop to his darker emotions much; and when he did, he didn't do it in "my" language, so I wasn't as open to hearing them as I should have been.

I've learned that I can't share vulnerability and strength equally with everyone, in every relationship. Some people resist switching roles--they cling to their fallback identity, whether it is victim or tyrant, superwoman or injured child. Some people really are too fragile or too occupied working out what they need to work out in one aspect of themselves to be able to play with wholeness.

I know a woman who denies every bit of her own aggression. She won't use swear words and she winces when other people do. She can't stand being teased and she never teases anyone. I described playing tennis to her, how satisfying it is for me to thwack the ball really hard, how healthy I feel afterward, all my frustrations discharged on the court. Limp with health. She shuddered.

"I couldn't do that."

I told her how C and I trash talk each other: "Prepare to meet your Maker. I am the Merchant of Death." "I am the Dominatrix of Doom and I am going to grind your ego underfoot."

She winced. "I could never do that."

I am so grateful to have a companion who will play with the shadow. Who will tease me about mine, who will acknowledge his own, who will bat it back to me, fiercely or gently, but always with honesty. When there is no room for shadow play the relationship dies.

This blog was supposed to be about art and life, but lately it always comes back to love. I feel a little embarrassed about that--I do want to debate important questions relating to Art and life and playwriting--but I can't keep from singing about what is uppermost.

Most of Saturday I sat in bed and worked on the first draft of an essay I want to send to Modern Love, about C and his cat, and love in middle age, and fear and committment. I sent it out to my dad and sister and a bunch of my friends. Of course dad loved it. Some friends liked it too. C had the thankless job of pointing out places where I could have gone deeper. (Another friend, via email did the same.)

It's hard to be the partner of a writer--well, I should say, it's hard to be the partner of me. When I write something, a poem, an essay, and it's hot off the press I can't keep it to myself--I have to share it. I want immediate feedback. When it's fresh and new and still dripping with vaginal juices from the birth canal though, I am not always the most receptive audience for criticism, however gentle and correct. I argued with C at the kitchen table about his thoughtful comments. A short time later I came around.

Sunday, we cleaned out the laundry room, where David has been storing his tools, bike, a playhouse he's building for his daughter, and other items. I had to negotiate fiercely for the space. My space. Our space--space for C to set up a workshop to make more ladders and work on house projects. Once David had moved some of his things, I threw away a bunch of stuff. Old identities, the struggles of the last fifteen years. I feel like I'm dumping my old life, at least the worn-out no longer useful parts of it. It feels great. There is so much that I am ready to leave behind.

C and I walk to the tennis courts in our neighborhood. It's early dusk, the sky is pink. The tennis courts are at Brookdale Park, where a large crowd of Latino men are playing soccer on the adjoining field. There's a basketball court too, and a baseball diamond. Kids on bikes, kids shooting hoops, kids standing on the sidelines watching the men play soccer. I don't know how they can tell who is on whose team. They don't seem to be wearing any identifying shirts.

The tennis courts are empty. They're fringed with pine trees which hide the glare of the setting sun. As the shadows deepen, the sky goes from light pink, to deep peach, to purple, and the trees go from green to black. Swedish ivy in banks alongside gets darker and glossier. All the leaves are new.

There's a spent condom on the court, and the night lights don't work, which is a shame, because if they did we could play night tennis. As it is we volley until it gets too dark to see the ball. Playing in the half-light I sense rather than see the ball. My arm moves automatically in its direction, I hear the thwack and catch a glimmer of flourescent chartreuse whirring over the net like a small fast planet.

Walking home, we stop because fragrance is pouring out of a camellia bush. "Is that lilac?" C asks confused. There's a profusion of sweet smells; everything is blooming. A few minutes later we are walking under a tree with white blossoms when sweetness assails us again. Orange blossom or honeysuckle? There's no moon but plenty of stars. At home C improvises something lyrical and sweet on the piano while I put a salad together; new spring peas and goat cheese and avocado and small heirloom tomatoes, yellow and purple and red.

I feel full and voluptuous--hormonal. Teaching, I had the third graders use their five senses to describe a memory of the first time they did something--first time riding a bike, first time swimming. One child remembered leaving his orphanage in Cambodia--he was two. He saw dancing monkeys. His new American sister hugged him so hard he fell down.

Another boy writes about the first time he went bowling. He reads in front of the class, "I smell balls." His friends giggle. He frowns. "Not those kind of balls." I interject. "Maybe you could say 'I smell bowling balls.'"

I still have to rewrite the very end of the hot tub play, and tweak a few things here and there. I work on one of the poems The Sun came close to accepting. I wish I could write more like Jorie Graham. Wish I weren't so wedded to narrative and prose. But my mind feels very earthbound. I keep making the same signature moves. For better and for worse. C comes up and puts his arms around me as I stand at the sink, washing lettuce.

Tim and I auditioned an actress for the role of Olivia yesterday. She was good--I thought--passionate--but a little young for the part. It's audio, so looks won't matter, but Tim said there's an accent thing. He said accents drift, over time, a Boston accent in 2008 doesn't sound like a Boston Accent in 1908 or one in 1808--and there are micro-changes that occur every decade.

I feel like it's more a question of inflection--younger people tend to end sentences on a more rising note, as if asking if the listener really understands them. This young woman had a deep enough voice, so it wasn't like she sounded like a little girl or anything. And she was smart, and likeable, and related well to the character's struggles.

I'd be okay to go with her, but there are also possibilities for other actresses. Carla would be great, if she has time, which is a big if, and there's also my friend Diana, who is the right age, and teaches drama and voice in Spokane, and loves the play. The only drawback to Diana is that she lives in Spokane and we'd need time for rehearsals.

We have a couple of possibilities for Jack--one Jewish guy with a slight NY accent, whose voice I like very much. It's important to me that the actor playing Jack sound Jewish and lawyerly, but subtly so--there are a lot of tiny things in timbre and inflection that inform that without going into a full Fiddler on the Roof impression.

I got a note back from The Sun, rejecting all the poems I sent them, but saying that three of them came close, so it's back to the revision board again. I hadn't been satisfied with the way those particular poems ended anyway. Sometimes I have the body of a poem and then it takes years--literally--for me to find the right ending.

I read the latest Poets & Writers and was knocked out by the poem of Jorie Graham's that was in there--alright, she is a genius, I admit it, even if I can't understand half of her work. Also, they advertized this cool new thing called a NEMO or something--a portable word-processing machine, like a laptop, but lighter and sturdier, capable of running for 700 hours on a couple of triple A batteries, with no Internet distractions!

G and I watched a Sopranos episode last night for the first time in ages and I regret to inform you all that Adrianna finally got whacked. This news will probably not come as a shock to anyone because it happened way back in Season 5, but some of us are slow in making our way through the series.

I really was sorry, because of all the characters, in some ways she grabbed me the most. She was so trapped, in her crazy relationship with christopher, in her drug habit, and by the FBI--she was like a little trapped animal. In the end she was shot in the woods.

I was thinking about the discussion we had in class Sunday night about redemption. Adrianna died "unredeemed"--that is, she never got a chance to set her messed-up life straight. Even if she and Christopher had entered the witness protection program and relocated to Utah, one can't imagine them being happy or staying out of trouble for long. She was doomed from the beginning, and she died a very sad and ignoble death.

The reason I think her story is worth watching is because she's real--at least her character's feelings, thoughts, hopes and dreams are real representations of a lot of people. She doesn't end up going to rehab, kicking Christopher out, getting her life together. She can't. Some people do transcend their circumstances, and many don't. It's fine to focus on the heros who do--they shine the light for the rest of us. But I think it's also fine to show those who don't or can't--they evoke our compassion, for them, for each other and even for ourselves. When I watch Adrianna getting beat up and still clinging to her abuser, or trying to lie and cover-up things because she knows she'll get slammed if they are discovered, I think "There but for fortune go I." If I were in her shoes, raised in her environment, would I have been able to make better choices? I doubt it.

Elsewhere in theatrical news, my nephew Eli, age 8, who has no front teeth, due to a combination of growing up and roughhousing with his older brother, called me last night, seeking sponsorship for a play he is in, about loggers and panda bears. He plays a logger. He has four lines of which three go, "We're not! We're not! We're not!" which he recited for me over the phone. He knows I can't make the show but could I please send a check because his class is going to adopt a Chinese panda bear.

I love this very small little world we live in now, where kids adopt bears half a world away (and probably track their bears' progress over the Internet.) I wrote the check and now it's today. I'm still working on cleaning our room, getting rid of debris and paperwork. Why is it so hard? At least I feel a lifting of the fog that surrounded me for the last few weeks. Tomorrow Tim and I are going to start reading actors for the radio drama based on my hot tub play.

We had such an interesting Personal Essay class last night. Among other topics, we talked about redemption. Some of the students look for redemption when they read, or go to the movies. Many of my friends feel the same way. A bleak movie, like Leaving Las Vegas, leaves them feeling depleted and angry because after all that suffering, there's no redemption in the end.

I argued that perhaps the redemption takes place off the page, or after the credits have rolled. Maybe the redemption is in the discussion we are having now, I suggested; maybe it happens later, in the consciousness of the audinece, who know, at least, that no matter how dark or horrifying their circumstances, someone has been there before and written about it.

Afterwards I regretted not having asked this question: given the inevitability of the story this essayist has to tell (it was Cheryl Strayed's essay "The Love of My life," about how her grief for her mother led to a long binge of self-destructive behavior,)-given that this is the story the essaysit has to tell, how could she have worded it so that you felt closer to the experience and more satisfied at the end?

I find this essay to get mixed reactions: some people passionately love it; others react strongly against it. That's fine by me: it's provocative. What I'm interested in is how the style of the storytelling either works or doesn't work to make the essay alive and memorable.

I came home very high and excited. Those experiences of an engaged group discussion are beautiful to me;lots of different minds exploring an idea from all angles, coming up with a richness and diversity of response impossible alone. It's such a smart, engaged group of students!

I didn't blog here about how Thursday night and Friday night I performed with Wing It! Thursday evening was just the women--we performed at a women's health conference. Had fun dancing and doing spoken word about mammograms and pap smears. Megan did a mesmerizing poignant piece about swimming.

Then Friday night I read some of my poems at Interplayce. I read Half-Remembered Fragments of Song Lyrics, and Letter from Southern Africa and Sustain. It all worked out well, except I definitely need reading glasses now, even with 12 point type. C and I went to Target Saturday and picked up a pair for me. Now I just have to remember to bring them along.

About a week ago, I went on a hike in the hills with Ruth. We were driving back, in my car, talking, and at the exact same moment that she said, "Look at that beautiful pink tree with all its petals," I found myself saying, "Look at that young man being arrested."

I was looking at her, and behind her, through the passenger side window, I saw a young black man being handcuffed and pushed into the back of a police cruiser. She had turned to face me, and through my window she could see a gorgeous cherry tree shedding its blossoms in the wind.

Both sights were true; they were both on the same street. As Carla would say, "Bittersweet."

That's what my life is now--if I look out one window, I see the fragile sweetness of Spring (yes, sorry, East Coast readers--we are playing tennis, and gardening, and hiking, it is in the 60s, beautiful warm sunshine, and the acacia trees are all yellow and the cherry trees are all pink and white, and everything smells good.)

On the other side of the window, Carla's ALS diagnosis, fears for the health of other people close to me, the economy going down the toilet (I dreamed about this last night,) war, and the kids everywhere who are not getting even the basics of what they need--a sustainable world. I can look in either direction. I think I have to look in both. To turn a blind eye to the half that is painful is to deny the whole picture. But last night, after a beautiful day of tennis and lovemaking and a good movie, a delicious dinner, phone conversations with my dad and my sister, I cried as I went to bed. I know all these things are fleeting. I fear losing the world.

Yesterday I went into Juvenile Hall with C and taught two classes of poetry. I brought in the Chinese Oath of Friendship, which involves swearing a vow of loyalty "forever and ever, until all the mountains are flat and the rivers all run dry." The language is simple--about a second or third grade reading level--but the concept of loyalty and different ways to express a long long infinite time I thought would be relevant. And I brought in a Forest Hamer poem, "Initiation," about being jumped into a gang.

The first class was too disruptive to get much done, although we did manage to brainstorm two whiteboards full of different ways to express "forever and ever." My personal favorites were "until Kobe Bryant start passoing the ball," and "until Jesus and the Devil have a child."

But their idea of real poetry is rap, that rhymes, and soon they started reciting long tracts of it, out of which I caught the words "nigga" and "motherfucka" about a million times. Their mastery of the repertoire was impressive; they had every gesture, every syllable memorized, pages and pages of it, like the bards of old. They could have gone on reciting and rapping all day, for as long as we let them, and never run out of material.

Faced with this, I didn't know exactly what to do. I was impressed by their command of the form, and at the same time it all seemed rotely memorized to me, and as if they were just repeating certain stock phrases, mostly having to do with violence, over and over. I wanted to find a way to co-create some kind of poetry with them that could incorporate that culture but expand its vocabulary. I didn't find it on this visit, but I'm not discouraged. It would be crazy to think I could figure that out in one session, when it should be a joint effort, me and them together. Unfortunately the teacher didn't have the greatest rapport with the class, and so they were already jumpy and aggressive when we started.

After that class was over, C and I repaired back to his cubicle, got on his computer and found a couple of good poems by Kevin Young: including "Black Cat Blues." We brought them in to the second class which began on a better note as I was a little less nervous and took the time to introduce myself and meet them properly. They seemed to really like the Young poems, when a crash and shouting next door made all the guards and counselors jump to attention. There was a big fight; a kid had gotten back from his court date and it hadn't gone well for him. Another kid said something and he lunged.

Guards and counselors streamed into the room; our kids, who were jumping out of their seats and craning their necks trying to see the fight, were told to stand with their hands behind their backs, and everyone was marched back to their own rooms, under close supervision. Class was over for the day. C took me out for a BLT, and we processed the day. No one could call it a howling success, but it hadn't been a complete failure either. A couple of kids had paid attention, asked questions, engaged. We'd found some material they liked. I was beginning to see what the challenges were and I was not in despair.

(Today of course I went to the elementary school where the third graders clamor to show me their poems, so there was balance.)

I finished Rewrites. Neil Simon rewrote his first play that was ever on Broadway more than 25 times. Completely rewrote it, top to bottom, in the era before computers. He went through so much grief just to get the thing produced, including bad reviews, thin audiences, self-doubt, and producers wanting to close the show after a few nights. They started giving tickets away in a desperate attempt to spread word-of-mouth.

When he returned to his study to write his next play, he bought a dart board and spent four months doing nothing but playing games of darts with himself. He lied to his wife and told her he was working. I can't tell you how encouraging I find all this information. It makes me feel like I might have a chance after all.

Neil Simon's book Rewrites had me glued to the couch all morning, after I'd finished revising an essay I've been playing with, off and on, for a couple of months. It's not War and Peace, but it's compelling. I have not had a fraction of the success that Simon has, but I found myself nodding when he described play openings as painful rather than pleasurable. Everyone expects you, the playwright, to be flooded with delight and joy, but the real feelings are a lot more mixed, including anxiety, shame, embarrassment, depression, and a desire to hide under the bed. And this is when things are going well.

I sometimes feel like that when I have a big piece coming out--The Sun is going to publish a 2,500 word essay of mine in April, and I'm already cringing in anticipation. Is this a neurosis, or is it simply a fact of life that the smaller things really are more satisfying?

It moves me when someone tells me that something I've written has brought them pleasure or peace. When I say something funny and Carla throws back her head and laughs. I love it when my Dad cried at my play. It's deeply satisfying when C comes up to me from behind, puts his arms around my waist and nuzzles my neck. I get a glow from swimming, from working in the yard, or even playing tennis--and I'm a mediocre player at best. But opening night at the theatre? I try to imagine what it would be like to have a play on Broadway. I'd be terrified of the reviews, I think, and also scared that the producers would lose money.

Then why write the things? I don't know, I like it when people laugh or cry--I like to watch actors grab ahold of the thing, chew it up, and make it better than it ever was by infusing it with their own life-force. And I still have so many ideas!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we watched the Bourne Conspiracy last night--Conspiracy or Supremacy I can't remember which one. I think it was the last one in the trilogy, because Bourne discovered his true identity and the bad guys were brought to justice. Lots of things blew up, which delighted C who kept insisting that we rewind so that he could study a multi-car crash again. And again. As usual I most enjoyed the special features, where they show you all the incredible hard work, with an army of 500 technicians and staff, to make those things blow up realistically, and to shoot the actors without killing them.

I also re-started Wangari Maathi's Unbowed, which is a gripping and beautiful book, and much more important than any of the other stuff I've been blathering about here. And now to clear green waste from the yard, fill up the green bin, and wait for Carla to come home. I hope she's enjoying fair winds as she boogie boards with Maclen in Mexico. I hope she comes home salty and contented and glowing.

Yesterday we went to Juvenile Hall, to visit one of C's students who never gets visitors. I don't know where this kid's mother is, but his father has four or five other children, and, I think, a car that doesn't work.

C had baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and we took some. It was a chance for me to look around and get acclimated before I go in with him on Wednesday. The grounds are new and light, with lots of great art around--sculptures, murals. But the inside rooms smell of teenage boy sweat and strong disinfectant cleanser.

C's student came out of his room rubbing his eyes. His face fell for a moment when he saw us. His father had promised him that he would visit this week, and again he was disappoiunted not to see his dad.

We sat and talked for a little while at a picnic table. D is small for his age, shy and soft-spoken. He likes to play football. As C says about so many of his students, "They're not criminals. They're just the kid in the back seat of a stolen car, in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people because they don't have anywhere else to be."

I'm so mad that Ralph Nader has announced his candidacy for President again. Doesn't he have anything better to do? Every time I feel like I'm wasting my life, not using my time well, I think, at least I'm not Ralph Nader, siphoning off liberal votes away from the Democratic Party. Hopefully, he'll have no effect on this year's election.

I was bummed to miss the Academy Awards last night, but essay class was wonderful--two poignant moving essays and very good discussions. It's such a sweet, mature, thoughtful bunch of students.

C is going to try and contact D's father Wednesday, and drive him up to the Hall if necessary.

Watched 8 Mile last night with Ruth and C. Hey, it's only taken me fifteen years to get on the rap bandwagon. I gained fresh insight and respect for the art form of rap. A good thing, since I volunteered to teach some poetry classes at Juvenile Hall where C works...and I'm nervous. Will I be able to find the right material to reach these kids? How can I go with their culture and grow their literacy and comfort with the written word at the same time.

I think that poetry could be a fantastic medium for them to practice--it's shorter and in many ways easier than prose. I think I need to relax my anti-rhyme stance, but at the same time I want to teach them something about imagery, and using language for different purposes.

In the film, the aspiring rappers did "battle" with each other, each one striving to cap the other in witty rhjyming insults and narrative. In that way, their poems resembled more narrative ballads than the kind of lyrical image-driven work I write. But when I was first discovering poetry as a kid, I loved those ballads that told a story like "The Highwayman" like Alfred Noyes, which totally fired my imagination. I could bring in Langston Hughes. I could bring in some of the prison poetry I got from Judith T., my friend who taught poetry at San Quentin for years.

This will be exciting and nerve-wracking. I'm psyched. And I'bve also been assiduously avoiding the rewrite of the Marie Antoinette play for weeks now.

Yesterday in the teacher's room, there was a discussion of boys and war imagery that segued into talk of fathers, brothers and sons who served or are serving in the military. I just listened with my ears open. So much to chew on for the musical.

Then last night I went over my friend Jill Nagle's house for a reading of her new screenplay. It was fantastic! Interesting, complicated situation, a psychological thriller, original insight probing people's vulnerabilities. She did twenty-two drafts of it--twenty-two drafts. That's the thing about critics. It's easy to criticize. What's hard is to hold on and keep the faith for twenty-two drafts or as long as it takes.

Today, Ruth's birthday, we went hikinbg in the hills during a break between rains. The grass was sparkling and we saw turkey vultures dipping low and circling over us, looking for food. The acacia trees are blooming yellow all over the county with their mild spicy smell. One of C's students made a propaganda pster extolling his virtues as a teacher. I'm prouder than if he had won the Pulitzer.

True confession--not pretty--but true. I was relieved to read the New Yorker review of Crimes of the Heart where the reviewer spent the first seven hundred words basically trashing Beth Henley, who won the Pulitzer Prize for that play back in 1981. Why? Not because of schadenfreude, but simple reassurance--if a Pulitzer Prize- winning play can get so thoroughly criticized and its playwright so denigrated in the pages of the all-important New Yorker, that means if I and my little first play got trashed in the Detroit Free Press that it's all part of the biz.

And now, thank you, I will go train to be a genetics counselor, so that I can earn real money and see people all day and not be stuck in this little teapot of writing where tempests arise regularly.

Friday night C and I celebrated our one-year anniversary with a fancy dinner at a good French restaurant--hors d'oeuvres, a cocktail, and we split a dessert. All out. I got a little drunk on one margarita. I'm usually content with just making salad and throwing some chicken in it for dinner at home, with a glass of wine on the side, but I have to admit, there was something magical about candlelight, nice tablecloths, atmosphere, and delicious expensive food. Once in a while.

Then we went to hear Carla sing at Anna's Jazz Island--it was wonderful. C was especially taken by the bass player and the pianist she had backing her up. I got a chance to meet her parents--in her mother's case, to re-meet her. We hugged and gushed about Carla, who was sexy in a black camiusole and see-through black lace top over that, and who sang like a clear-eyed angel. The place was full, and C and I perched at the bar. Another new thing--we don't often go out to hear music together. There's a continual opportunity for re-discovery in a long-term relationship--oh yeah, we did this at the very beginning when we were just starting to date, but since then so much real life has rushed in that we forgot about those other luxurious sides of ourselves.

Saturday night I participated in a Malawi Wowee night at Interplayce--I read some of the poems I wrote about the Malawi trip. Lots of people who had been on that trip were there, so it had a special resonance--when I read "Eating Lake Flies," folks were there who could visualize exactly what I was talking about, the smoky funnel of flies thickly clustered around the porchlight, the laughing girl with the basket who dared us to taste her "fly patties."

Sunday morning's NY Times Magazine section was all about the power of play, so I called Cynthia up and told her about it. Researchers are studying the effects of play on children and young mice and rats--does it have a survival purpose? Does it help develop creativity and intelligence? The drive to play is so strong in young humans that even in Nazi concentration camps, little children found things to play with. I remembered the kids in Malawi playing with an empty tin of shoe polish, an old bicycle tire rim and a stiff straw for a hoop and stick. Kids don't need fancy toys, although they like them. They can make play objects out of anything around them.

Sunday afternoon we went to see Walkin Talkin Bill Hawkins; My Search for my Father, a play by my and Carla's friend W. Allen Taylor at Afro Solo (762 Fulton St., in San Francisco.) It's an amazing show, about the early days of black radio, and Allen's search to learn more about the father he never knew. It's still playing for two more weeks--go see it! The url is www.walkintalkin.com

This show was a benefit for Carla, so many of her friends were there--it was very emotional. First time I ever saw Allen cry while doing his show. I love one-man and one-woman shows--the energy and artistry and audacity of one person to stand up and hold an entire audience for ninety minutes while playing all the parts. Allen is especially affecting (to my mind) when he plays women--his mother, and another older lady who had worked with his father. He also played himself as a child, as a teenager, and as a young man, and he played his father's cronies, and he played some of the men who were surrogate father-figures to him. All in all, amazing.

C had wanted to mount and hook up his new beautiful speakers, so in and around all this cultural activity, he managed to find time to do so. I taught my class Sunday night at The Writing Salon, where somehow, in that weird synchronicity, several of my students are writing about death and grief. In truth, I was pretty beat by the time I got to class.

Monday we went to Michael's, a craft store, and bought a bunch of Velcro (it comes in many shapes, sizes, and degrees of toughness--who knew?) and then over to Carla's to see how we could help make it stick onto her boogie board and then onto the glove she'll wear. It's just a small modification, but hopefully it will help her stay more balanced and stable on her board when she's out riding the waves next week with Mac. It was good to see her, if just for a minute, and then I rushed out to Wing It! practice while C kept working on his beloved speakers. A full weekend--we crawled into bed at 10--and a good one, and today a morning full of chill gray rain.

Down at the tennis courts by the lake with G. A bright sunny day. We hadn't played for weeks and weeks, both of us were rusty. The only other person there was a white-haired little Chinese man, Master Chang, a tennis coach, who was waiting for his student.

G and I hit balls back and forth to each other. There was a high wind, and both the tennis balls he had in his pocket were elderly and tired, but we were having a good time. Wallup, wallup, rrun, scream. The coach watched us, and as his student didn't show, he jumped in and started giving us a free lesson.

"Return to neutral, like so," he scolded me. "Both hands on racket in between shots. You hold it all the time with one arm, arm get tired." It was true, but hard to practice. He ordered G to my side of the net, then he played against both of us. He could actually control the ball, choose where it landed. Amazing.

After we'd played for about an hour, he pulled out a portfolio and showed us his photos. He'd been tennis coach to the stars. There was a young tall, handsome athletic Christopher Reeve, shaking hands with Master Chang, whose hair was still black. there was a young Dustin Hoffman. There was Walt Frazier, the basketball star, seven feet tall, and Master Chang next to him, all five feet four inches of him.

"You come next week, I give you another lesson. Buy some new balls," he told us. He told us we both had potential to be good players.

"I suck," I said.

"No!" he insisted. "You have good eye. Powerful swing. You can do it. Hand--eye--good!" No one has ever accused me of having good hand-eye coordination before, so that was very gratifying.

"We'll come back next Thursday!" we promised. Already I can feel my game getting better.

This morning I've been sitting inj front of the computer since 8:30 a.m. One poem, and the revisions to Saying Kaddish. I've spent little time actually writing--most of it has been procrastinating. What a waste. I'm going down to the computer store to get parental controls put on my computer so that I can block the website Websudoku.com. It's my worst habit.

My friend Cynthia Winton-Henry sent me the following from a wonderful poem by Rupert Brooke called "The Great Lover."

"These I have loved:

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,

Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;

Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust

Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;

Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;

And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;

And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,

Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon

Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss

Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is

Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen

Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;

The benison of hot water; furs to touch;

The good smell of old clothes; and other such--

The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,

Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers

About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . "

*******************************************************************************

I love the poem for the gritty little details, the intimacy, the naming. I can't get my arms around love. It's too big. I can only talk about the sweetest smallest things: C bringing me coffee in the morning, our hour together before he goes off to work, watching the sun rise through the windows and eating and having breakfast in bed, talking quietly.

It's not the roses and chocolates. It's not being perfect. It's being ,messy and imperfect, and wrestling with the sticks and thorns in the front yard, the scheduling and bills, and laughing about it all, finding something in it always to laugh together about...

Yesterday, I ran a few errands with Carla. She is going to Mexico soon, to ride the waves with her boy while she still can. We shopped for bathing suits, the activity which only a potentially fatal illness can truly put into perspective (just kidding! Kidding!) We looked all over, had fun in chi chi little stores with wonderful sales. I bought a pair of black pants made out of hemp, and a cute, gauzy reversible skirt for only five dollars. Carla found some sweet things too, but no bathing suit. Then I remembered I had some new ones in the trunk of my car, and one of them--a little black maillot--fit her pretty well. Score!

By the way, not that I'm keeping track of points or anything, but she agrees with me completely: the fact that I sat through Norbit the other night with C (not only did I watch it with him, I went out and bought it for him, how cool of a girlfriend does that make me?) earns me not one but TWO chick flick evenings from him.

I have been buying tons and tons of movies lately; there's a store called Silver Screen video that always has lots of great used ones on sale and it's only a dollar or two more to buy them than it would be to rent them--and considerably less than to watch them in a theatre. I feel guilty about this, because I know the whole dvd thing is killing small movie theatres--and I do love them, with their smells of old popcorn, their worn red carpets with squashed kernels underneath--but I'm also addicted to the "Special features" on DVDs.

The other night we watched The Last King of Scotland, which was magnificent. I loved the central relationship between the two men--it was seductive, without being overtly erotic. And they were both brilliant--Forest Whitaker and James MacAvoy.

Norbit was a slightly less elevated viewing experience, but I loved watching the special features, seeing how Eddie Murphy gets into each role with the help of fat suits, prosthetic teeth, wigs, make-up, etc. It's an incredibly involved process; the make-up is an art form unto itself. He plays an elderly balding Chinese man in Norbit and completely disappears into the part.

Then last night a convening of the Libra Girls to celebrate all of our recent and upcoming adventures--a half-marathon, job change, possible trip to Macchu Piccu, and my opening in Detroit. They made me tell the story--every detail--and laughed and cried with me. And remembered for me, how long I worked on this play, Saying Kaddish (which still is waiting final revisions,) and how much faith it took to come this far. Meanwhile, my friend Tim and I are forging ahead, making a radio play out of the hot tub drama. I may or may not play the female lead...radio is great, I won't have to wear a bathing suit.

Carla posted it on her blog, so I can write about it here--there is some hope!!! Real hope--it feels as warm and life-giving as the unseasonable sunshine we're getting here--seventy lovely degrees, and the cherry blossoms fit to burst on the pink trees.

A study in Italy seems to show that small doses of lithium can be effective in slowing down the progression of ALS, and preventing death. It's not a cure--it's not even definitive yet. The study is only on about fifteen patients, and has only been going on for 18 months, but the results were so dramatic and surprising that the researchers put the control group, who were receiving a placebo, on the lithium, because it would be unethical not to.

It's not a cure, but it buys time until we get a president who will put stem-cell research on the front burner. It's a ray of hope, and I am bathing in it.

(For more detailed information, see Carla's blog at www.carlamuses.blogspot.com .)

I've felt kind of raw and vulnerable since returning from Detroit. I know I "should" be basking in feelings of success, but I am finding the playwriting biz stressful. There's money involved, for one thing--not money that I see in my checking account, but big money for production costs. And unlike poetry, where it's perfectly acceptable to hide out in your study in your sweatpants, it seems like playwrights are supposed to Show Up at things--like early rehearsals--and have opinions, and know something.

Plus, the subject matter and the language of my play--some people like it, some don't. That's what it is to be out there in the world, some people are going to love what you do, others won't, and it's not my job to read everyone's mind or make everyone understand me and like me. It's just my job to teach my classes and do my revisions and make lasagna.

Yesterday I volunteered with SF Connect. I thought I'd be planting trees, and thus advancing towards the goal of fifty trees planted by my fiftieth birthday, but instead ended up just weeding around tree basins in the city. It was great though--I learned about an organization called the League of Urban Gardeners and Arbor Day, and met some nice folk, and most importantly was just out in the fresh air and balmy sunshine. Funny, I'd passed those city trees a million times and never noticed them--but of course they need weeding and tending and care. Everything does. I have mostly been about creation and destruction in my life so far. Middle age seems a fitting time to learn about preservation.

First bad review, in a Detroit paper (the Jewish paper in Detroit gave us much love.) Actually, the review was not all bad--the critic liked the individual performances and conceded there were many good things about the play, before trashing the ending-- but the headline makes it sound like a complete hatchet job.

I found out about it while talking to K, my new mentor. (I asked, and she accepted. "I'll be your big sister," she joked, "even though I'm short and you're ten feet tall." It's true--I towered over the Detroit Jews like a skyscraper.)

She told me she has gotten bad reviews too--it comes with the territory of being out in the wider world. Not one of the more fun parts. And that's the thing; the mother in my play has a line she delivers to her younger daughter: "Family life is not all it's cracked up to be." Nothing is all it's cracked up to be. Not family life, not career success, not "being a real professional playwright," none of it.

But the flip side of that is that things which are not cracked up to be so special can be innately satisfying. I just spent forty-five minutes clearing detritus from the front yard--all the stuff we clipped during our mad gardening day. I chopped it up with the new gardening loppers and filled the green bin. A former student of mine walked by and noticed what I had done and said, "You're getting there." And I am. One more week, one more recycling pick-up, and all the stuff will be cleared.

It takes no special skill to chop up pieces of rose bushes and get them into the green bin. But it was intensely satisfying to work with my body and just do something natural and non-controversial after the hothouse of theatrical production, the focus on ego and pleasing people, the worries about my words being right or wrong.

It was just me and the clippers and the brush. I was thinking about Heath Ledger. I remember his performance in Brokeback Mountain astounded me. I read how bad his insomnia was, how none of the meds he was taking for it were really helping and I felt for him. I've had intractable insomnia at other periods in my life--not so much now--and it was awful. I felt so exhausted I wanted to die, and he actually did die. I wondered if he could have gotten his hands in some dirt, done a Habitat for Humanity type project, just gardened or constructed a house or something simple and physical like that, if it would have helped.

Anyway, the conversation with K was illuminating--I'm finally ready to look at one of the stubbornest issues of the play, the Deus Ex Machina in the next to last scene, which the reviewer put his finger on as a glaring problem. Rahel doesn't really soften or give any evidence of changing before her final 180 degree about face. I wish I could have realized this sooner, but I didn't--all I can do now is make the script as good as I can and then send it out again.

As Carla said, my attitude about all this has to be unconditional. Not that I can't respond to criticism of my work, revise, feel frustrated or sad or anxious, get excited, whatever. But if my attitude is, I want to learn whatever I'm supposed to learn from this experience rather than Broadway Or Bust, then it will be a richer more worthwhile experience. Because I'm sure even Broadway isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I had another screaming nightmare last night. I have them about once a month or so--haven't really tracked how frequently. C woke up and comforted me. He said I yelled really loudly. I remember in my dream I was enraged. Detroit jogged some trauma stuff for me and it's time to find a somatic therapist who can work with me around PTSD as well. I HATE being in therapy--spending all that money just to talk to someone about issues that I always think I could process with friends or with myself or just put into my work--but so much has gone on this year, I can't process it on my own anymore. My sensitive system is just overloaded. It's not even the nightmares that bother me most. It's more the feelings of numbness and disassociation I feel when I'm stressed.

I have been doing my work, but not feeling ultimately all that connected to it. Maybe there's just too much; besides Kaddish, i completed three other plays last year, one long one-act, one short one-act and one full-length, as well as a couple of major and a couple of short essays. I just found out that the short one-act, about Marie Antoinette, will get a reading at the end of April. And luckily I trust the director, Stuart Bousel, will do a great job, and there will be no unnecessary emotional drama involved.

Back in Oakland. Palm trees instead of snow. Bright sunshine through the windows of my study where C installed new French doors for me while I was away, as a surprise. Nursing a cup of coffee, the remnants of a head cold and the last shreds of jet lag.

Saying good-bye to the kids in Massachusetts is always wrenching. My seven-year-old nephew borrowed his mother's cell phone and stood outside on the cold and dark platform for ten minutes, talking and waving to me while I sat inside the train, talking and waving back. They didn't leave until after I had pulled out.

And Miss Thing, my brother's four-year-old daughter, who is slow to warm up to new people, played and played with me. We get each other. Same cock-eyed originality, same fierce stubbornness, same sense of humor. It doesn't hurt that she looks just like me--even my sister-in-law's mother says so.

When I was kissing everyone good-bye at the door, she ran back into the den. I followed her, where she sat on the floor, absorbed in a toy. Squatted down next to her and asked for a kiss. She offered her cool little cheek. I was at the doorway when I heard a small voice: "I wonder when you'll be coming back. I think I'm gonna miss you."

Me too, Miss Thing, I miss you too.

Dad and my stepmother and I flew out early to Detroit, where ten inches of snow were predicted on Friday, but mercifully did not fall. There was some snow--by California standards a lot of snow--but not the paralyzing blizzard we had feared. C arrived a few hours later, looking fairly worn-out from exhaustion and travel, and we had a nice dinner with his brother and sister-in-law at our hotel.

C and I had both been a little nervous about our families meeting each other--would they like each other? Would there be too many cultural differences? Would dinner be unbearably awkward? But no, my globetrotting stepmother fell in love with his hearth-tending family and there was a lot of talk and laughter. C's sister-in-law, Speedy, had knitted me an ice-blue scarf as a "Welcome to Michigan" present, which I put on and did not take off for the remainder of our visit.

We went to Saturday's afternoon perfomance of Kaddish. Masankho flew in from San Diego where he'd been studying Spanish and arrived at the last moment. It was like a family reunion to see him.

There was a good audience! I was so glad because the bigger the audience, the better the actors do; they feed off the energy. Dad and my stepmother started tearing up as soon as we arrived in the lobby and saw the posters for the play with my name on them, and the photos of the actors on the walls, and the reviews (two reviews, both good, and an interview with me in the Jewish newspaper.) It was good. The actor who plays the mother is getting better, although my family also felt she was the weakest link. It's too bad, because after the New York show in 2006 I came away convinced that she was in fact the main character, the one whose changes are the fulcrum of the play, the one who is in the most scenes.

I listened hard all through the play for any lines that could leap out at me that would make good alternative titles, but I didn't hear one. I will rewrite Lydia's performance art monologue and maybe something will come from that.

At the end of the play my father was crying. My stepmother said she had never seen him cry that much since she met him. I just held him and hugged him. He is so precious to me and I am so grateful we were given this much time to make a circle back.

We flew home Sunday and I taught at the Writing Salon that night, with the help of several cups of strong black tea. I was running on fumes and had a head cold, but the class went well--it's a great class, and in a rare burst of foresight I had prepared the lesson two weeks earlier. Yesterday I was slammed though, just hit with a wall of fatigue. I didn't manage to get out of my pajamas until about one in the afternoon.

I did call Carla to talk; she wanted to know how the show went, every detail. Reassured me that audience numbers and money are not what make a show a success. She had had her appointment for a second opinion while I was gone. I know, because we had talked about it, that like me, she had been hoping against hope that the ALS specialist would say, "There's been a big mistake. You don't have ALS. You have xyz, any other curable or livable disease." That's not what happened. The eminent specialist ran more tests and said that "in his heart of hearts," he thought she did have ALS.

There's still hope, of course--there's always hope. Hope that she may be among the percentage whose symptoms arrest at an early stage; hope that he's wrong; any and all kinds of hope. But what Carla said to me, when I gently tried to express sympathy about his confirmation of her diagnoisis was, "My positive attitude cannot be conditional upon results." It's one of the most profound lessons I've ever heard, so I'll repeat it here, for my own learning: My positive attitude cannot be conditional upon results.

Unconditional love--that's the thing we're all striving for, isn't it? Here it is, in action. Unconditional love for herself, for life, for whatever comes. Whether it results in a remission of her symptoms or an early death. "I have to just pray that I learn whatever I'm supposed to learn from this." Meanwhile, she's buring a boogie board tomorrow in preparation for her trip to Mexico.

I'm still at my desk, facing the final galleys for the essay I wrote that's going to be out in April's Sun magazine--today's the last day I can input any changes--and I need to get back to the dramaturg I met in Detroit and talk about revisions to Kaddish with her (I didn't want to do it yesterday because I was too foggy.)

On the plane coming back I read most of Philip Roth's Ghost Writer, and finished it up this morning--it's a wonderful novella. I had never read much of Roth before, except for long excerpts of the novel about Sabbath Somebody which were published in The New Yorker--this was great, although hardly an advertizement for the writing life. Old, grizzled, anti-social, chronically dyspeptic writer shut up in a New England cottage with drifts of snow outside writing, writing, and not living...that's one of his main characters, and the other one is Nate Zuckerman, an aspiring young writer who wants to be just like him. From what I've read about Roth's current life, it seems he has achieved that goal. I hope it makes him happy. It sounds hellish to me. But the book is beautiful, whimsical, rounded and rueful, so maybe that's what it costs. Is the bargain worth it--life for art? That's the question Roth seems to be asking.

Last night we watched Quest for Fire, an old movie C had mentioned several times to me, so I bought it for his birthday. It's remarkable--the most faithful depiction of what human life might have been like 80,000 years ago that the filmmaker (and the scholar-consultants he hired) could come up with. I was impressed with the egoless performance of Rae Dawn Chong, who totally became this naked creature loping through the tall grass, using her whole body freely and without affectation to convey every emotion.

The movie brought us back to imagining what kinds of ancestral memories must lie encoded in our brains and bodies: abject terror, the necessity for warmth and companionship because we needed each other to survive. (There was only one character in the whole movie with any white in his hair--most people would have died before our age, of hunger, or wild beasts, or in an accident, or childbirth.

The movie centers around fire, the hearth, the beginnings of story-telling. Having just come back from seeing my little play mounted in a $40,000 production (and hoping desperately that they will recoup that investment--the house was not full, and they were running a two for one sale, so they are not making much on it,) it was good to be reminded of the origins of theatre, and of language itself.

Best of all has been C and I reuniting--it had been a ragged week for our relationship. He was preoccupied with the project of the French doors, and keeping it a secret, so couldn't be totally present when I called from Detroit in nervous distress. And he is, at heart, a hearth-tender, so it was stressful and exhausting for him to travel alone to Detroit, with a weather advisory posted, after working hard all week, when he would really rather be puttering and playing music. Over the weekend I was feeling uncharacteristically out-of-sync with him, which troubled me; when we finally got home and I saw the beautiful beautiful doors, and how he'd labored to give me a snug warm place in which to write, I understood.

And now we're back in our sweet routine; the cat pads onto the bed, wadded-up kitty litter caught in her paws; she nestles down in the covers, purring loudly. We take turns serving each other food and coffee and water and wine, do household chores, take out the garbage, unload the groceries, read together in bed at night. Morning and he's off teaching kids at Juvenile Hall, and I'm facing the usual desk full of projects to revise and emails to return. And life resumes.