LIVES I NEVER LIVED, Pt. 1

Intermission. I'm part of a milling crowd in the lobby of the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway, 1987. All very exciting, and Act I was terrific. We had splurged on tickets for "Into the Woods," already famous for its huge Giant's boot dangling above the marquee of the theater, visible for blocks.

Suddenly a woman comes up to me, even more excited than I am.

"Didn't you design the costumes for "Phantom of the Opera"?" she squeals.

Oh, for a ready lie! How hard would it have been to lay a finger to my lips, and wink modestly? I could have lived the entire second act as a world-famous costume designer, could have heard whispers rustling like candy wrappers along the adjacent rows, could have pointed a judicious finger towards the stage and sighed sadly at a shmatte that missed the mark. I cudda been a pretender!

But alas, I didn't. I wasn't. When the squealer asked the question, I demurred, I may even have simpered my denial. And that was that. Why the woman thought I was Maria Bjornson I don't know. I just now Googled Bjornson's name, and up came a lovely photo of the designer, sporting a chic beret. I have a collection of berets, and may well have been wearing one at the Martin Beck Theater that evening. On such a slender thread hung a chance to have fifteen minutes of fame. Or something like it.

But a few years later, under the warm, laid-back sun of South Carolina, my chutzpa waxed stronger, and I boldly lived a bit of a life that was never mine.

I had moved to South Carolina, leaving behind the fourth Dodge Caravan that I had owned. ("Old Blue.") My plan was to find yet another Caravan, about ten years old with acceptable mileage. In order to drive around and visit Myrtle Beach's many car dealerships, I borrowed Nancy's Cadillac STS, "Vanessa." Wildly unknowledgeable about cars, I didn't realize that the STS (Series Touring Sedan) was Cadillac's most pricy sedan and, worldwide, Cadillac's flagship model.

Before Vanessa, to me, a car was a car. It took me about ten minutes behind the wheel to realize the difference between Vanessa and Big Blue. It was the difference between pure Jersey cream and skim milk. Powdered skim milk.

So here I was, driving around to dealerships in the latest-model STS, the elegant "Vanessa," in a color called Moonstone. And I was asking the salesmen to show me a Dodge Caravan, about ten years old with maybe 75,000 miles on it. I might as well have couched my request in Urdu. They showed me everything under the moon, none of them remotely what I had requested. I realized that the salesmen considered me an eccentric who didn't really know what she wanted and could be easily overpowered by large smiles and Southern-gumbo rhetoric.

Very well, very well. An eccentric I would become. So I found an misdemeanor of a hat (didn't have to look far) and assumed a Role--sort of a cross between Bailey White's Mama and Angela Lansbury's Mame. I would roar into a dealership, screech to a stop, parade down the rows of cars, and tell the saleman trailing after me what I wanted. "IT'S THE DOGS, OF COURSE," I'd explain loudly so that the cowardly manager hiding in his office could hear. When the salesman tried showing me a Chrysler Town and Country, I'd laugh madly as if he'd suggested a yacht. "Oh dear ME, no! No no no NO! The dogs would devour those seats! Taking the DOGS to the SHOWS, that's what we want the Caravan for! Do YOU personally have dogs, Raleigh? I thought not."

It was rare fun. The SDS convinced the car dealers that I was rich; I convinced them I was cuckoo. They couldn't just dismiss me. I had an attentive audience for any nonsense I spouted. "Fourteen Chihuahuas! One HAS to take out that third seat. Just TOSS it OUT!" For a couple of hours a day, a few days one jolly week, I was Hortense von Clydesdale, trying on that gaudy life.

But even for Hortense, the dealers in Myrtle Beach couldn't find an aging Caravan.
Reluctantly, I kissed my fingertips in good-bye. We finally pressed deep into the Carolina backcountry, to a dealership-and-bait-shop owned by a friend of a friend, where I found a ten-year old white Caravan with 50,000 miles on her. "Vanilla." The dogs loved her. All two of them. Neither of Mexican ancestry.

(Next time, Hyacinth Who? And In the Trenches of Viet Nam. )

ASK ME ANOTHER

An online site recently asked for questions that could stimulate journal-keepers and personal-history writers to divulge or discover more about themselves. The resulting 40-odd responses ranged from inventive ("Something you'd love to do if it wouldn't get you arrested") to TMI magnets ("How you disposed of dead pets").

The thread reminded me of the questions James Lipton routinely asks at the end of his ACTORS STUDIO television interviews with movie celebrities. If readers there still be of SOUNDINGS (I have been SO derelict!), I'd be much interested in your own answers to the questions. I know that posting a comment here is as chancy as expecting logic from the Alaskan Rogue (who was in our backyard this past week, with predictable results). But if posting doesn't work, email me your responses. I'll paste 'em up for all to enjoy.

Here are Lipton's questions.

1. I'm skipping his first one ("What is your favorite curse word?") because I lack enthusiasm in this sphere, and even when I come up with something, I sound like Mark Twain's wife. Olivia, trying to shame her cussing husband, memorized some obscenity and recited it. Twain responded, "Livvy, you have the lyrics down, but you just don't know the tune!"

2. "What sound or noise do you love?"
No contest: Rain on a tin roof.

3. "What sound or noise do you hate?"
Again, no contest: Television laugh tracks.

4. "What profession other than your own would you have liked to attemp?"
Assuming the requisite talent (absent in this lifetime), a mezzo-soprano diva.

b. One intriguing occupation hardly existed when I was a-choosing, and even now I don't know its proper title. But I would have been hugely engaged raising orphaned or abandoned wildlife babies prior to their return to the wild or (more likely) their assignment to an animal park.

5. "What profession would you NOT want to participate in at any time?"
Selling. Could not sell chocolate to my own clone.

6. "What's your favorite word?"
"Bravo!"

7. "What's your least favorite word?"
No originality here: the F-word. Among other things, the irony is too sad.


8. "If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?"

a. For years, I had a ready answer to this: "Your class is waiting for you."
Then, one day in the arthritis therapy pool, a truly wise, and truly loving old woman said gently, after I'd offered that answer in our watery discussion, "What if He said, 'Your teacher is waiting'?"

All I can say is that I've ever learned the most by teaching, and that I consider the source the same in both activities.

b. "OF COURSE there's chocolate here, girl!"

WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF 'IN DENIAL'?

The hugely talented and insightful writer Kathleen Norris has a book (ACEDIA AND ME) in which she carefully and at length distinguishes between depression and *acedia. She knows both first-hand, and also by means of tons of research.

Yet one smug reader insists that Norris must be "in denial," because what's she describing, he asserts, is "clearly depression." Ignore this glibster's cotton-hay- and-rags brain-box. It's the psychobabble term "in denial" that interests me here.

In a brief response to the Strawman's comment, I stated that Norris was almost the perfect opposite of someone "in denial." But then I realized that our era HAS no word for the opposite of "in denial." Do we miss it?

If you're not "in denial," what are you? Cool with everything? In your dreams, pal. As a culture, we're so uncool even the palms of our feet are sweating.

Well, then "guilt-ridden." Surely that fits. Most of us feel guilty for everything from global warming to the lack of procreation among the pandas, for honest wrinkles at eighty to extra pounds on eight-year olds. And anorexia in teens.

No, not "guilt-ridden." Generalized guilt is the other swing of the pendulum, the arc of the other end of "denial." Accept everything and you take responsibility for nothing. Guilt is as far from the balance point as "It's not MY fault!"

The concepts of confession, remorse, and restitution went out of fashion the day after Bloomers came in. Those practices would seem to assure the logical balance point. With those in place, we don't deny, but neither do we cling to guilt and consider it a substitute for doing better.

But--the mythology of the human race would indicate that,"It wasn't MY fault" comes pretty naturally. Anyone who ever knew a three-year old can testify to that reality.
But outside of now rather suspect religious institutions, where do we learn, let alone practice, confession, remorse, and restitution? It is only in that tent, those many and multi-colored tents, that we can grow spiritually, or even in character?

* * * * *

*acedia is an interesting word that was almost lost to our culture, though the condition it describes has never been less than everywhere in evidence.
I recommend Norris' book on the subject. Meanwhile, a quick though unsatisfactory definition might be "spiritual torpor, a deep-seated sloth that robs one of any degree of caring, about any aspect of life."

THE HEART HATH ITS REASONS. . . .

"The heart has its reasons that Reason does not know." (Pascal)

In the hollow of my hand lies a watch. It's not a wrist watch, a pendant watch, nor exactly a pocket watch. And I'll be jiggered if I know why I have it.

This watch is a serious but cheerful blue color, and about the size of a silver dollar. It boasts a red sweep second hand (sometimes useful); small numbers around the face that indicate 15, 30, or 45 seconds or minutes forever fled, data I can't imagine not knowing without being told; and another set of small numbers indicating that 2 o'clock has an alias (14), but for design reasons, I assume, the watch omits the aliases for 13, 23, and 24.

In the dark, the hands give off a glow. I'm of the generation made nervous by such moonshines. For many years, radium paint was used on watches and clocks, as well as on aircraft instruments, until its use was banned in the 1960's. The paint was poisonous; countless young women, working on assembly lines, died quite horrible deaths from radiation poisoning. (See the book RADIUM GIRLS, or, if you're lucky enough, an excellent play of the same name.)

What sets this watch apart, however, is not the variety of information it offers. Built into the design is a carabiner. (I thought that was the word, but looking it up, I found "a cavalry soldier armed with a carbine." Oh, come now. During the subsequent search, I was distracted by a ream of lovely words in the neighborhood: carambola, cartouche, carragheen, and one of my favorites, caryatid--
a sculpted column in the shape of a woman, with the entire pediment supported by her head. Turns out that the word for soldier was a "carabinier." Extra e.) So, carabiner: "an oblong metal ring with one spring-hinged side that is used esp. in mountain climbing as a connector. . . ."

Thus you could hook this small, sturdy watch to a loop of your belt--if you wore a belt. Or you could clip it to your backpack to see how late to class you were--if you toted a backpack. Or went to class. I have tried hard to figure out a way to clip this watch to something of mine, but my only thought would be a bra strap--if I wore. . . .well, let's move on.

The watch is sold under the aegis of the National Geographic Society, making it semi-official and semi-patriotic, I would say. Its movement is of Japan quartz though. But it's manufactured by the Dakota Watch Company, and has the side view of a bison or buffalo on the back. The buffalo is related to the model on the five-cent piece, so I think we can just call it flat-out "patriotic," with no apologies. It claims to be water resistant to "100 feet." Down or out, it doesn't say. If you press a small knob on its edge, a red light goes on, a small but useful flashlight, I guess. Don't know why it's red, but I'm sure there's a reason. Perhaps in order not to startle the fish, 90 feet down there, so far from tail-lights and stop-lights and all.

The thing is that I love this watch. I long coveted it as I paged through the National Geographic catalog, shopping for creative toys for the small adventurers on my list. It just seemed so, je ne sais quoi--perfect, complete. That's not really a logical reason. But at last I ordered it, scolding myself all the while. And it came, and it was exactly right. Its weight in the palm of my hand confirmed that it belonged there.

My cell phone gives the time; so does the computer; the car dashboard tells the time; there are clocks all over the house, and as an added pleasure, St. Monica's up the road tolls the hour with ancient assurance in its fine bass voice.

Why do I love thee, carabiner watch? Eh bien, ask M. Pascal.

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BOOK?

Don't tell me you don't want to write a book: everybody wants to write a book. Even people who wouldn't READ a book if their daily chocolate ration depended on it are searching for a hot topic. A few years after I retired, a former student wormed my telephone number from a colleague--(you know who you are, Douglas!)--and called to invite me to "help" her write a book. "I got a great idea!" she assured me. "I just need you to put it into words." (I am NOT making this up. She later admitted the whole thing was her therapist's idea.)

But the problem is, you don't know what KIND of book to write. You can't write a detective novel--you're still sleuthing for your favorite pair of glasses, the ones with heavy black frames and lenses the size of teacups. You can't churn out romance novels; the doctor said you're flirting with diabetes and you must lay off the sweets. As for the ever-popular cookbook genre--well, how do we think you developed a risk of diabetes, right?

I have the answer. There is a new genre of book now, and it's selling like. . . cookbooks.

I refer to the "My Marathon" genre. Not your 26-mile-385 yard foot-race marathon. That's old stuff now, and besides, the Ethiopians have the copyright on that story for at least another fifty years. But any other kind of marathon will do. If you can combine the marathon with a blog ABOUT the marathon, you can sign the publisher's contract the moment you stagger over the tape (whatever form that tape takes).

Of course that's what Julie Powell did when her life went as stale as the Twinkie in your July 4th picnic basket. She decided she would do a cooking marathon: cook all 524 recipes in Julia Childs's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In a year. She cooked, she blogged, her readers gobbled it up, they made the movie ("Julia and Julie"). Now they're all skipping hand in hand to the bank --Powell, Meryl Streep, the movie producers, Powell's publishers, CHILDS'S publishers ("Mastering," published in 1961, is flying off the shelves like Julia's flapjacks off the range), and any restaurant that advertises "a Julia Child special, only $59.99 plus wine."

Ammon Shea's marathon took exactly a year also, though he hadn't set himself a finish line in time, just in pages. Shea is a man in love with dictionaries. His apartment has stacks of dictionaries where other people have chairs, tables, beds.
The Mount Everest of dictionaries is the Oxford English Dictionary, called the OED by its pals. So Ammon set out to read every word of the OED. Every, single, beloved word. And he finished in a year, and then, of course, wrote a book about it. READING THE OED: ONE MAN, ONE YEAR, 21,730 WORDS. I've read it--Shea's book, of course, not the OED. And it makes very good reading, actually; what else would you expect from a man who loves what he's writing about AND loves words? Here's what he said after finishing this marathon: "All of the human emotions and experiences are right there in this dictionary, just as they would be in any fine work of literature. They just happen to be alphabetized."

On the other hand, as in running, there is a race that has style, and those that don't. A.J. Jacobs ground out a book titled ONE MAN'S HUMBLE QUEST TO BECOME THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. That tells you everything, right? Jacobs read the Encyclopedia Brittanica. So we don't have to. End of book report. Lately, Jacobs decided to spend a year "living Biblically." Grew his beard outlandishly long, wore a De Mille style robe and sandals (Cecil B, Agnes, who cares?), walked around calling attention to himself, hailing people as "thee" and "thou." Twelve psychiatrists offered him cards in one block alone.

Now let's talk REAL style. Suzan-Lori Parks. Parks starts yawning one day, decides she needs something to do, guesses she'll write a play. Every day. Yep--for a year. And publishes the results, of course. To great acclaim. What's the catch? The catch is that Parks is a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant winner ($500K), a Pulitzer Prize winner (for the 2002 drama "Topdog/Underdog")and in short, someone who has been around the winners' course a few times and has the literary Ethiopians breathing hard. And more than 700 theater groups around the country are performing this particular work. No, of course not all 365 plays. Samplers. And I plan to see one version onstage for myself, right here in America's Heartland, come November.

So set yourself a marathon, blog about it, and decide who'll play YOU in the movie.
Hmm. Movies. That just gave ME an idea!

KITTEN DIARIES--THEORY V. REALITY

TOYS WE BOUGHT FOR THE KITTENS TO PLAY WITH:

1. 10-foot long nylon tunnel, accordian-like construction for portability. Kittens to chase each other through tunnel with glee.

2. Long, colorful strip of soft flannel attached to plastic wand--humans to wave same in elegant patterns, cats to chase and enjoy.

3. Half a dozen open-weave plastic balls (golfball size) with small bells inside.
Cats to chase and bat these about on floor and entertain selves for hours.

4. Life-sized flannel mice, to be annointed with catnip and hidden about the house.
Cats to seek out and frolic with.

5. Two scratching boxes for kittens to sharpen claws on and enjoy.

WHAT ACTUALLY BECAME OF THESE TOYS:

1. Tunnel--cats grab one end, drag tunnel across hallway entrance to trip up humans while same are trying to carry cats into their time-out room. Otherwise ignored.

2. Cats chew off flannel strip, divide between themselves, poop colorful deposits for several days, fight over remaining plastic wand, which is removed from the scene as a possible danger to strangulation.

3. Dogs claim small plastic balls, chew to pieces with great satisfaction, scatter tiny remnants in inaccessible places, poop tiny bells for several days.

4. Flannel mice declared BOR-ing, remain untouched in their hiding places, serve as magnets for great quantities of dog and cat fur which ultimately, the size of melons, are batted out from under furniture by kittens in the presence of appalled guests.

5. Scratching boxes are visited once a day with considerable ceremony, only when humans are watching, as proof of kittens' obedience and intelligence. Evidence of additional unheralded scratching events to be found on carpets, furniture, packing boxes, dogs.

WHAT THE KITTENS ACTUALLY PLAY WITH:
1. Empty quart ginger-ale bottles, which make a most satisfactory clatter as they figure in vigorous hockey matches across the house.

2. Cords with tassels dangling from the venetian blinds at various windows. Elusive and endlessly tempting, these must be secured out of kittens' reach anew each day to avoid the dangers of strangulation.

3. The dogs. In particular, the Corgi's straightforward game of Fetch the Ball, which B.K. simply involved one human throwing the ball 1400 times in a row and retrieving the ball when it was, in the Corgi's mind, inacessible to her--i.e. too near a large paper bag, too near a wire of any sort, too near the water bowl, too near a dust bunny, etc. With the addition of the kittens, this becomes a complex and exciting game, as the felines lie in wait, preferably hidden, then LEAP at the ball in mid-flight, deflect it who-knows-where, race in front of the swift Corgi to claim first-touch, and otherwise make a wondrous team sport of what was a dull exercise. Fetch the Ball has, it must be admitted, become hugely more interesting to the humans, who find delightful the gymnastics and athleticism of the leaping, plunging, rolling, racing cats.

4. Tiny, tiny items which, before their arrival, had been lost, ignored, or swept into small crevices, under the fridge, beneath the armchair, under a couch cushion,
behind the bookshelf. The kittens find same, exhibit great glee at the discovery, hunker down for serious chewing; (whether the bits are paper, plastic, rubber, dried bread crusts or birdseeds carried in on dog paws, they care not). Humans must thereupon race to kitten, pry open the tiny, sharp-toothed little maws and extract the possibly dangerous flotsam or jetsam.

5. THE GREAT BILLOWING CAFTAN. Above all, the kittens delight in sneaking silently beneath one human's ankle-length caftan while it is being worn, then leaping up as high as possible, as though the person were a scratching pole designed for their special pleasure. The game's enjoyment is heightened when both cats are involved, as they compete for height attained and screams produced.

THE KITTEN DIARIES

DAY 1. We adopted two new kittens today! What a lark!

DAY 2. The veterinarians had named the pair Marlon Brando and Paul Newman. Don't like "Marlon and Paul," so call them "Brando and Newman."

DAY 3. "Brando and Newman" too impersonal, as if cited in a movie review by Ebert. Trying "Stanley" (Stanley Kowalski in "Streetcar Named Desire") & "Butch" ("Butch Cassidy").

DAY 4. Slowly introducing the dogs to the kittens. Don't want dogs to scare the little fellows.

DAY 5. HO_HO! Kittens supremely confident, not to say swaggering. Swipe lazily at dogs in passing. "Ho-hum."

DAY 6. Re integration of species. Dilly, the West Highland White terrier, is smitten. In love. Lumbers after the kittens all day long, sober, serious, true dour Scotsman. Only his tail gives him away, constantly in motion like a windshield wiper amid an Oklahoma thunderstorm. "Let me play! Let me play!" He is stunned at how swiftly the kittens dart, dash, climb, disappear. But he never gives up. Trot. . . trot. . . trot. Terrier determination unabated. Trot. . . Trot. . .

DAY 7. Tango, the Corgi, at first tried herding the kittens, Corgis being great herders by breeding and reputation. Ran in wilder and wilder circles, first in one direction, then in another. Kittens glsance up, say "Ho-humn." Nervous breakdown may be in Corgi's future.

DAY 8. Nope. No nervous breakdown. If you can't join 'em, lick 'em. Tango now cleans every feline ear she can get close to. They take it as their due. Tango's thrice-daily games of chasing the ball through four rooms of the house (humans absolutely MUST throw ball when asked; the Corgi stare is effective on very large cattle; who are humans to resist?)--her game of chase is today interrupted by a kitten shooting out at an angle and batting the speeding airborne ball awry. Astonished at first, Tango now relishes the added dimension to her game. We rarely turn on the TV these days.

The kittens' behavior verifies the old distinction: Dogs see that humans feed them, house them, groom them, pet them, walk them, and say, "These humans must be GODS!"

Cats see that humans feed them, groom them, pet them, cart away their odiferous litter, and conclude, "We must be gods!"