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.

I'm up to my neck in nieces and nephews and loving it. Anna just rode me like a horse all the way to California(her orders.) We didn't actually get to California--we only got as far as the Rockies when the horse pooped out.

Theo is doing a biography of Dr. Seuss as his third grade school project. He has compiled a bunch of sources and now knows everything worth knowing about the author.

Yesterday I was with my sister and her three in Western Mass--Noah, Eli, and Lucy. My sister Emily has been helping a Mexican farmworker family. The furnace at the house where they are renting has been broken, the landlord won't oir can't get it fixed, and four adults and two tiny children livwe there shivering, wearing snowsuits indoors. The mother, Rosie, is 25 years old but looks fifteen. She's tiny, wearing child-sized clothes and doesn't speak much English, but communicates what she needs with her smiling eyes. She told Emily, "Tell me when your sister is coming again and I will make her chicken mole."

The fat baby toddles around, falls down, laughs. The little girl sat on my lap, a warm weight, and flirted. Their daycare provider, who hardly earns any money herself, had taken it upon herself to help them out and came over to babysit so the parents could go out and look for housing. Another apartment had been found in town, and we all trooped over to see it. My sister translated for the landlord who was a bit dubious, but ultimately agreed. The family is ecstatic!

The kitchen of the new apartment slopes in one of those A-framed, gabled New England roof ways--too short for me, but just right for Rosie, who is only as big as a doll herself--a doll-house.

My nephew Noah, almost 13, can trap one of his farts in a glass, a dubious talent which I hope will stand him well in later life. He has shot up so tall since I last saw him six months ago. His hands and feet are mammoth. His voice has deepened to a baritone. It's all happeniong so fast--one minute he's a goofball child, the next a semi-responsible semi-adult who can intelligently discuss the candidates for the upcoming '08 election. Eli, age seven, has a loose tooth and lives to annoy his brother. And Lucy, little Lucy, is a goofy princess of pure light.

Oh my. Oh my oh my. Here I am in the home of my old friend Ruth and her girlfriend Mchelle; hushed snow, New England rocks, and bare trees. Ruth and I took a long walk through town, talking, talking. A chance for me to digest after the pressure cooker of Detroit, and all the learning that went on there.

Saturday's two shows went very well. Sunday afternoon matinee I snuck in the back incognito in sweats and a T-shirt and watched grown men wiping their eyes at the end of the play. They laughed and cried! The play works! It needs a new title and a little more polishing, but it does work. Sunday morning we stopped in at the JET offices and the director, Nick Callani, waved the newspaper at us. We got a great review! The reviewer loved the play, and she understood it. She got it. And there were THREE big photos of the actors! I hope that draws audience.

Sunday night Evelyn and I went to see The Rabbit Hole, the play that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. It was pitch perfect. Not one false note. The cast and production at the Meadowbrook Theatre were superb. The play is wrenching. It deals with the aftermath of a family's grief when a child is killed in an accident--but it is cleansing and achingly human. It deserved the Pulitzer.

Afterwards we went out to dinner with some of the actors and I heard how detailled the script was. Apparantly the writer punctuated the lines, not necessarily according to the rules of grammar, but exactly as he wanted them said. In revision, I would like to do that with Saying Kaddish, or whatever it will end up being called, so that nuances are clearly marked, and there is less room for misinterpretation. The script then becomes like a musical score. Suzan-Lori Parks writes like that.

Even though I am 95% happy with the direction of my show, there are a few key places where I wish I could change things. Evelyn had urged me to come out earlier, when they were still in rehearsal, but it felt too stressful snd expensive, making that many cross-country trips in the middle of winter. And truth to tell, I don't know if I could have articulated what was needed then. As Grace Paley said, "It takes a long time in me between knowing and telling." I had to see it several times, watch the audience, digest, and also talk with the dramaturg and other people to begin to arrive at directorial opinions.

Evelyn said to me quite fiercely that it's my play and I need to be as committed to it as a mother is to her child. And I am, I am. The problem is, I've just birthed two other play-babies in the last year or two and I've got another couple brewing in my belly. Kaddish is seven years old and yet still in diapers as this is its real premiere. And it still needs more tweaking and polishing --and a new title.

Anyway, it was three days full of swimming, theatre going, and a marathon of listening. My brain is tired from paying so much attention. C says this is an education I could never get in an MFA program and he's right. One thing I learned that I already knew was that I need to work on my energetic boundaries. Theatre is an intense little world--and of course Jews are an intense people--and put together the combination can be both stimulating and draining. The problem is that I am an incurable listener, always hoping I will hear that illuminating nugget. And often I do. It's just that I have to sit through a tsunami of stories to get there and that becomes exhausting.

Another thing I found out that it cost about $40,000 to mount my show and JET will be content to break even. (Maybe they will even make more--I hope they do.) For that reason, a title that can entice people away from Netflix and out into the cold to buy tickets that cost at least thirty dollars had better be catchy and attractive. So far I haven't been able to come up with one. Help!

The most precious thing I gained were new friendships--with the actors, director, artistic director, and JET's dramaturg, Kitty Dubin, whom I immediately felt as a kindred spirit. A fellow playwright, she understood exactly what I was going through--that it was not all fun and glamour, but work in progress, and she offered exactly the right words of empathy and affirmation, and most importantly the receptive listening that I needed.

It was like water in the desert to be truly deeply listened to--amazing how not very many moments of that sufficed to help put me right again. The other way I kept some clarity was by swimming as much as I could, in the beautiful Olympic sized JCC pool. Stroking through the water, I repeated the 23rd Psalm to myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," but what I needed in that moment was the prayer of St. Francis of Assizi, "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace...Grant that I may seek/not so much to be understood as to understand..."

In this way I tried to let go of any frustration I felt. I am overwhelmingly blessed to the point where I need help processing some of the blessings. God help me stay in pure gratitude and not descend into nit-picking because of the anxiety all this evokes. My ego feels like a raw red squalling baby. I don't know whether to feed it and comfort it or try and shoot it with a tranquilizer dart.

So many things have come up for me at once in the last few days--the themes of the play, loss, jealousy, family, regret, not-listening--and the Jewish theatre culture is not unlike the warm, conflicted, funny, sad, intensely irritating world I grew up in. I was back home all right! I'd stepped back into the culture that first nurtured me as a child, and was now nurturing me as a novice playwright. How fitting.

I've been frustrated at how hard it is to reach C. Dropped cell phone signals, busy schedules, and most of all the basic impossibility of translating all this into spoken words in a short coherent phone call. I remember when I was in Africa last summer; many of the people on our trip tried to call home. I didn't. That was a good choice. It's too hard to send a boatload of personal and ancestral grief mingled with hilarity through a skinny phone wire.

Right now I'm just so grateful to be in the quiet coziness of Ruth and Michelle's home, sipping tea and blogging while Michelle reads and Ruth prepares a course she is going to teach. In the silence I can hear myself think for the first time in days. I feel back home.

I'm in Detroit. It's eight degrees. But hey, and hoo hoo ha ha--there's central heating here! I'm wearing long underwear, gray wool lined slacks, a long-sleeved oatmeal sweater topped by a shiny blue shirt, and the high heels I picked up for $5.00 at Community Thrift in SF--and I'm not cold! Exhausted, yes--our day began at 4:30 a.m., driving to the airport in rain and darkness--but not cold.

The play went pretty well tonight. Some glitches--some actors missed lines, and there were places where the energy or the intensity wasn't there the way it should be--but other places where it was. Laughs in unexpected moments. Other moments--and those are the ones you dread--where laughs are expected but none forthcoming.

It's a difficult play. I was trying to do what Chekhov does so well--write lines that reveal the characters, without being only about what they seem to be about. Depth and shallowness co-existing at the same moment. Chekhov pulls it off nicely, but I'm no Chekhov.

They're also advertizing it as "an outrageous comedy" but the whole play deals with death and grief. Also: tons of quick transitions between heaven and earth, reality and super-reality, and flashbacks to different time periods all make big demands on the actors and tech people. I watch too many movies--it's a play that wants the freedom of cinema while still retaining all the word-privileges of the theatre.

The director did a great job with finding evocative music--the last song is stunning, and a complete surprise--and finding creative special effects. The set and costumes were all great--Oprah really shines. Still, there are awkwardnesses and imperfections for which I take responsibility. This was the play I cut my teeth on, the play where I began to learn how to write a play.

The Artistic Director and someone else told me it perhaps needs to be re-titled. At first I was very resistant to the idea--it's been Saying Kaddish with My Sister for the last seven years--but now I'm thinking they might be right. Saying Kaddish With My Sister sounds like something by a failed playwright in a Woody Allen movie. The trouble is, I'm not sure what else to call it.

I had a wonderful talk with the actor who plays Lydia, one of the sisters, about a scene where her character performs a comedy monologue/performance art piece. I have never quite been clear about what I'm trying to accomplish in that scene--how is it moving the play forward, what needs to happen there? Tonight I realized I want a revelation there, some new way of looking at life that's not just hammering on the same themes over and over. She mentioned Eve Ensler and The Vagina Monologues, and that gave me a fresh way to look at it.

I also got an email from The Sun saying they'd like more revisions on an essay they had accepted for the April issue. I agree completely--it's just going to be a challenge getting the time and privacy to write them here. I might be able to score two hours to myself tomorrow if I'm able to be both tactful and firm with setting boundaries--kind of tricky when I'm a guest in someone else's house. I feel ever-so-slightly panicked about whether I can pull it off. Maybe I could try to find an Internet cafe...

The fields and roads here are all dusted with snow. From the plane, Michigan looks like a big wedding cake, cut into different-shaped pieces. I ate good food from home, lovingly packed by C, and read The New Yorker, which has a fabulous short story by Louise Erdrich in it, and a great profile of a painter doing gorgeous semi-pornographic images. And the latest Sun, which had essays on parenting by Sparrow, Krista Bremer and Poe Ballantine which were variously funny (Sparrow), wise, sensuous (Krista) and all all unflinchingly honest.

I know on Krista's part at least, that it's a piece she had been thinking about for a couple of years. I could read in the beauty and care with which she explored the topic of circumcision, many hours of soul-searching and revision. Damn, it takes so long to make something really good and balanced and complete.

I think of those cathedral-builders who designed structures so elaborate and complex and divine that they took generations to build. The architects knew they would never live to see the finished product. They had to content themselves with their vision of the work--and with their faith, perhaps, in an afterlife, where they could see the perfect realization of their best dreams.

Today is my C's 52nd birthday; he has now reached full adulthood according to the Mayan calendar, (although he will always be my baby.) We had an early celebration yesterday--lots of presents, food, and Michael Clayton, a great movie starring George Clooney. Mmmm!

And today I found out that the long one-act hot tub play I wrote, which is now called A Couple of Savages Up to Their Eyeballs in Hot Water (but which my friend Rebecca thinks should be called Cannibals in Heat) is getting a staged reading from the Cold Cuts Series, held at the Algonquin Theater, 123 E 24th St. in Manhattan on February 11. Yes, in just three weeks or something. It's a theatre company that mostly does readings of new plays, but if someone falls in love with the play, there's a possibility for a production. So, good news.

I've got to get ready to go to Detroit tomorrow for the production of my play Saying Kaddish with My Sister. Going to Wilderness Exchange to buy warm things--gloves, hat, better long underwear. Did I mention that it's twelve degrees there? And that my plane leaves at 6 a.m.? And that C, in a fit of loverly madness, I mean devotion, said he would drive me to the Oakland Airport at 4:45 a.m. tomorrow morning? Think of us as you turn over in your nice warm beds.

I've also got to get lesson plans copied because I'll be East on an extended jaunt through Massachusetts and back to Detroit, arriving home Sunday afternoon Feb 3rd to teach at the Writing Salon that night. Oy! I'm going to need a couple of days at Harbin Hot Springs doing nothing but soaking my ass and taking yoga classes to recover from this trip.

How does it feel to be a star? Rebecca emailed facetiously. I wrote back: It does feel good, but I have to get up at the crack of dawn--before dawn even, and I'm still waiting for the big bucks to come rolling in.

I remember working on Saying Kaddish seven years ago and wanting it to be produced so badly, wanting it to live on outside of me, the way a mother wants a child to live, with every fiber of my being. But so much has happened since then; other productions, the relationship with C, Carla's illness...At the time I wanted that for Saying Kaddish, that was all I had to hang my hopes on--my work. Everything was hinging on that star. Now there's so much more life in my life that it puts things like productions in perspective.

Still: "Revel in this!" Carla instructed me, and she's right. I've got to enjoy it, because God knows there was a lot of hard work leading up to this, and there will be more hard work to come. And Rebecca wrote, "ROLL in it, lap it up, rub it in your hair and on your skin. Look in the mirror and repeat, 'I am one hell of a smart, sexy bitch!'

So now I'm going to take my smart sexy frozen-fingered bitch self off to the copy shop and the food store for plane snacks, and the warm clothing store...I'll blog again from Detroit.

Why is it so satisfying to destroy things?

Yesterday C and I worked for a couple of hours in the yard, pruning the fruit trees, cutting back the prickly stickly thorny undergrowth of rose bushes, lemon trees, climbing ivy, castor bean sapling, and various unidentified green beings who had Napoleanic complexes and were bent on taking over the yard as a precursor to the world.

We had bought implements at Home Despot: loppers and whackers and a long pole with a saw attachment that I was afraid to even touch. It was a beautiful day. We set to and immediately started arguing.

If our relationship were the TV sitcom The Odd Cuple, (which it kind of is,) I would be Oscar (Jack Klugman) and C would be Felix (Tony Randall.) C is a measure twice cut once type of worker, methodical, precise, thorough. I am more of a just wade in and start whacking kind of girl. So I waded in and started whacking at a leggy rose bush that was hopelessly codependently entwined with an ancient peach tree, half of whose limbs were dead or close to it.

Whack, whack, clip, clip. I started throwing long thorny stems around the yard.

"Wait!" C yelled.

He made me cut them into small pieces and put them in the green recycling bin. I did not like being "made" to do anything. The argument quickly escalated, and grew to include such phrases as "I got along FINE for 48 years, trimming my own backyard," (me), and "If you got along so well doing it your way, why is the yard so overgrown?" (him.) Both of us had sharp implements in our hands, and sharper ones in our mouths.

(Note to self: "Quit saying, "I got along just fine without you for forty-eight years." It does not advance the conversation in a positive direction.)

When we were able to cool down and talk, or as we say in the Bay Area, "process," we uncovered a few things: C has used to working collaboratively on construction sites, with other men using dangerous tools and heavy equipment. He is a licensed carpenter who's good with tools and equipment.

I prefer to run my own show. When I teach at Writing Salon, I'm in charge of the class; when I work as a poet in the schools, I collaborate with the other teacher, but for the hour of my lesson, I take the lead. When I write, of course I'm the only one responsible for the words on the page.

I like to imagine that I play well with others, but when I look at my work life I find that that happens best when it's on my terms. I've said that I want a collaboration, but the fact is collaboration is challenging for me.

I am used to being the sole owner of this house for the last seven years. It's been good for me, if stressful at times. When something breaks, I've figured out how to get it fixed: call a handyperson, or call a boyfriend. But the buck has stopped with me. I haven't been a perfect homeowner or a perfect landlady. But it's been good for me to have this material-world responsibility to grow with. And the house is still standing.

Now it's time to shift into a new way of being, one that will entail negotiation, compromise, and tons of this processing business that is so time-consuming. Oh man, what have I gotten myself into?

For his part, C was sad that he had gotten angry at me. I assured him that he needn't be: I've prayed for a relationship where the two participants could get angry. It's not that I enjoy being on either the giving or the receiving end of anger, but having lived through a marriage where the unspoken rules were that we would never come into conflict--and having suffered through the awful explosions that came at the end of nine years of that--I'm glad for the opportunity to practice pushing back at someone who has their own agenda. It's like a martial arts instructor: don't hurt me, but throw me your best shot. Help me learn how to stand my ground; help me learn where my ground is.

And: I know down to the bottom of my frost-bitten toes that this relationship is what I signed up for, what I want. Communication. Honest feelings. Sweat and scratches from the thorns. ("Roses have throns, and silver fountains mud." Shakespeare.) Integrity, independence, and respect.

We moved around to the front of the house, and by the time we were done with the front yard the green bin was overflowing and we had pretty well decimated most of the overgrown shrubbery. This being California, everything will grow back in two weeks.

It's much easier to prune, clip, and cut back than it is to plant and make. I remember putting my four kale plants and six broccoli starts in the garden space in the backyard: hard work, squatting, digging, grunting. When I stood up I felt dizzy. Couldn't wait to be done. But lopping things off, cutting away deadwood, doing demolition--bring it on. I love it. It's cleansing and a great relief.

(Is it easier to criticize than to create? To kill a person rather than to spend nine months carrying him,m a day pushing him out into the world, and years trying to teach him to be a mensch? Of course. That's why the world is the way it is.)

So now the front yard now looks like one of those news photos of trailer parks after a cyclone has ripped through. There's a huge pile of felled branches, topped off with a roll of abandoned chicken wire. This all goes nicely with the Collection of Dead Appliances along the side of the house--the dead microwave, the decaying plastic doll house, whom nobody has claimed responsibility for, and the abandoned cooler, which is probably harboring Ebola virus. Very picturesque.

After our foray into gardening and processing, we had fun kissing and making up, including a group shower during which I washed some of the sawdust and organic debris out of my hair. Then we went to see Rebecca Riots perform at Kehilla Synagogue. It was a special show for children and families; the kids and moms were up front, a very multi-cultural patchwork of them, since half of Kehilla has adopted children from various third world countries.

I had terrible baby lust, watching the little ones get up and dance, and especially when I ran into an old friend of mine who had been actively trying to become a mother for seven years. She had finally gotten her daughter--a one-year-old, from Guatemala, only a few months ago. I was so happy for her! I remember the long heartbreak of infertility and then her frustrations trying to adopt as a single (lesbian) mom. Finally, finally, she has her heart's desire, cradled in her arms, a gorgeous little girl whom I wanted to hold, but who is too attached to her mother (a good thing, a sign of health,) to go to a stranger. It lit up my world to see them.

Then I went off to teach at Writing salon again, another good group, I'm going to enjoy them. Today: rain, gloom, and a bunch of food shopping for C who has been fighting a sore throat all week. I made him chicken soup with lemon, dill, ginger, and a ton of garlic and onions; it turned out very well if I do say so myself. I remember making this soup for my friend Susan and her boyfriend Scott when Scott was run-down from chemotherapy.

"My soup can heal the dead, " I boasted, and we laughed. Enver had accompanied me up there, with a wig and lace-up boots and a mini-skirt--he dressed up in drag and lip-synched a great show for Scott, and we ate the soup and laughed. And now Scott is dead, but that was a good moment, for all of us.

Long exhilerating exhausting day teaching at the Writing Salon. I had thirteen great women in my daylong class, including a philosopher, a nurse, a couple of social worker-dancers, a theologian, some consultants, and some businesswomen. Thirteen spirited women; a coven. We covered a lot of ground. Everyone participated fully, heart, mind and soul. I gave all I had and received great gifts in return. Great energy.

Afterwards, I thought I'd have enough left to go out to a party in SF but I can't drag my weary (and flat, from sitting all day) ass over the bridge. I may have just enough left for a half hour on the treadmill and maybe fifteen minutes on the rowing machine, tops.

Thursday I took Carla into the city for accupuncture and we had another lovely deep talk. Bittersweet, the flavor of all experience now. She talks about that word, what it means to her, how it's the only way to name the taste of these days, and I look at her and am reminded of the bright orange berries that are made into wreaths called bittersweet, the same orange tone she has decorated her apartment in, color of the sun just before it sets, of leaves in autumn, of her hair which has no gray in it yet.

She challenges me more than I've ever been challenged before to open to all the love that's available here, now, this present moment. It's hard. I close off so subtly and instinctively, climb up into my head where it's safe, where I can deny the preciousness of experience. I spent a long time learning how to do this, practiced hiding from life by writing about it. A paradoxical way to hide, but it helped me survive what was too intense to be borne.

Yet now her honesty and vulnerability crack me open. What's hardest and most important is to take in how much I love, and how much I am loved. How difficult it is to look at that sun directly. It's like exposing raw scar tissue to oxygen and sunlight.

If it's so hard for me to do that with a healthy body and all the distraction it provides, how much harder it must be for her to receive the vast outpouring of love that buckets over her daily and weekly. She and I have both been better at giving than receiving--it's easier to do, keep busy, write a check, volunteer to drive, than it is to just sit and open one's heart. Yet how unutterably precious the service that the open-hearted one provides just by being and saying, implicitly, "Come on in, the water's fine, it's safe to open now."

In fact, it's imperative to open now.

I bought the book, A Year to live by Stephen Levine and have read the first chapter. It's what he talks about, soft eyes, soft belly, soft heart. Allowing ourselves to soften.

I'm sitting here typing in my little study with lists hung on the walls: lists of writing projects I want to get to, plays, essays, book projects. Lists of goals I hope to achieve, 2007, 2008. Yet none of those goals are as important as the task of allowing my heart to open, and without an open heart all the accomplishments I may accrue this year or next are meaningless. Without an open heart my partnership with C becomes just another item on my life list, and each achievement becomes just another addictive notch on my ego's belt.

I don't want that. In so many ways, I have enough, right now. I have a good lover, after all those years of pining and searching. My dad is in good health, my siblings and nieces and nephews are all doing well, I have wonderful friends, writing is fine. Children are all that's missing, and that's a big thing. Ellen and I were walking around the barren rose garden--not barren, but dormant, and beautiful in a different way than when it is in full flower--and musing about parenthood. The parents we know all say that their children are the most important things they've ever done in their lives.

"Maybe it's the experience of total commitment, "Ellen said, and I'm sure it is, but it also goes beyond that--the kids themselves, the people they become. if you're lucky.

What I pray for now is the courage to open and receive and appreciate this life, even as it flows past me, burning with bittersweet brightness and deep tears.

Beautiful sunny day. The cold is breaking. We finally got wise and pulled out the space heater and down comforter. I know it will be spring by next month. The first hints of what will become buds are already showing.

The tree man came over this morning. A weathered guy, plain as a gray stick, whose face broke into light as he began telling me how to prune. "The tree will teach you what you need to do. The branches should go up and out, like this." His arms reached wide like a dancer. "No downward dogs."

He can't help himself and grabs the lopper from me, even though this was only supposed to be a consult, and starts nipping and trimming himself. "Isn't this fun!" he exclaims, in total sincerity. A man who loves his work. "Oh, what a wonderful yard. You have room for a small orchard back here." We have a peach tree and a persimmon tree and a tiny garden in the back, with my four kale plants and the two broccolis that survived and are thriving.

"I was thinking of maybe a poemgranate or an avocado tree," I offer.

"Or an apple?" he suggests. He trims the peach tree along the side of the house to show me how it's done. A small branch nicks him on the chin as it falls and he swipes away blood.

"Oops, the tree is getting back at me."

I have to teach writing all day Saturday. Good for me--haven't been working much at all this past month or so, except for finishing the draft of the play about poetry and getting a few essays and some poems out. It will be good to be earning money again.

I also got a call from the Jewish Ensemble Theatre in Michigan about my play. Everything seems to be going okay--I'll be there in a week, if they get the plane tickets straightened out. This is what I wanted--to be a playwright. And it comes down to missing plane tickets and long underwear. (No it doesn-t--it comes down to crucial conversations.)

I read Carla's blog (www.carlamuses.blogspot.com) and am reminded how all this can shift in a moment. None of this is my true identity, teaching, or even writing. None of us even knows what our true identity is.

So I finished the revision of the play, God help me. The deadline was today and I finished at about 2 p.m., and ran down to the copy shop and got it copied onto three-hole punch paper, and bound it, and included a bio and a check and a cover sheet, and addressed it, and sent it off--and was assured by the postal clerk that the pastage stamp would indeed be marked January 15, which is when it had to be posted by--only to get home and realize that they also wanted me to include a synopsis (almost wrote biopsy) and a list of characters.

Fuck!

1) I hate hate hate writing synopses. Plot is my worst thing, how can I synopsize my play?

2) I forgot to include it in my packet, will they penalize me? (This is the Ashland new plays reading series.)

So I'm writing a synopsis now, and I'll email it to them and hope and pray that the contest gods will be lenient and kind and they'll allow it. After all, there is 78 pages of playscript in the package. Surely that ought to count for something.

My fingers are blocks of ice. I feel like I've done nothing for the past week but sit and type, worry about the play, procrastinate in various creative ways, and type some more. I am so relieved to have it done. And proud of myself for having actually finished. Even if it's not perfect, it's better than the first draft was. I emailed a copy to my friend Suzanne, of Mirror Stage Company, and I can't wait to hear what she thinks. Even if Ashland doesn't take it, she might. Or at least she might have an idea of what to do with it next.

Last night G, Ellen and Beth came over for a rush dinner, then all five of us drove in C's car to Berkeley to see Carla perform at the Hillside Club. I had been wanting my friends to experience Carla in performance for a long time, but with Bay Area-itis, and everyone always having ten other commitments, it had been hard to get them together to go to something. Now, however, Carla's illness gave a focus and an urgency that got them there--and they were all glad they came.

It was not a pity party. It was a show. It was Carla at her most vibrant, powerful, and human. From the moment she stepped on the stage, she owned it. She was sassy, funny, graceful, soulful, and totally in charge. All the angst of the past few months only served to deepen her performance. Throughtout the show she held the audience, most of them friends and friends of friends, in the palm of her hand, even cracking jokes about her ALS:

"I just got diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, which really sucks because I hate baseball. Why couldn't I get some cool basketball player's disease--like Wilt Chamberlain Syndrome--have sex with 20,000 people and then die? Although I think I'd start to chafe after 5,000 or so."

Then she'd sing some jazz standard about how quickly time goes by and how we never quite grasp the great times while they're here (sorry, I can't remember the title of that one,) and everything was infused with new layers of meaning. She looked hot too, in a semi see-through blouse and camisole and skirt, with cute little round-toed pumps.

It wasn't until her last number, "Wonderful World," that the tears started to really flow for me. Uncontrollable. That song is like Gospel for Carla (and for me,) and she sang it as a love song, which is what it is. A love song to the world. My friend Bethie, who cries more easily than me, had been crying all through the performance, but it took that song to find the chink in my Prozac armor. (It's not just Prozac that makes me a tough crier, it's a long-time habit of denial in the face of deep water. But then I always end up in the swim anyway.)

She was precious up there, strong and vulnerable, and totally real. She held the audience--not just with her exquisite singing, but also with the emotional tightrope she was walking, between intense enjoyment of the moment and unbearably poignant awareness of how fleeting it all is. I especially love the two duets she did--an Appalachian tune, very mournful, with just Mike accompanying her on sax, and a beautiful soft number with the piano player (sorry, I can't remember names.)

C noticed me crying on Wonderful World and reached over and held my hand. I was proud of my two dudes, C and G, sitting next to each other. They're buddies. It's so sweet. And my grrlz. And other friends who heard about the concert on this blog and drove long miles to see and hear Carla. Her blog by the way is www.carlamuses.blogspot.com, and I'd put it up on the links section of this blog, except I that I am too technically incompetent to figure out how that works (C tried and he can't figure it out either.)

And now it is today--C's out with David, climbing around on a roof in San Francisco somewhere (yeesh!) and I have to go to Writing Salon and get new keys, and go to the grocery store and pick up food for two different potluck dinners, and try to get more done on the play.

My four-year-old niece called me just now from the barbershop where her big brother was getting a haircut. At first there’s just heavy breathing on the phone. Then her husky little voice, saying “Aunt Alison.” She’s going to be four tomorrow. I’m giving her a copy of Koko’s Kitten, a book about a chimp who adopted a kitten. My sister says she’s been asking a lot of questions about death lately, maybe it’s some developmental thing—my other niece, the same age, different family, seems to be going through it as well.

“I know you have a special birthday tomorrow,” I told Lucy.

“I’m going to be four!” she reported proudly. “How old are you?”

“Uh…forty-nine.” A pause while she tried to make sense of this astronomically high number. “That’s pretty old, huh?” I added helpfully.

“That means you’re probably going to die soon,” she responded. I laughed. But it gave me pause. In many African countries, life expectancy is less than forty. Approaching menopause, I’m also approaching borrowed time, bonus time, time my ancestors probably didn't have. My ex-husband died at age forty-five. My good friend just received a terrible diagnosis. Nothing is promised or guaranteed.

The other day a friend who is also a good friend of Carla's said that she was “angry at a God she didn’t even believe in.”

I’m not.

I believe in God, but I don’t believe God is a person-like entity who gives people ALS or cancer. I think God is a vast creative energy that our puny human consciousnesses cannot even begin to comprehend. I believe we are all molecules in the body of God.

There’s a guy in Brazil, I think people call him St. John. One of my writing students told me about him. People come from all over the world to get healings for incurable conditions from him. There are surgeons in the Philippines who operate without using knives, anesthesia or blood. They put their hands into the ailing human body and come up with the tumor and throw it away.

Maybe the God I believe in is Physics and Chemistry, but not just the Physics and Chemistry that have been "discovered" by humans so far. I mean, all the Physics in the Universe, the dimensions we haven't mapped yet, the subtleties scientists are just now uncovering or will uncover in a hundred years if we don't burn ourselves up first.

Like Chekhov I believe, I hope, people of the future may be smarter than we are now. they may figure out some of the things we do not as yet know.

I believe in people like St. John, and other healers, even though I don't know how they do what they do--I don't know how an X-ray works either, or aspirin, or electricity, or this computer I'm typing on. It's just another type of technology. If there can be lasers and ultrasounds, if we know that matter is not solid, but that we are indeed a roiling mass of moving molecules, if we know now that everything in the Universe is connected, then why not people who can work with energy flows, who can reverse even grim diseases like ALS, who can perform miracles? Why not?

I would like to be the kind of woman who loves rainy days, who skips through puddles and embraces the wind and the storms, exclaiming "Isn't it wonderful!" as freezing water trickles down the back of her neck.

Unfortunately I am more the kind of woman who cringes and winces and huddles and shivers, as I am now, up in her freezing cold room, because this house is an uninsulated barn, and my PG&E bill was $500.00 last month. And I know I know, it's seventeen degrees in Massachusetts or something and even C has taken to teasing me about my thin-blooded California wussiness, but okay, I'm a thin-blooded California wuss. With the metabolism of an elderly lizard.

Right now I'm wearing long undies underneath my sweat pants, and a t-shirt and a sweat-shirt (I know, this is almost too sexy to bear) and my hands are like blocks of ice as I type. I'm going to the gym to sit in the hot tub and after that I'll bring the computer to a coffee shop and work--any old coffee shop, just so someone else pays for the heat.

I'm going great guns on the Greeny Flower play, which is now tentatively named Eva Pearl. No word on See How We Almost Fly yet. It's out at at least a dozen other contests, so if this one doesn't come through, there's still a chance something else might.

C is back at work, where new kids with new problems have shown up at Juvenile Hall. Haven't seen Carla for a few days but my thoughts are with her constantly.

We are cocooning and being disgustingly domestic and relaxed and happy, in our sweat pants and wool socks, eating meatloaf for breakfast, tapping away at our laptops, or painting, or playing music, or watching movies. I feel like I could be snowed in like this with C for months and not get bored. I’d emerge on the other end, pale and flabby with a full-length play and a bunch of paintings; meanwhile, he’d have built a whole addition to the house which would be turned into a sound studio/performance space, and fitted it out with equipment he ordered on-line.

It’s gray and wet and nasty outside—high winds closed several bridges, and there’s even been thunder and lightning plus torrents of rain. Inside we’ve been playing Bobby McFerrin and Eva Cassidy and Tuck & Patti and Eliza Gilkyson and C has been accompanying the CDs with guitar or piano and I’ve been singing along.

Right now he’s hacking away on the computer trying to help me apply for an NEA grant—the deadline’s not till March, but it’s good to start these things early. The web site is impenetrably lousy—it’s like a nightmare labyrinth which you enter as a little mouse, wanting the cheese that is the cash grant at the center. You end up chasing your own tail, scurrying through the virtual corridors for hours and not getting anywhere. I wonder if this is the government’s way of eliminating people. I know the grants are very competitive and I am not going to count on winning one, but, as G would say, it wouldn’t suck. I’d especially love it if See How We Almost Fly got taken, and then I could focus on writing a bunch of new odes to flesh out Sustain.

The Marie Antoinette play is inching forward and then I start revising the old play about the grocery store…

At breakfast, we talked about master’s degrees. I don’t have any—I’ve been a B.A. backdoor kind of girl all my working life--but I think about getting two; one in human development/psychology/criminology, and another one in scriptwriting. I don’t know that one learns scriptwriting in an academic setting, though. It seems more something you learn by just writing them, and maybe workshops and private classes and tutorials. As a professor’s daughter, the urge to get more letters after my name was imprinted early, but I’ve resisted it all my life because academia feels too cut off from regular life, and I know I learn best by the seat of my own pants. Still, I wonder if it would open doors…

We finally watched Volver last night—good movie! (Though I still like All About My Mother best.) Penelope Cruz is such a dish, absolutely ravishing, funny, sexy, and down-to-earth. Now I want to rent The Wire because Tony Kushner raved about it in an advertisement in The New Yorker.

I had a nice long talk with my darling Carla today—what’s great is that our conversation ranges from the deep and emotional—what do you want to do before you die? How do we shut down or open up in the face of deep feeling? –to the raucously funny, to the topical—How about that Iowa caucus? This whole journey with her and ALS is—or can be—an amazing lesson about feeling deeply and letting go. Moments of fear or grief (or in my case, numbness and denial) come up, but so do moments of tenderness, and often, Carla being Carla, deep humor.

Meanwhile I notice how when other people cry I shut down. Other people at the meeting cried—even the men cried—but I didn’t. Instead I went home and wept on C’s shoulder. Which caused him to start weeping in empathy—he cries more easily than I do—and then we both laughed because we were wiping our noses on each other’s shirts.

Two last words: pomegranate wine. From Armenia. Delicious.

A well-organized group of women and men motivated by love is a magnificent thing to behold, scary in its primal ferocity and devotion. Granted, we should live in a country where if someone gets a serious illness they do not have to worry about disability insurance, medical expenses, the expenses of orthotics, or having to work when they are sick to maintain their benefits. We should live in a sane society where people can live and die secure in the knowledge that their basic needs will be met whether they can work at regular jobs or not.

But since we don't, as yet, live in such a country, thank God for love, which pulls gifts of service and devotion out of us which we didn't know we had.

Last night I sat in the circle, humbled by the skills and willingness of the mostly women and a few men around me, Carla's support group. People had thought of everything, from getting her a health advocate to funding a trip to Mexico so she can boogie board with her son while she's able. Carla and her 15-year-old son had made individualized T-shirts for everyone in the "Driving Miss Crazy" support group with our face silkscreened next to Carla's. Mine is bright burgundy, my favorite color, and sexy and low-cut the way I like. Every other person's was an appropriate cut and color for them. Carla also had a T-shirt made for her ex which reads, "My estranged wife got ALS and all I got was this fucking T-shirt," which perfectly captured one amng many of the supreme ironies of the situation.

Laughter and tears. There's been a lot of both. Right now it's storming outside and I'm so grateful C doesn't have to go to work, but can stay in and annoy me by reminding me to clean up the dresser top on my side of the bed, repository for old coffee cups, glasses of water, half-empty bottles of medication, and assorted earrings, pennies, and stray buttons.

I am caught between the mundanities of life--extra cups of coffee, cleaning the room, trying to finish the plays and the essay I started, and the hugeness of this thing I cannot put my arms around.

Gray day outside, and C is off to Juvenile Hall to visit some of his kids. We went to the deYoung Museum yesterday in Golden Gate Park to see the Louise Nevelson exhibit. Austere assemblages, painted mostly all black or all white. I was struck by a huge wedding display she did at age sixty. In the program notes she said it did not relate to her own failed marriage of thirty years before, but "a wedding with the world." I think that's what all poets and artists strive to achieve, a wedding with the world, but it's not always easy. The world frequently leaves the toilet seat up and socks on the floor. The world is demanding and capricious. Nevertheless.

Came home and I got out the paints C had given me for Chanukah and painted some feet floating in the air with vines coming off them. I was thinking of Carla's precious feet, how they are weighted down by this ALS thing, and the feet of those who fly in dreams but are connected to earth by green tendrils.

We've been watching movies lately: Breach, with Chris Cooper and Ryan Philippe, very good, Hollywoodland last night with Ben Affleck and Adrian Brody, less good, but God, I love Adrian Brody's face! It's so rare that you see a real Jewish face in Hollywood, with a nose that long, and eyes that sensitive and intelligent! I was tranfixed by his face, but the movie was annoyingly opaque; we kept having to pause it and ask each other, "Did you understand what he said?" "No, I didn't either, but I'm sure it will all be explained in the Special Features." God bless Special Features; that's why I love DVDs.

I found out that See How We Almost Fly is a finalist in one of the contests I sent it to back in September. It's been a finalist several times now, which means I am definitely getting warmer. If it wins, I'll have to withdraw Sustain from the contests I entered it in as there is so much overlap between them. I am inching forward on the Marie Antoinette play and the gym essay. Speaking of which, it's time to go swim.

Carla sent out an email titled "life goes on" which said she is performing January 11 at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. in Berkeley. I urge everyone reading this, if you are within shouting distance of the Bay Area, please come. She has a delicious, sexy, clean, flexible alto voice that she can do pretty much anything with, and she sings with complete soul and committment. Now more than ever.

I made black-eyed peas for good luck this new year. It's a recipe I got from my friend Rebecca Chekouras, which I shamelessly adulterated over her strict injunctions to keep the Southern tradition from whence it sprang pure and simple. My apologies, but I think my additions taste good.

The recipe: soak a bunch of black-eyed peas overnight. Rinse. Put in a big pot with water to cover. Fry up a mess of bacon. Drain. Throw into the pot with the simmering peas and a couple of bay leaves. Crushed farlic and minced chive, salt and pepper. That is Rebecca's recipe. She would say: Serve it with hot sauce over white rice. I cooked it that way last year and it was good.

This year I added four tomatoes, a handfull of kale from the garden
(cut up,) a green Bell pepper and a red pepper, thinly sliced. G came over and ate a bowl and pronounced it very good. C ate two bowls, which is eloquent testimony. David and Libby had some, and if truth be told I had two bowls myself, and we're almost done with a huge pot I thought we'd be stuck with for weeks. I like having a big pot of something so we can just dish ourselves up some food whenever we feel hungry. I just don't know how to cook for less than six people--occupational hazard of growing up in a large family.

I read on-line that it is considered good luck if the first person to cross your threshold in the new year is a dark-haired man. It didn't say a big black bald man, but if G had any hair, it would be dark, so I'm going to call it a good luck year.

C's in his study, wrestling with composing music to go with a lyric I wrote him for Chanukah. I'm flipping back and forth between the Marie Antoinette play and the essay about the gym. I played tennis for an hour or two with G. We were both missing a lot--slow reflexes, plus wind, plus my hair kept falling in my eyes and I forgot my sunglasses. Towards the end we improved to the point of near-mediocrity, then his knee started hurting and we packed it in.

In 2008, I want a cure for ALS and an agent.

Do I appreciate the long hike C and I took today just a little bit more, given all that has happened? Do I savor stepping on soft pine needles in the bright cold, the sight of a majestic silvery white horse named Mister, the sparkling view of the bay, the cathedral of bay laurels, bending over their trunks to create a sacred dappled archway for us to walk under?

We walked and walked and walked, and on the way back took a wrong turn which put another mile and a half on our trek. By the time we got back to our car we had been walking at least two hours. Tired and satisfied, we drove to the Vietnamese restaurant right near our house and stuffed ourselves with spicy hot and sour soup and beef with fat noodles and broccoli and gravy. Went to the grocery store after that and bought chicken to roast, and bacon and black-eyed peas and bell peppers, tomatoes, and green beans for tomorrow's New Year's feast. We'll have home-picked kale as well.

I don't believe much in New Year's resolutions--hell, I make resolutions all the time, to do it on New Year's seems kind of a set-up--but I thought I'd include a list of books and plays I am wanting to read in the coming year.

The Known World by Edward Jones
A History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham
Foreskin's Lament by Shaom Auslander
Unbound by Wangari Maathi
Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene
The Birthday Party and The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (plays)
The last Harry Potter book (as soon as I find a 12-year-old I can wrest it away from)
The new translation of War and Peace by Tolstoy (when it comes out in paperback)
Autobiography of Red and The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson (poetry)

I did read Tuesdays with Morrie while sitting in Border's Books yesterday--it was surprisingly much better than I thought it would be (I thought it would be treacly and terrible.) But the main message of the book seemed to be love, love, love--which is the same conclusion I see Carla arriving at, and the one I myself most resonate with. All the dogma, religious traditions, even meditation and spiritual practice--aren't worth a plugged nickel, unless they are backed up by, stuffed with, grounded and rooted in love.

I won't say that the dizziness is grief because it is probably some inner ear thing, or a perimenopausal symptom, or not enough electrolytes or a potassium imbalance, but I can say that Carla's news about her health has knocked me sideways. Today we were walking, she picking her feet up carefully and placing them with an effort, me weaving around the sidewalk like a drunk in the bright cold end-of-the-year sunlight. What a pair, ALS girl and her sidekick, Dizzy Luterman.

There's laughter and tears. There's grief, humor, gratitude, gossip, fatigue, and love. There's tea and chocolate. And music. Thank God there's music. Carla turned me on to a singer named Eva Cassidy, whom I'd never heard of, but after hearing her sing "Wonderful World" on Carla's computer, I went out and bought one of her CD's. Absolutely exquisite, soaring, tender, pure voice. And dead now, gone quickly and too soon.

Right now I feel like all seven of Snow White's menopausal dwarfs: Itchy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Weepy, Dizzy, and Spacey. Oh, and Dopey.

As a psychologist would say, this brings stuff up. Carla so strong and so vulnerable right now. My sister, three thousand miles away. The short days and long cold nights. I can hear C drilling with his power tools in the next room; he has built himself a desk out of a piece of plywood he attached to the closet wall. I envy him being able to make things with his hands, practical things; nails and hammer, and saw and drill. I'd love to do some of that, but in my present condition it would be dangerous.

The past two days have been overshadowed by my friend's news: she has been diagnosed with ALS. While still holding out hope for a misdiagnosis, a remission, a miracle--we'll take it in any form, we are not picky--it has been a time of sitting stunned and teary, trying to digest the undigestable.

I can't believe my friend's courage, grace and humor in the face of this. "I'm still going to put on sunscreen," she reports. "And I'm still ex-foliating and waxing, in case I ever get to have sex again, which I hope I do."

"I hope you do too, honey, and I'll do anything in my power to help make that happen," I respond tenderly and then we both laugh very loudly, very fully, from our guts.

Damn! There's nobody like her, nobody whose company I so fully enjoy, no one else who both inspires me and makes me snort my coffee--at the same time--the way she does.

Quiet un-Christmassy Christmas, which suits me fine. We walked around the lake, about three and a half miles. Bright and sunny, the ducks shaking their dazzling tails and diving deep into murky water. Lots of other people were out also, only one couple with Santa Claus hats. We passed a couple of people who were alone and looked sad; a young woman, in heels and a nice skirt, who averted her gaze as we passed. The holidays can be so tough. I remember in previous years, when I was single, this whole stretch of time from November through Valentine's Day seemed like a gigantic plot to torment me with loneliness.

We talked about creative confidence. What gives a person the courage to create art even in the face of the world's indifference? How to deal with the fear of humiliation? Although I strive to create as safe and gentle an atmosphere as possible, every semster I have students who shake or cry when they read their work out loud, every semester there are students who drop the class, even though they paid good money to join it, and every semester there are students who jump through hoops of fire to get to their dream, whose emotional breakthroughs rival their creative achievements as they finally allow themselves to be writers. But it's not easy.

I don't know exactly why my neuroses don't land in this particular area. I'm as neurotic as the next girl in most ways. And I feel frustrated just like anyone whjen my work is rejected. I just don't, for whatever reason, interpret those rejections as a sign from God to stop. Maybe I'm just slow to get the message or something,(she says, having received yet another rejection for See How We Almost Fly in the mail this morning.)

For whatever weird combination of reasons, flourodated water, a grandmother who thought I was a genius, a hard-headed mother, sheer stubbornness is my claim to fame. Every semester at Writing Salon I encounter brilliant, deep, insightful students. The only thing that qualifies me to sit in the teacher's seat is that I've spent a few hundred thousand hours just doing the work, and that's something no degree can confer on you and no one can take away from you.

After our walk, C went off to hang with a friend, and G came over and we threw a basketball around as he had forgotten the tennis rackets. Came back and had a beer and watched Merci Pour le Chocolat, an incomprehensible French thriller starring Isabelle Huppert, which I bought because it was on sale for four dollars and I'm a sucker for anything French. G fell asleep about ten minutes in. C came home and chided him, "Don't let her force you to sit through that. You got to stand up for yourself!" (Here, I am compelled to admit that C has happily accompanied me or initiated many seriously offbeat cultural adventures, including one-woman shows, song cycles, and dragapella shows with dreaded Audience Participation, but for some mysterious reason he is resisting the latest Pedro Almodovar.)

Today is a day of waiting for my girlfriend's medical test results. Rejection slips pale in the face of this. It really doesn't matter if See How We Almost Fly gets published this year or next or not at all. Not compared to this.

Monster was just as amazing as I remembered. Theron's courage lies in showing the monster that resides in all of us, the monster that just needs love, like in Beauty and the Beast. In the fairy tale, the monster receives the love he so desperately needs and is transformed; in real life, the movie says, that doesn't happen. The monster goes beserk from lack of love, from abuse, and is destroyed.

Theron's blonde hair, made to look thin and blow-dried in bar bathrooms, even gives her a bit the look of a lion, a lion in captivity, a tortured deformed lion. The eagerness shining out from her damaged face is almost unbearable.

After the feature we watched the interview with the director Patty Jenkins and were both astonished at how young she is, and how confident and powerful. Then, dweeb that I am, I went on line to learn about the real Aileen Wuornos and discovered how many people were upset that the film depicted most of her victims as johns. Especially the families of the dead men.

I could easily put myself in their shoes as well; imagine if one of my brothers had stopped late at night to pick up a lone female hitchhiker because he felt sorry for her, or concerned for her safety. Imagine that she killed him and that then a movie was made of her life in which his motives were called into question and his life negated, while hers was portrayed with compassion.

But no two-hour movie is large enough to tell everyone's story in full...

These questions are especially poignant for me now as I wrestle with the ending of the Alan essay. Of course there is no ending in life, but essays, plays, poems and novels need to have endings. My sister and my father were both very excited about what the draft that they read, as much for personal reasons as for literary ones. They knew Alan, his generosity and his eccentricities and his difficult parts. Emily said what I had done was balanced and she appreciated what a tightrope it was. Actually, what she said was,"How did you do that?" Then she said she didn't know whether it was right to publish it. I don't know either. Of course I would change the names, but what about Alan's widow and their daughter, what about his mother and brothers? What about him, who can no longer speak for himself?

I keep coming back to: my job is to write about life, in all its weird and wonderful permutations, with as much honesty and compassion--and hopefully, beauty--as I can. Back to that one again. I repeat it like a mantra. It's my only justification, if you can even call it that. Because, as Lucille Clifton says in one of my favorite poems, I am Adam and his mother and these failures are my job.

As I type this, C is downstairs, playing his heart out on the grand piano. We have the house to ourselves--wonderful luxury!! I am so glad he is playing. I need to get up and walk. Dizziness persists, despite me drinking as much water as I can stand. A friend emailed me and said she had experienced the same thing, as a result of a virus, and her husband also. I hope this passes quickly, this black spinning; it's not fun.

So tired my head is falling down into the keyboard. We went to Herbst Theatre last night to see the Kinsey Sicks perform Oy Vey in a Manger, an anti-Christmas show by a dragapella quartet. Gorgeous drag queens, horrible puns, amazing barbershop harmonies. I've known Irwin Keller, one of the founders, for years, and they just keep getting better.

Today C and I went out to Hayward to visit one of his former students who has graduated from Juvenile Hall to a group home. This was a day when he got to be home for a visit with his family, so we went to the family's home. C brought him strings for his bass guitar, and we brought chocolates and pastries for the family. C gave him a bass lesson, while I played tic tac toe with his mother and sister.


Their home was simple, with framed photographs of relatives everywhere. Both mother and father grew up on ranches in Mexico. The little sister is beautiful and completely besotted with horses. While C gave her brother his music lesson, she told me about every horse her family had ever owned. The mother looks to be no older than her late thirties, although she has some adult children in Mexico. She served us chicken and frijoles and soft tacos and that salty Mexican cheese, so dry it squeaks between the teeth. I asked her what she was doing for Christmas and she responded entirely in terms of food; her boy wants tamales and her girl wants posole so she's going to make both.


Afterwards C and I hiked for hours up in Redwood Park. My muscles are strong and I have no trouble going up hills, but I've been having dizzy spells lately, when I lie down in bed, and when I get up. Everything spins and I feel like I'm going to black out. I think it's just low blood pressure--too little water in my veins, so I'm trying to drink more water and eat salt whenever I can remember to.

After our hike we were exhausted and stood around dumbly in the video store trying to find a movie we could agree on. I adore C in every way that it's possible to adore a man, but he wants to see films with things that blow up (he says) and this completely goes against all the finer points of his otherwise sterling personality. I started pulling films from shelves and he started rejecting them; this one is too heavy(okay, so it was about Nazis,) this one has subtitles which are too much work, this looks like a chick flick (guilty as charged.) Why is it that there are hundreds of wonderful movies which I have not yet seen, and they all vanish from mind and view the minute we cross the threshold of Hollywood Video?

"What if it's the last night of my life and I'm watching something crappy?" C asks. I am so tired that I can't figure out if this is a reasonable thing to say or not. We compromise on Monster. Monster is a great movie--I've seen it before--Charlize Theron's performance is one continuous revelation of empathy, compassion, courage, and at-the-edge reckless artistry I've ever seen on screen, and I'm looking forward to the special features where they interview the director.