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The Play’s the Thing

23 Jul

About three months ago I was asked to write a play. I have never written a play. I had no intention of saying yes.

“I’ve never written a play.”

“Oh, you can do it. I’m sure. You’re a writer.”

“I don’t know how.”

“I’ll send you some web pages.”

“I don’t have time to read them.”

“You have three weeks.”

“To read the sites?

“To get us the play. I need the cast list by auditions in a week. The finished play can take three.”

“I have finals to write and year-end grades.”

“Then I’d better get you the books this week.”

“Did you hear what I said? I don’t think you did. I’m sure of it.”

“There are three of them. I’ll being them Tuesday.”

Talking with Evanne can be like this. Often is. My defenses don’t seem to have much of an effect.

Which is how I found myself with a set of books, stories to adapt and writing a play.

I brought my laptop to work. My lesson plans adapted. My students became test-readers and part of an actual, live language arts project. They proofread, corrected, commented. It was done. I have never written so quickly, so fully engrossed in a project.

I took several stories of the Arabian Nights and adapted them to fit into a version of the Scheherazade story. To do so I needed to create segues as well, narration, ways in and out of the stories told by the queen looking to save her head with the stories that came out of them.

I wanted them funny. I wanted them beautiful and simple. I wanted some nearly silent and others a delight of language and a joy of sight. I wanted elegance and comedy, sweetness and wisdom. I thought I got it.

But how would I know for sure?

They loved it. Some of my stage direction had to be adapted for a children’s theater. Ages four to seventeen. That young, eh?

Some of my stage direction “was too beautiful to cut so we had to make it into dialogue. It reminds me of Tennessee Williams” This is one of the best compliments I have ever received.

An old woman once called me a mensch. As compliments go, it’s hard to get better than that.

And the Theater was much large than I had anticipated. That is I thought it was one of the small summer productions. No, it was in the main theater of The Henegar Center. Another surprise.

I stayed away from casting and rehearsal. I didn’t want to interfere. Once written, what right did I have to tell them what to do? I don’t know their theater, their audience, their business. Two months had passed.

Then I was asked to be a stage manager. Me? You’d make a good one, I was told. Something else I had never done. But why not? It was a summer of firsts. My first CD, my first movie (a short, student film) my first DVD, my first stint running, MCing an open-mic poetry. Why not be a stage manager?

I arrive the day before the play opens. “Scheherazade and the Tales of the Arabian Nights.” I am stage manager, dresser, prop-meister for stage left. I am seeing what I have done come to fruition, come alive in front of me, under the lights, on the stage. This is a shamanic dream during waking.

The children slowly come to realize I wrote much of their play. I have not said anything. They have question after question. How did I think of that? It came from my head. How does that happen? I don’t know.

This is so funny, the oldest actor, seventeen, tells me. The little kids love it but there is so much here my I think is funny too. Where did you learn to do that?

Underdog, I answer. And Fractured Fairy Tales. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Mel Brooks.

Opening day. The theater is sold out. Five hundred seats. I arrive at 8:15. House opens at 9:30. Places at 9:55. Costumes on, last minute glitches, costume malfunctions, pins, props, positions everyone.

The music starts and the lights dim. I can hear the audience laughing, sighing. It works. Kids want to be the hero of one of my segments, a donkey named Chaki. They laugh. People lean forward when the Nightingale sings and dies, rises again and is free, react in surprise when Amira rejects her suitors, discovers her garden again has bloomed in her new desert home. They applaud and applaud.

I had said no. I would not write this. I’m glad I was not listened to. Sometimes it is for the best.

The last show, a full balcony, no where to stand. The end comes and costumes are put away, carried to storage. Props are carried upstairs, downstairs. There is a pervasive sadness about the cast, crew. I feel it over me.

The cast party starts.

I hear there is talk about me. A certificate of thanks of some sort. I look outside the theater doors to the banquet-room across the hall and it is crowded. I walk out, walk toward the crowd.

There is a line for food. It is the first thing I see and I know better. There will be nothing there I can eat, nothing that will be good for me. Day one of the play, between performances, thee was pizza supplied for the cast and crew and I left for food elsewhere, brought it back because I was afraid if I didn’t, people would think I was anti-social instead of just asocial. I sat alone, not wanting to impose myself on anyone. Evanne sees me alone, set apart, and comes over to sit with me. I think she understands but feel I have, by sitting alone, put her in a position where she did not want me to be unhappy. While I was happy for Evanne’s company, I did not want to think her compassion for me took her away from talking with others, visiting, enjoying her lunch.

The next days I brought lunch, took a walk, ate alone and did not impose.

Now, the cast party and what to do. I walk away from the food as I see people with plates of cookies, brownies, worse. I walk to the other end of the room.

I can sit by myself or find someone I know and cling, or feel I am, and then go home and wonder if I had behaved improperly, was a pain. Did they really want to talk. Were they being merely polite. It doesn’t seem worth it. Either way, I feel uncomfortable, unsure, free-floating and anxious. People are tugging at me, congratulating me, asking me things. In the theater I knew what to do; it was clear. When I was writing, I knew what to do; writing is simple – it makes sense to me. Here, I have no idea, I’m uncertain. There is very little potential here for comfort and I’ll wonder later; wonder what people thought, what they are thinking. I don’t know why. This is something I don’t understand.

So I am kind to myself and leave, walk back to the theater, open the doors and enter. It is dark. My eyes adjust and there is nothing left on stage but a bare set and a rug. Perhaps I am not the last one out, but just in case I walk to stage right and take from behind the curtain an tall old lamp with a naked bulb and a long cord. I walk it to center stage, front, and turn it on

The ghost light.

The stage should never be dark. This I understand.

 
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Posted by on July 23, 2006 in Culture, Education, Food, Social

 

Day of the Manatees

15 Jul

US1 through southern and central Brevard County is an easy drive of sparse architecture and brilliant liquid beauty along the Indian River. The Indian River is wide and shallow, averaging three feet deep and often navigable by foot from the quarter mile to eight miles between bank to bank. Not a river at all, really, but a rod-straight saltwater sound, it is barely separated from the Atlantic by more than a spit of land.

Along the river are salt-marshes, inlets and coves and it was past one of those many coves I drove Saturday morning on my way from Palm Bay, five miles north, to pick up Evanne. That day we were making a kiln of coiled newspaper at my home, breaking into a bag of terracotta clay with about a dozen people to make runes, Tellstones, whatnots small in size. People were due at noon.

As I drove, the shoulder, commonly narrow enough only for an emergency stop, widened into a grass-filled clearing level with the lapping river. Only about forty feet deep and perhaps one hundred feet long, normally empty and affording a view of the wide river and the narrow division of land which broke the ocean and created the sound, today it was bordered, as the trees cleared, by an upright half-sheet of plywood asking, in large caution-orange paint, that we take home one of the many pit-bull puppies available. Behind it were parked what were certainly to be too many cars to be explained by free puppies. Against the shore were clumps of people – adults, children – with cameras, binoculars, pointing fingers off the bank at a space some thirty feet distant.

At fifty miles per hour I can’t see much. Cars, people, cameras and a boiling of water where they point. In the river’s tumult were dark shapes, significant in size, one breaking the surface of the water. While I cannot see what they are, by the time the tableau has taken its place behind me, as the car curves past the Honda dealership, I have figured out what they were; manatees.

I have been here a year. I have not seen a manatee though I hear about them and their friendly nature, their bad breath, the texture of their skin.

I speed up. I am but five minutes from Evanne’s and reach for my phone to call her, to ask her to be ready so, in the truck, we can go back, park, walk to the bank and, I hope, see my first manatees. The phone rings.

“Are we on for today? I figured we were because you said we were, but Jack said I should check.”

I was due to pick her up at eleven that morning. It was ten ‘till.

“I’m four minutes away. Can you be ready? I’ll explain when I get there but I don’t want to talk while I’m driving.”

I drive too fast. She is ready and gets into the truck.

“I think I passed a group of manatees right off the road. I think. I want to stop and see. We have about an hour. If people have to wait a bit for us, for this, they’ll have to wait.”

“Really? I’d love to see them.”

People rush so much. Everything, it seems, is on a time frame. For picking up Evanne on time, by a clock, at a time designated by us and marked by specific numbers on a clock, watch, cell-phone, I chance not seeing the manatees. I drove by them. I think briefly of passing them by again; people are due at my house. I drive back quickly. Too quickly. Time again. This time I stop, pulling over the double-yellow line into the clearing and between two cars.

There is a whirlpool deep with dark silhouettes of bodies long and broad. I can see this through the windshield and open the glove-box to take out the binoculars, the monocular and we get out.

Approaching the water, I hand the binoculars to Evanne. “I asked for a discount on the binoculars, since I can use only one lens, but they just laughed. I don’t see why I should pay for something I can’t use. You turn this to focus.” She takes them out of the case, I twist the wheel between the lenses as she holds them. I take the monocular out of its case and stuff the vinyl into my back pocket. I put it to my right eye and point it out to the roil in the river.

We are two among a constantly renewing eight or ten people watching the spectacle in the water. Three manatees, it appears, one female and two male: mating season. We watch, one then the other, the one again. Breaching, tails slapping the surface, mist blowing from nostrils, grey backs above the water. At once it appears there is a jostling, it appears one has attacked another. We watch. We listen.

Perhaps the female has told one of the males she has had enough. Perhaps has had all she wants. Or one male has challenged, is ready to fight, been rebuked by the female. Then all is calm and they are taking turns again.

The sound skips over the water and mixes with, spurs on the chatter around us .

“It’s a manatee orgy.”

“Manatee gangbang.”

“She’s tired of them and wants a ciggy.”

Snickering, laughing. Rude comments.

I think to myself, talk to myself, I wonder at the anthropomorphizing. Why put them into a human frame? Have we done such a good job of it? After all, they’re the ones making love in the water, having sex in the river, taking turns, out in the open, no worries, no cares, procreating, playing (perhaps), not thinking of tomorrow, not yesterday, just now, in action and moment, life lived as present-tense verbs.

What’s our problem? We want to live, be healthy, or, at least, be comfortable while we live long. We want to live and live and live. Quantity over quality and tomorrow over the moment. We want to have things, more things, one more thing, then something else, another. More and more. We want shelter because we will be more comfortable, live longer if we are out of the cold, out of the heat, out of the sun. Longer, more, tomorrow, worry, next year, better place. Then, we look at the manatees in the river and give them our thoughts, our desires and our reactions when it is we who wish to feel like them, give up the home, live in the water, have sex on the shore, think of nothing and have only now. But for the fear, we would. But for fear of the end, we would. And so, we pretend they are like us as imagining we are them simply begs dissonance, wonder, confusion.

It is quarter ‘till twelve. Evanne reminds me we have people who will be waiting for us. I respond by going to my truck and getting my polarized sunshields – big enough to fit over my glasses. With these, I can cut out the reflection of the water, see through the surface. They are one more thing. I bring them back and hand them to Evanne. We pass them back and forth. Finally, binoculars, monocular are put away. I’m reminded it’s time to go and, back to the truck, we do just that.

We drive way from the water, out to US1, and, as we recross the double-yellow I can still see the swirling of the water in my mirror.

The afternoon comes, the company does as well. Stones are made, a kiln is built. I make a dinner of salmon and steak, both on the grill for hours now, lowly, slowly and vegetables cooked fast in a large, flame-surrounded wok.

Over dinner, Craig tells us about the park nearby, Goode Park, and the manatees. He lays on the dock, the one that floats. His hands lay in the water, waving gently and the manatees come to him and to have their bellies rubbed. Bellies rubbed? I have never heard of that. Manatees again.

I am to do a workshop that evening: a singing workshop. Old Aramaic chants. It is at Goode Park. I picked it because it was close by; six blocks away and I plan to walk there. Goode Park is on Turkey Creek, which connects to the Indian River.

Walk there we do. It is seven in the evening and the workshop starts at seven-thirty. It starts when I get there but I would not start late. I will start on time, by a clock, at a time designated by us and marked by specific numbers on a clock, watch, cell-phone, and, if there are any, I chance not seeing the manatees.

I walk with Evanne and Valerie to the dock and, as we step, it moves beneath us. I see nothing but lay down on my belly, as do the ladies. I put my hands in the water and wave them in and out just under the surface. In and out. Nearly instantly, surprisingly, a nose, four inches across, breaks the surface, closed nostrils open, hot air expelled and it smells of old vegetables., eyes are wide, focused on my face. Eyes like mahogany shooters surrounded by grey flesh. A short-nose elephant in the water.

I reach over and pat the head. It is smooth, warm, comfortable. Round, firm, comforting. Another comes up, sleekly, quietly, graceful in way I have seldom seen and I am thinking how something so impossibly shaped, so ungainly on land could be the utter animation of grace and flow and while I am thinking this another sneaks up, unseen, unheard. So large and so quiet.

I pat it with both hands, rubbing either side of its head. As I do, it snuffles at my palms, left then right, opens its mouth, licks my fingers and moves forward placing its head once more between my hands.

It turns over, deftly, silently as I rub and my hands are on it’s belly: soft, muscular, warm and I rub it as long as it will have until it moves back and my hands are on it’s chest, its flippers are thick, nails large and tough and I can’t help but feel them and I hold its hand. Hand, so much like my hand, five nails, fingers joined by skin and cartilage but five fingers, five nails. A moment passes and the hand I’m holding places, easily moves, mine back onto its chest, making its desire well and clear; it wants its chest and neck rubbed.

It is raised from the water, belly and a portion of its side above the surface, visible. On the grey skin, in the flesh, are four yellow scars, at regular distances, at the same angle, nearly and inch wide and each about a foot long. I would see this again and again as the manatees would come up, each in turn, scars and scars.

And so, our bellies to the ground, theirs to the air, we rubbed them, as long as they would have, into the warm night.

 
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Posted by on July 15, 2006 in Culture, Nature, Social

 

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A Day at the Beach

07 Jul

I headed out of the house at 9:30 to pick up my friend for a day at the beach. I am light and burn. Evanne is transparent and will, if given the opportunity and circumstances, frizz away faster than a vampire in special-effects sunlight. So, of course, we headed to the beach where no suit’s needed.

I picked her up about ten. Evanne is not her real name, of course. I changed it to protect her identity. Her real name is Evan. Her father had expected a boy, it seemed, or had the name picked out already and why let a little thing like the gender of a child change an already well laid plan?

My son had a name before he was born. Benjamin. When he arrived, I caught him. I looked at him, handed him to my wife as my daughter, age five, readied to cut the cord. He lifted himself up on my wife’s chest and looked her straight in the eye. She then voiced what I had thought: This is not Benjamin.

We named him Alek. Four years later he was playing with a friend neither I nor my wife could see. We asked him, “Who are you playing with?”

“Benjamin.”

“Who is Benjamin?” We knew the answer. We didn’t expect the answer.

“My brother. We switched,” he stated with a broad, wry smile.

Well laid plans.

Evanne wanted to go to this beach for a while now but had no-one who wanted to go with her. For me this was an easy decision. A day with Evanne is not exactly a kick in the head. For those of you with no sense of sarcasm, remember sarcasm is the statement, as foil (a sharp contrast to point out clear differences), of the opposite of what is well understood as truth. So, I restate: a day with Evanne is definitely an event to look forward to. And looking forward to this I had been; listening, talking, walking with my friend.

Her husband is delighted. He doesn’t want her to go alone, has not been there, has no intention of going there. And, happily, he trusts me. I’m safe. At least, that’s how my wife explains it.

I’m good with that. Being safe has gotten me into some rather interesting situations.

“Help me try this on.” “Does too much of me show in this?” “Is this too see-through?” “How does this thong fit?” Can you help me put this chain-mail bikini on?” “Would you watch my nubile young daughter for me?”

All which, of course, have nothing to do with this. But it was great or making the guys I worked with, went to school with, shake their heads in disbelief.

We were headed to the nude beach.

I love being safe.

“Whoowhoo!! Nude Beach!” That’s Evanne. That’s quite a bit of sound from my four-ten friend.

She is nervous. Has brought clothes just in case. Has looked forward to this and brought clothes just in case. It is deeply ingrained, this feeling that taking clothes off is wrong. I know. I feel it each and every time I go there. I tell her not to worry but, if she wants to leave at any point, just to let me know.

On the way we talk of writing and she asks if I’ll be writing about this. Of course.

In truth, no. I will write in a cursory fashion. I’ll write of the generality, the universality. Most of what we say will never make it here. I won’t let it. It is no value to those who read it but it is priceless to me. And why should my friend think everything we say and do will be for the world? I’m too selfish for that.

Do you want me to change your name?

I would. If she wanted I’d change her name. She tells me no. No need to change her name but, if I want, I can give her a nickname instead. She’d love to see what kind of nickname I’d come up with for her.

I tell her it would take me longer to come up with a good nickname than it would to write the entire piece. Nicknaming is not a direction my brain goes in. I can’t think of a better name for her.

For some people, their names are just wrong. I take a moment to think of their names. Hesitate before calling them. Wondering if I have the name right. Not so with Evanne.

So we headed to the end of Playalinda Beach, the end of road at Canaveral National Seashore. Past lot 13. Perhaps they thought having a lot 13 would scare folk away. It was the busiest of the lots, had the most people. Of course they were happy: No wet suits.

We parked. Took the bags, the two folding cloth chairs, the water and lemonade and walked from the lot to the dune-crossover. Above our heads, the American flag and, directly under it, waving from the same pole, a yellow flag with a bright orange sun sporting dark sunglasses. The sun protected from itself.

She had been covered with Coppertone sunscreen before we left. It was the kind that has the large pink bottle and the small blue bottles that attaches to it. I must assume one solution is the girl sunscreen and the blue is the boy sunscreen. I imagine they are mixed together like epoxy, bind and make an impenetrable shield of reflection. I imagined looking at her and being fried, instantly, by the exponentially magnified ultraviolet.

I told her mine was SPF 2,316.

“Really?’

“No.” What can I say? To nearly anyone else I’d have let that go. To Evanne I tell the truth. “But it is waterproof and I won’t slide off the seat.”

I waited until we were out on the beach and made sure she had any extra she needed. I worried about missing some spots. I always worry and always do. They become evident later.

The sun has heated the sand. We’ve gotten there by eleven to avoid the most direct heat of the day. Neither on of us needs that much sun. Yet, the sand is still too hot to for me as we walk toward the surf.

We move to where the sand has been wet and the temperature is lower. The chairs are set out as we remove shoes. Two towels out of the bag. Shirts. Hesitation. Hesitation. Pants. Sunscreen. I miss some spots. I know it.

I am now comfortable. I am amazed. Not long ago, heavier, paunchier, I’d have worried. Who was looking, how did I look? There was some vanity involved, self-consciousness, and if I admit it, which I shall not, self-loathing as well. But now, lighter, thinner, I know no-one is looking, no-one cares. I am comfortable with myself. Comfortable in this chair. Not perfect, but comfortable and I delight in knowing it was my hard work and persistence which is paying off, now, in my comfort and joy, out in the sun, today, with my friend.

I know Evanne does not care. We would have come out anyway, enjoyed the day, the company, conversation. I admit it’s all me and I am out and delighted with myself. A new experience for me. I could get use to this.

We work on fleshing out my RPG character. I’m not quite geeky enough. Not yet. I need to play a Role Playing Game. That will help.

We talk of a video game that I remember as Catman Domine. That’s not the name. It involves funky Japanese music and a sticky ball that picks up cats and batteries so the King’s only begotten son can bring light back to the world. A Japanese electro-analogue of Kabalistic Christianity.

I have never played a video game. Not since Centipede. I don’t think this is the one to start with.

The sun is hot. The dunes behind us real, seagrassed, tall. Before us the waves are high, wide, long.

We talk of Russian history, the Tsars, movements to freedom stopped by well-meaning anarchists unknowlingly putting an end to that for which they fought, assassinated with constitutions in their pockets, on their way to dissolving themselves.

It’s time for a walk. We head North on the waterline. The tide is headed in and the chairs disappear in the distance behind us. People are walking. Adults, children, teens. Some by themselves. Some as groups, couples. Some comfortable with each other, some stand at distances, apart, unsure. Mixed couples. Female couples. Male couples. Laughing, holding hands, trading glances between themselves and the incoming waves. Families, lovers, friends.

“Look at that. It’s so sweet. Everyone gets along. No worries about clothing or gender or who’s who. What if it were like that everywhere?”

“Well, then we’d actually take care of things that mattered, like who had no place to live, who had no medical care, instead of who’s living with who and who says they’re married. Imagine that.”

We turn around. How long has it been? As we walk, we move toward the water. The waves are aggressive, they push and pull as the large-grained sand buries our feet, pulls out with each receding wave, grates our ankles. The water is colder than we expect. There is gasping, squealing.

Once back at the chairs we sit. Not in them but far out in front of them, in the place where the waves reach out to the shore. We sit ourselves down upon the sand, legs out, feet meeting the water, inviting, letting the water wash over us, behind up, taking the sand from beneath us. More squealing. The waves hit hard. The tide comes in. We let it move over us, over time.

We stand, move into the water to wash off the sand.

I have been careful to make sure I notice if Evanne starts to turn red, burn, become flush. I know there is no real need to take care of her, but that doesn’t stop me. We all take care of each other. I see some pink in her face, looking rosy. It’s time to go.

Moving toward the chairs, I pick up her shirt, hand it to her.

Sand off the feet, clothes on, chairs away.

We are approached by a fellow who says hello. Asks where we’re from. Have we been here before?

How far up does this section go?

Miles.

We walk to the truck as it begins to rain.

Later that day, I read he headlines. NY and Georgia both dealt with same sex marriage, anything that passed as marriage, anything that gave the semblance of marriage and some, even, making domestic partner insurance illegal; Georgia’s Supreme Court overturning a lower court ruling that said that state’s 2004 voter-passed ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and the New York Court of Appeals upholding a state law banning same-sex marriages. The court ruled it was up to the legislature to decide, not us. They ducked.

While we walked in the sun at Playalinda.

 
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Posted by on July 7, 2006 in Culture, Social, Travel

 

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Forth of July in a Foreign Land

05 Jul

It is the forth of July. My wife and I have gone to the local Brevard Community College campus for Freedom Fest and Fireworks. I expected booths with local organizations, political parties, speeches, a parade.

A stage and music was advertised. Jimmy Buffet music, specifically. Appropriate, largely, considering our location and the large Parrothead community here.

We parked in the Home Depot parking lot and followed the masses past the Grocery store and plaza, into the street and waited for the police and crossing guards to stop the cars and wave the throng forward. As a populus, we carried coolers, chairs, babies, packpacks, blankets and totes full of fireworks. Strollers were pushed with their on-board babes by Mamas and Papas and siblings and all together we moved toward the fairground.

The sidewalk disappeared. Once on the college campus, the sidewalk went away. Thee was grumbling, dismayed disbelief and surprise. Strollers and no sidewalks in an area where people are expected to walk from class to class. We walked in the grass skipping over red-ant hills. We walk in the street, pressed to the curb by line of cars searching endlessly for a place to be.

The fairground had a bouncehouse, six food stands with lines into the forties. I know because I counted the people. A booth advertised “Freedom Crafts for Free” and, well… that was it, sav the stage.

On stage was a band playing tropic tinged music which sounded slightly Buffetesque but wrong in some minor way. The singer had a faint Florida accent and we listened to what we thought was “Cheeseburger in Paradise” but somehow was just not right. We stopped in front of the stage..

March to the left/March to the right/We’re marching forward for Jesus Christ

Marching for Jesus Christ/We’ll all go the Heaven won’t that be nice./Give your life to Jesus now don’t think twice/We’re marching forward to Jesus Christ.

I will not take this space quoting the founding fathers and their thoughts on religion. I will state Jesus lives in most of the county and city government here and, the more I hear it, the less I feel I belong. Even our county commissioner has taken a stand with one of them telling non-Christians, in official documents, she feels sorry for them and their unfortunate children.

The remainder of the evening, as the fireworks flare overhead and concussion waves thump our hearts and bolt our bodies to our chairs, we discuss where we could go. Where in the US? What part of the world? And, in this crowd, we feel alone.

 
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Posted by on July 5, 2006 in Culture, Religion, Social

 
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