Collections 1

I have, perhaps like many people of our era, a collection of music. I love music. I don't listen to music as much as I'd like to. Since I was little, I've been encouraged by my father who is a great lover and collector of music, to have records. He's always been better at it than I have. In fact, most of the men I know are. They have a gift for collecting music, really, and knowing things about the members of a band, composers, how all the people connect to one another.

My knowledge is quite finite.

In terms of collections I own, I'm proud to say my music collection feels manageable and under control. It never seems to overwhelm me - like say, my book shelves or my sweaters.

Here's the caveat. There are a handful of albums I do not like, and I can't seem to get rid of them.

WHY!?

I have no idea.

The only thing I can come up with when trying to cull my collection are these few things:

A) FEAR OF NEED: I might need this album for a sound design project.
B) GUILT: The artist / person who gave me this would feel horrible if I gave away their work / gift.
C) RATIONALIZATION: It's only a few, and my music collection is under control, so why get rid of it?
D) FEAR OF LOSS OR PAIN: One time I got rid a compilation a friend gave me and I've regretted it ever since.

Can anyone give me a suggestion as to how to begin to let these few pieces go? Is there any way of doing this without suffering?

Perhaps through suffering there is relief.

Litter

I've been wearing earplugs to sleep for something like 17 years now. I feel all olden saying this, but there was a glorious time when every little sound and light of noon did not phase my sleep cycle. These days I seem to have developed the super power of hearing through earplugs and seeing through eye patches, and if there is a pillow over my head, my skin now detects light.

I find it ironic that at the same time as my sensitivity is increasing, my normal powers are fading. Recently I've noticed that I can't focus on things close to my face anymore, I'm beginning to miss what people behind me say, loud noises hurt, I can't hear one person talking in front of me in a room full of people, and tinnitus has begun squatting in my head, becoming a shanty-town constantly shrieking rabble rouser.

I tested my ears here the other day, and if I am close to the computer speakers or wearing headphones, I can still hear up to 17kHz while the cats are disturbed up to 22kHz. Not that anyone communicates to me in 17kHz or higher. Honestly, I would happily love never again to hear the buzz of florescent lights, the hum of a printer, the whine of a computer fan, the ticking of my watch across the room on the dresser, booming like a tell-tale heart reminding me second by second of my impending mortality.

Now that the tinnitus is here masking those higher pitched frequencies, I feel cheated. I understand that 17kHz isn't bad, I still feel like I'm 39 going on 90.

As I'm beginning to hit my aging stride, I am finally learning all those truths my elders told me I would one day eventually come to understand. Youth is wasted on the young, don't listen to that music so loud, wear your sunscreen, et cetera, et cetera. Taking my hearing and sight for granted is something I will never do again. I vow to enjoy every moment of my senses.

What does all this have to do with stuff, you may be wondering. A life with earplugs is a life of tiny midnight cat toys. Minke Boodle has even attempted to remove them from my ears while I'm sleeping. Earplugs get washed and bloat up to twice their size in the machine, making annoying little water blobs that are icky to the touch. They show up in weird places like in and on desks, under couches, in over coat pockets, in books. Once used, they become dirt, hair and fur magnets. They cost money. They probably account for 10% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They may be damaging my hearing. By allowing myself to become addicted to earplugs, I've bought in to another thing to buy in to.

I'm not sure I can break the habit. They do help me sleep. I suppose one must pick one's battles. And maybe go get one's ears checked by a professional.

Impedamenta

I have decided to walk to my Field Production class tonight to get a bit of fresh air and learn my lines for "How to Have an Argument" (the thing I directed and recently got shanghaied into performing for one night on November 11th). I've spent a lot of today trying to learn as much as I can about boom microphone setup and trying to remember interview techniques.

(I also sat on my new old couch by the huge dining room window while playing guitar and singing as the yellow sun went by. The cats were right there with me enjoying the warmth and the color of our Japanese maples. Do trees count as stuff?)

In prepping to leave, I finally cleaned out my purse which had become heavy heavy enough to hurt my back. How does so much cat fur get INSIDE a purse? I found and removed a bottle of bubbles, 4 lipsticks and 3 chap-sticks, 5 barrettes, an empty coin purse and 3 non-working writing implements among the 8 or so that do work. Also, there was garbage.

It's not what I would call great progress in terms of junk removal, but my purse is lighter and now my lesson plan for tonight fits in. It also feels a lot less like I'm carrying my scary basement around on my shoulder.

Off to class where no one will know by the contents of my purse what a basket case I am! Er...except you.

Junk

I associate basements with stressful events: floods, monsters and vampires, cockroaches (taking up residence in my clean laundry or sitting completely still while psychically catching my attention at 3am when I'm raiding my parents' freezer for popcicles), and piles completely disorganized junk.

The basement is the embodiment of the secrets of my family's collective souls. Most of us seem to put on a good face in life, basically friendly and for the most part rule-abiding and "normal" from the outside. Yet inside there seems to exist the anti-social creature - the angry, insecure, untogether person. The Basement is the three-dimensional tell of our dark sides.

The top of my house looks fairly pretty and presentable, yet down the stairs you'll find towers of boxes (labeled ominous things like "Old Letters" and "Writing"), unfinished projects, tens of mostly empty paint cans, bags and jars of mixed up screws and nails, broken windows, odd sized boards, parts of telephones, a museum of ancient computers, the innards of a single futon taped up in roles, 7 crates of various cables and wires in knots. The cats mark the junk with urine. No wonder I fear basements.

My mom recently sent me three large boxes and a sofa (beautifully reupholstered, I should add) from her basement. The couch is in the dining room looking cute, but the boxes of things that were important to me when I was 17 or younger are still stacked 4 feet high, unopened, obstructing the tool chest and the path to the back door.

I have asked a friend to help me with the exploration of their contents. She's a priestess of sorts, so I know she can help my spirit let go of these objects before I can reattach to them. A big accomplishment I made this year was admitting that I cannot be trusted to get rid of my stuff alone.

All the basements in my family have been like this: private, sometimes shameful, repositories of the past, with some useful tools thrown in here and there, often with a layer of silt on top.

I have managed to get a couple of corners organized and Zen - the laundry room has only what it needs, as does our TV room. The scariest part is now my room and the storage areas. This is when the old adage "One Day At A Time" comes in handy.

At 39, I still can't go into the unfinished part of my basement without feeling certain that red eyes and gleaming white fangs are just out of my sight, beside the furnace and behind the stack of empty Christmas boxes and mailing supplies that got out of hand a few years ago.

I still take a running start before pulling all the light chains and dashing up the stairs, feeling the cold, powerful hand of the undead reaching from the inky darkness around my socked ankle as I yank it up to the next step.

I feel I'm in a chicken / egg sort of conundrum. Should I get therapy in order to be able to clean out my basement? Or if I can somehow steel my will enough to clean out my basement, will I gain shrinkly wisdom?

This is clearly going to be a month of exorcisms...

One day at a time.

Stuff

I'm in the process of finally moving into my house. When we moved to Portland, despite the excellent successes I had in getting rid of things, I still schlepped just as many boxes full of stuff which had not seen the light of day for 15 years or so. Boxes with ominous titles such as "Old Letters" and "Writing." On the first day here, a friend we made that day commented on the "Old Letters" box, pointing out how nice it must be to still have them - with such sarcasm in her voice I knew we'd be friends forever.

I'd been called out.

And it was fantastic.

Something about having that compulsion revealed publicly gave me a massive sense of release from the obligation to continue to protect all those letters.

I've talked to friends who manage to get rid of old love letters, things they've created, even family heirlooms. My friend Anthony burned a bag of personal baggage before his move to Korea at a campfire beside his friends at his going away party this summer. It ended up being cathartic for us all. I have a deep admiration for people who can let go.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the inclination to cling to things comes from a yearning not to lose a moment, a feeling, a person one loves. Yet life is raging by, a river full of moments, feelings, human connections, and all that stuff is beginning to feel like a lead weight on my foot. I'm still flowing along the rapids, but just under the surface and bumping rocks along the way. STUFF is becoming a hindrance to the ride.

The flip side is the true joy that stuff and things bring. There's a sense of security in having enough cookware and towels, there's always a book to read or a movie to watch. I have a cool little coin collection that belonged to my mother with contributions from my own travels and those lovely individuals who have traveled to me and left me with coin and paper money mementos of their visits, like Nyoman from Bali, so tiny she literally hung off of Tyler's arm when we took her ice skating. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw the endless rink and said "We don't have ice in Bali! I have never seen it! It is just like the Olympics!" She left me with a 500 Rupiah Bank of Indonesia note sporting a beautiful picture of an Orang Utan.

I love my craft supplies - any rainy day I'm bound to be able to find something fun and complex to do in my own home. We have comfortable furniture, more and more of it made out of real wood with a family or friend history to share.

This month, though, I'm going to try to come to terms. This morning, I began sorting through my jewelry collection. I have 39 years worth of mostly costume stuff, with contributions from several grandmothers, a grandfather, lovers, and friends.

I am trying to pare it down. It's almost impossible. Each charm has some emotional value, some unique distinct beauty. I find myself glad when I have forgotten what a piece means so that I can give it away.

Most of this jewelry I don't wear. But getting rid of it feels like removing joints of my fingers and toes. WHY?

I got a particular wallop from the past when I found a set of jewelry related to my first love. Hank made a prototype of a wedding ring for me in his metal shop class in 1986. He took a silver spoon from his grandmother - I'm not sure she ever knew - and made a very cool geometric design that he planned to fill with rubies. He never got around to making the gold version because he died in a car accident during Homecoming weekend. The night he died, we'd had a fight at school. He'd been homophobically attacking a friend of mine on the school bus and I gave him what for about it.

Before the game, we made up, made love in a the tenderest way we ever had, truly and deeply connecting, which was powerful and new for us at 16. We peacefully agreed to spend the evening with our own friends - to feel secure in the other's freedom. This was also new - a triumph for me who was so insecure and jealous.

The next morning I went to his house to collect him to go to the mall with some friends, and his mother came running out the screen door in tears hollering at me "Tell me Hank is with you! Tell me Hank was with you all night!"... and in the next few moments I very quietly learned amid the screaming and wailing and chaos that Hank had died in a car accident in the wee hours. He had been sleeping or passed out in the back seat of our friend's car when they hit a tree. A simple snap of the neck, not even blood, and he was gone. He had taken our friend Buddy's ID to get alcohol that night, which had lead to confusion about his identity. Poor Buddy didn't go out to party because he'd found out that week that he had a rare and incurable form of bone cancer. It was an overwhelming weekend for us all to say the least.

The wedding ring in my jewelry box does not disturb me though. In fact, I love the design and that it represents the pure exchange of love that Hank and I shared under all the high school drama. The humble silver and simplicity of the thing is comforting, and the fact that he stole a spoon from his grandmother still tickles me.

It's the related items that still hurt.

Hank's parents had divorced when he and his brother were quite young. Hank's father came back into his life after years away in Florida, while Hank and I were together. I met him once. They bore a striking resemblance to one another. I know there was pain in their relationship - Hank felt betrayed and left behind. After his death, his father called me. I could hear the devastating weight of his grief over the telephone line. He wanted to meet me. I agreed.

He picked me up for dinner. That night, he gave me a pair of earrings. They were cheap, made of serpentine chains soldered together in that common 80's combo of golds: yellow, white and rose. I remember looking into his shattered face as he put the little fuzzy grey box into my hand. He pointed to the sparkling things and told me there were chips of diamonds embedded in them. There were not. I did not know if he was lying to me or if he'd been swindled himself. I stared at them, unsure what to say, next to this heartbroken stranger that looked like my lover from the future as he pointed to diamonds that weren't there. Have you seen eyes incapable of hiding sadness? Maybe you have a better word for them than "heavy" which is all I can think of. I looked into those heavy eyes and I said to Hank the Senior "Wow! Diamonds! Thank you! Um, gosh...they are beautiful."

How do you reach for someone when you have no idea who they are, little idea of who your son was, and absolutely no hope of knowing who he will be? I guess I still have those earrings because of how desperately that man needed his grief needed to be honored. He was an estranged father, a lost soul reaching for a human connection he will never have.

The next piece was a necklace given to me by Hank's mother and step-father. After many years of staying away, I ran into Rusty, Hank's mom, and Tiffany, the baby of the family (all grown up now) in the parking lot of my high school after the homecoming game at my 10 year reunion. Rusty invited me over for a visit. I couldn't bring myself to refuse, though I was terrified to go.

When I arrived, I realized immediately that the inevitable flood of memories I faced threatened to drown me in their sorrow.

We sat at the table and talked. Rusty filled me in on the years she lost, unable to work or function after the loss of her first born. She took me to Hank's room. She had not allowed it to be changed. In that tomb, that locked memorial to a young man, I felt myself trying to escape my own body, my soul clawing it's way past my throat and out the top of my head. His stuff was untouched all around me: the fishing net he'd nailed up over his bed, his clothing and records, the mirror I'd seen us both naked and perfect in, me 10 years older, a woman - him a ghost memory at 16 barely visible to me anymore as the details slipped away through the years. All his stuff pressed against me like evil.

At the end of the visit, Rusty and Mike handed me a little grey velvet box. They'd gotten a gift for me for my 17th birthday, but never found me to present it. Inside was a yellow, white and rose gold heart locket. I took it with a murmured thank you, unable to share my emotions with these people who'd been a huge part of my early life for a year and a half - my second parents. At home the tears just poured out. They wanted me to have my heart back.

My own grandmother is still angry with me that I gave Hank a small gold cross her husband gave her for their engagement. The cross was lost in the confusion we all went through after Hank's death. Even the lack of a little scrap of gold carries debilitating and imprisoning weight.

If I get rid of the jewelry, will I be light enough to float with my head up in the river of life? If I free myself from honoring and obliging the pain and loss of others, even myself, every time I open my jewelry box, will my days be less complicated? Will I be happier? Strangely, there's comfort in these painful memories, too. Its the affirmation of my own existence.

Is it betrayal to get rid of these things? Should I let the stories that defined me go? Rest? Die?

When I think of all the things around me that carry this level of importance, I am overwhelmed. Too many boxes of old things to go through. Honoring ancestors, friends, lovers who are all gone now. Looking at them is too much. Getting rid of them seems impossible.

I dedicate this month to the true beginning of letting go of the past in the face of turning 40.

Here's to floating - not dragging - down the river...

right?

NaBloPoMo Begins

It's time for my annual blog extravaganza - my yearly commitment to myself to write, create, share my ideas, etc.

I will do my best to come up with things to write about - pictures when I don't have words, maybe.

Today is a hard day to start because I woke up sleepy and stayed so all day.

But here it is. My meager offering for the first day of NaBloPoMo.

The day started grey-cold and damp, and ended in a blaze of autumnal light. I forgot to set the clocks forward and ended up getting to my usher gig an hour early instead of just barely on time like I'd planned. Tried not to fall asleep in the green room - which was not too difficult given the cacophony of actors warming up on the stage through the blown out monitor speaker in the green room. There's nothing that can compare to that sound - of consonants being hit, pitches being stretched, everyone's lines being run top volume at once, as if the entire content of the show happens in 3 minutes all at the same time. I get a visual image of a pile of transparencies - each sheet a character and their thoughts stacked perfectly with all the others and projected at the same time.

Moments before, I'd been at the park with Tyler on the most peaceful Sunday I've had in some time, supping on a variety of mild cheeses and dense and grainy fresh bread. We watched the glowing leaves in the low angle northern light. The changing of the colors is so completely moving that it evokes a sense of wonder in me so earnest that I find myself thinking that I would actually not embrace death as readily as I always think I would if I were to simply stop and recall autumn leaves. I could watch this show for all eternity.

I had oatmeal with apples and walnuts for breakfast.

I will try harder tomorrow.

Promise.

Stay for the Cake

Please join me for my directorial debut!

Portland Actors Conservatory and The Montgomery Street Players present "Stay for the Cake," an evening of one-act plays written, directed, designed and performed by the conservatory's first alumni performance group.

NINE PERFORMANCES!
Friday, Saturday and Sunday Nights Oct. 30 - Nov.15
7:30PM (Doors Open at 7:00)

BUY TICKETS
https://www.ticketturtle.com/index.php?theatre=pac

Written by Scott Rogers
Directed by Elizabeth Calhoun, Vinnie Duyck and Phoebe Southwood
Curated by Philip Cuomo
Performed by Maria Aparo, Vinnie Duyck, Sarah Farrell, Cate Garrison, Emily Gleason, Robby Lundergan, Mark Merritt and Tom Mounsey.

PHYLLIS HARTNOLL'S FINAL LESSON
Phyllis Hartnoll, theatre writer and professor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, provides one final lesson from her death bed…and gets most of it wrong.

DONNERSTRASSE
The Grimm Brothers take a break from folk tales to write a pop song one hundred years before another artist writes the same song. A copyright attorney with a familiar red hood assists in sorting out the legal mess.

HOW TO HAVE AN ARGUMENT
A presentation from philanthropist and technologist Paul Graham on engaging in constructive disagreement results in an existential crisis, an exploration of the creative process, gratuitous accents and cake.

Portland Actors Conservatory
1436 SW Montgomery Street
Portland, OR
Phone: 503-274-1717

BUY TICKETS
https://www.ticketturtle.com/index.php?theatre=pac