See anything you like?
and other ways of surviving the planet
Smiles everyone, smiles!
I made my dentist cry this week. Not for anything you’d expect. I just told him about Japan and how much I had enjoyed it, and while I was relating how very wonderful the trip had been, the hugest grin lit up his face and his eyes welled with happy tears. Dabbing them away with a corner of his white coat, he said, “You seem like the kind of person who would find something to like anywhere you went. Anywhere. New Jersey. ”
It’s true. When I go anywhere—whether it be a fancy luxury vacation or just down the street to a brand new play someone self-produced—I look for things to like. I do this in my relationships too - a bossy assistant manager turned into a 30 year marriage, an email correspondence turned into a 25-year friendship, and this week I went to dinner with a woman I’d briefly met at an out-of-town reading, and after a long and wonderful dinner, we spontaneously added a show, and then drinks to discuss the show! That’s right: a text conversation turned into a five hour NYC night out.
(We saw English: it’s wonderful. Go see it if you or anyone in your family is bilingual in any language. And if you happen to speak Farsi, start running now so you don’t miss it.)
The phrase what’s not to like? comes to mind — but isn’t that exactly the problem with most of our interactions? We look for the thing that is wrong. The thing to fix. The thing that makes the event, moment, person, relationship, not perfect.
And then we complain about it.
Sometimes that’s funny.
Mostly though, it takes the joy down a notch. It’s not as fun to read a novel if you’re looking at the craft and structure and stopping cold at every typo. It’s not as fun to watch a movie if you get thrown out of the narrative every time the main character bursts into song or swim in hatred when your date pulls out a phone to text. Magic shows lose their sparkle when you spend the whole time analyzing the smoke and mirrors. Travel is tedious when you fret over all the locations you have to skip.
Sometimes we just need to give over and enjoy.
After the domestic events of 2023, rendered the cooking in our home up for grabs, I told the kids they could make anything they wanted in the kitchen. They were required only to clean up after themselves, but I would not interfere at all and I would give them cash to go out and buy missing ingredients, they could use anything they found in any shelf, and be as careful or carefree as they liked. I promised them that I would eat anything they made without complaint.
Without complaint and with gratitude.
I have been fortunate not to have to cook nearly at all since then.
Was the food edible at first? There was a lot of extra cinnamon mixed with other random spices in the savory dishes. A lot of sugary baking. A lot of Nutella. Once, there were cookies that seem to have swapped the measurements for baking soda and brown sugar. But I ate anything I was offered, and I was full-on grateful that it appeared before me.
Still am. And guess what? They’ve both become better cooks.
WRITING NEWS
It was nice to get that acceptance last week for the horror short. Inspired me to send out a lot of stories and a few poems again this week. Submitted my poetry collection to some contests. I’m ready to write about Japan, but I have to decide on the medium.
(It will probably be on Medium.) (Don’t worry, I’ll post links.)
I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on for Pen Parentis, but I did get to host the annual Poetry Salon which I always love. They’re word sculptors and I love it.
Going to theater isn’t writing and neither are movies - but I’ve been recently to see the restored Amadeus (do you think it holds up?) and The Brutalist (the only recent film that managed to shock New Yorkers—when the intermission slide came up after two hours the whole theater gasped) and on Broadway: Eureka Day, English, and Left on Tenth. The first two plays were excellent and had a LOT to say. They were fully realized with terrific design and great acting and scripts. The third though, by Deliah Ephron fell flat for me. I liked the acting but found the play an absolutely bland memoir. Summary of the play? “this is why I love my second spouse— P.S. also I had cancer.”
This play had the most irritating preshow music in the history of theater. An endless loop of the Verizon hold music including the perpetual vocal Verizon marketing interruptions; yes it was super-clever and since Delia Ephron basically got famous for hating Verizon it was a good choice, good direction, but truly it was audience abuse— as bad as when they turn spotlights into the audience’s faces. I thought it would reign supreme as the worst pre-show music….until I sat through the incessant heartbeat that is the tooth jarring preshow noise for a new play that premiered near my home (though it bills itself as a hybrid performance piece) Ophelia’s Ocean.
I love experimental theater and I love hybrid work and I don’t even mind noisy clatter-jazz, where people play the insides of pianos and use the back of the bow for the string bass (it has its place and some of it can even be fun), but this whole piece felt like someone’s MFA thesis that they didn’t get a chance to finish. And that heartbeat was canned and irrelevant and was like fingernails on a chalkboard after about thirty seconds… when it stopped two minutes into the show I breathed a very real sigh of relief. When it resumed ten minutes into the show I wanted to cry. It never stopped again. And had no bearing on the show whatsoever.
Does experimental theater tour? After its premiere, what happens to it?
I went to two more shows besides these - saw the Wooster Group’s amazing Symphony of Rats: everything that Ophelia’s Ocean wanted to do but successful, and then I went dancing at Stonewall and caught a fantastic drag show—old school with lip synching, high kicks, gorgeous makeup and catty good fun. Hey, we don’t know the fate of drag starting Monday. It felt a little bit like playing the violin while Rome burned.
Random Final Thought
“Hybrid Performance Art” is redundant…unless of course the performance is part performance and part something else? what else can a performance be? Part performance part…. what isn’t a performance?
"The Brutalist (the only recent film that managed to shock New Yorkers—when the intermission slide came up after two hours the whole theater gasped)" really made me laugh!!
I love how you approached cooking with your children!