A blur

A blur is all that remains of yesterday. I don’t know why more than other days? Was it the back-to-back meetings, the actual job interview, the rain-rain-rain and constant wetness seat, pants shirt and hair and the very depressing movie I saw, but it all coalesced into a blur of movement and strange stasis.

How does it occur that so much transpires and it all looks like a smear when I try to regard it in hindsight?

I met with a wonderful long time friend--I hesitate to write old friend, because we near being really old. This woman said she turns 60 this March and is planning a party in Machu Picchu, Peru. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I’d love to attend, but I need to find a job. So we sat on her roof and she let me vent about it all, as we both worked at LaMama on and off for over 30 years, probably now over 40 years.

From her, I went to a job interview. Changed clothes, lipstick the works. Interesting, maybe a reach, in the neighborhood, enough said. But I felt somewhat righteous. I had good ideas I tried to listen with my TWO EARS and use my ONE MOUTH half as much. Maybe I achieved that.

But when I stepped out into the sunshine, rain came later, there was Nicole, David Bouley’s wonderful wife, who always looks s if she is backlit, nearly angelic with a demeanor that sends clam to anyone in her sphere. I needed to see her as they are doing the nibbles for the opera benefit September 11. So there she was, and we had the meeting right on the sidewalk. This is why I love my neighborhood: the random encounters.

Went back home to take off the restrictive clothes AHHHHHHHHH Back on the bike to see
Boy Interrupted, a film by Hart and Dana Perry about the bipolar disease that contributed to their 15 year old son Evan’s suicide. Tough, wrenching, brutal and I so wanted to escape from it when it was over. I wanted to hug my family, who may be occasionally grumpy, even mean-spirited, but I adored the hot tempers and the out there expression that broils in my house, especially when compared to a buttoned-down wasp house, even one filled with tears. I really saw how great this film was, but beyond that, I longed to wallow in my wonderful family and thank them all for being so quirky and in my corner.

Evan’s funeral nearly three years ago took place in the midst of the worst thunder lightning, take-down-trees storm I have ever seen. Literally ripping trees down to block the road to his Grandmothers’ house, causing guests to walk through mud and arrive ravaged. When I exited the Cinema Village at 5pm in time for my rehearsal, of course the skies opened. I took refuge with a young Brit under an awning near NYU and gave her directions to her youth Hostel and then finally when it let up some I peddled off to Great Jones Street and rehearsal.

Composer Doug and I went through the entire score matching words to music and adding notes. It was exhilarating and it left me drained especially in the face of Boy Interrupted. I rode home to the loft, still in rain, and freezing from being wet for so long and came home to find fish, salad, goat cheese and chilled white wine. I was home free.

There was an email from my kids saying they were doing better. Oh there were also emails saying this one hates that one in the cast, the other is exhausted and terrified, and there still aren’t enough kids. Someone in the press can’t review us because the publisher BLAH BLAH, BLAH, and on and on and on. But that was the big blur.

I was home, dry now and sitting in a flannel nightie, nearly in tatters, but so lovely, eating a plate of spicy fish and salad made creamy with goat cheese. The baguette was soggy from the humidity, but I was dry and enjoyed my blur.