Loose Ends

So it's raining out tonight. And the World Series is over. Between those two events I and my roommate are hoping we'll actually get some sleep tonight. It's been weeks, really.

It's been almost two weeks since I attended the National Equality March (NEM) in DC. The last time I went to a march in DC it was the 1987 event that was the inspiration for National Coming Out day. So, twenty-two years to the day, I was marching (occasionally trudging, often sauntering and from time to time even sashaying) at a big political event for LGBT rights. For the last two weeks I've been thinking about what has and hasn't changed in those twenty-two years. Not sure why it's taken me so long to be able to articulate anything interesting about it. Let's see if I can now. Over all I've been feeling positive about things. Politically and personally I'd say things have changed for the better. It's often a case of two steps forward, one step back, but that's better than the other way around.



In 1987 I was 21, a senior in college and attending with a group from school. I don't remember how many of us there were, but we took two college vans, and at the time the group felt huge. The LGBT group on campus had exploded that autumn, in part because the first year class had what was, at the time, an unusually high number of students who were already out. We 'old-timers' were impressed, even a bit intimidated, and we wondered what these confident people were going to do during their sophomore years, what with coming out already taken care of. I'm sure they came up with something.



So, from our small college (enrollment 1100) quite a handful of us chose to head off to the march. Several alumni joined us at the march itself, which reminds me of a funny moment. A woman I barely had known when she was one of the prominent lesbians at Earlham came up to me at the march and congratulated me on "finally coming out."

Feeling my hackles rise ever so slightly, I said, "um, I've been out for nearly three years." (That is to say, for at least one of the years she and I were in school together.)

"Yeah, well, but now you're OUT out. M__ tells me you've come out to your folks and everything."

"Yeah, I told my whole family and all my friends... three years ago."

This was when I learned that because it's news to YOU doesn't mean it's news. I've been careful ever since not to congratulate anyone on "finally coming out."



But back to the marches, here are are some comparisons and contrasts, in no particular order.



In 1987, the initial estimation from the Parks department on the crowd size was 500,000. Then the DC police department issued their estimate as 20,000. Yes, I typed the right number of zeroes in both cases. Five HUNDRED thousand vs. twenty thousand. Immediately after the Police number was announced the Parks department lowered their number to 20,000 as well. It's obviously still an impressive number, but, um, did the Parks department really get it THAT wrong at first? History seems to have accepted the half-mil figure as more accurate. I've been in other politically controversial actions where the numbers of participants varied widely, depending on who you consulted. Make of that what you will.



Everything I've seen suggests the 2009 crowd was about 250,000. One might be tempted to think the smaller numbers at this march is cause for concern, but I'm not sure I do. Maybe there is more complaceny now, but if so, even that can be a weird sign of progress; more people are out, and have more rights than they did in '87. This march was planned in much less time than the '87 one as well, less than six months, by what is being famously described as a grass-roots movement. Marches always spark a certain amount of internecine fighting, but this one came with more of it than usual. Along with the usual arguments against marches as a whole (they don't accomplish anything, people just jump on the bandwagon, people would be better off taking REAL action, rather than just chanting slogans with their friends, etc.) this one brought up a lot of in-fighting between leading organizations and individuals. The Human Rights Campaign initially said it wasn't a good idea, but eventually sign on as a sponsor. Barney Frank, the week before the march, said it was a waste of time, the President didn't need the pressure, and people would do better to stay home and lobby their congress members. Given all that, I'd say 250,000 still sends a pretty strong, albeit vague, message.



I'm not going to devote a lot of time to question of the efficacy of public assembly. I don't doubt that many people come to these things woefully ignorant of the facts, issues and nuances. I'm sure plenty of people go home with a nice warm glow and never do another thing. But I obviously still think these marches are worth organizing and attending. Maybe it's just the theatre-lover in me, but gathering a lot of like-minded folks in as big a group as possible often gives me a morale boost in ways nothing else quite can. It's more than just being surrounded by lots of other LGBT folks. Here in NYC, of course, I could go to a different bar every night if I wanted to. While that may have its own charms, it's not the same as being outdoors, in the sun, feeling like we've taken over an entire city. Even when anger is the dominating influence, I still gain a sense of optimism. I feel reconnected to a larger community, or network of communities.


This trip I went down with a group called Broadway Impact, founded by members of the Broadway Theatre community. BI managed to find sponsors who paid for 32 buses to take New Yorkers to the march for free. Over 1400 of us took advantage of the offer. I was on the Sutton Foster bus, fyi. I still owe Ms. Foster a thank you note, I'm embarrassed to admit. That's next on my agenda. BI came about after three people attended the New York rally protesting the the prop 8 vote in California, by the way. There's an example of a rally galvanizing further action.


Since this group was founded by fairly young folks, most of my fellow passengers were pretty young as well. More than a few of them were clearly attending their first big march. It was fun to realize I was surrounded by people who were in the same boat I was back in '87. Occasionally I felt like a bit of a grandpa, or at least a jolly uncle, but that's an experience I'm having more and more these days anyway. I'm okay with that.



When I look at the changes that has happened since '87, I'm mostly heartened by them. Sure, there are plenty of statistics to feel bad about; it's still legal in 28 states to be fired just for being gay. 35 states still permit LGBT folks to be denied housing, or kicked out of their homes. I can't find the number for the states that have laws on the books denying same-sex marriage, I want to say it's 11, but it might now be 14. This is in addition to DOMA, which denies same-sex marriage on the federal level. I believe Florida has two such laws on the books, so you're doubly not allowed to get married there. They really really REALLY don't want the homos getting hitched in Florida. AIDS may be a manageable disease for many now, compared to '87, but the stats for infection keep rising, especially (at least in this country) among MSM (men who have sex with men), in particular MSM of color. As complicated as my issues are with the military, there's no doubt in my mind that DADT has been a fiasco of a policy, leading to the loss of thousands of valuable troops, and the needless destruction of careers. Violence against LGBT people continues; a particularly vicious case here in NYC occurred recently, to remind us that no place is safe.



But, then there's the glass half-full view. Five states have legalized same-sex marriage, domestic partnerships and civil unions exist in some form or another in other states or cities. Even just the press coverage seems better. In '87 the march was largely ignored by the mainstream press, and you have to remember, back then there wasn't a whole lot more besides the mainstream press. This year I was aware of big coverage before the march happened, even if most of it was squawking from the Rightwing wackadoos (O'Reilly had a lot to say), or articles (there was one in the Times) that focused on the in-fighting. I still see that as progress.



Maybe the biggest change between then and now all boils down the the internet. The story coming out now is that new media played a central roll in organizing the event, decentralizing the movement, putting control in more hands, and galvanizing younger activists. There's no doubt in my mind cell phones played a central role in the age old question of how people find one another in the midst of huge crowds, though they probably didn't help as much as people expected. More than once I heard someone screaming into his/her phone,"WHERE are you? -'By the rainbow flag' doesn't help. --EVERYBODY is chanting! -- WHICH Starbucks?'



Seriously.



Obviously the internet also meant there was a much wider variety of news sources to cover the march. Mainstream media may have still relegated it to a back page, or a side note, but I couldn't tell you if it did. I get most of my gay news online these days, where I have many more resources for finding information. Back in '87 my only gay news source was The Advocate. This is not without its risks of course; the interwebs are big, messy, and unregulated, so I need to do a lot of independent verification of claims. Then again, that was probably always the case (see above re: discrepancies in crowd estimates), and frankly, is just the way news, and democracy works. That reminds me of a fun moment.



At one point the crowd nearest me was chanting the fine old chestnut, "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" A guy near me laughed and said," yeah, this IS what democracy looks like." I knew he was thinking the same thing as me. Yeah, it's loud, messy, sprawling, inefficient, frustrating, unfocused, often misguided or ignorant, and probably the worst form of government there is, after you rule out all the other ones. This sprawling quality was evident in the speeches at the rally as well. There were roughly five million of them. A few were stinkers (don't sing a song if you don't know the lyrics, and don't hold the lyrics if you're never going to look at them, 'kay? Just sayin'), most were adequate and a small handful really stood out. Part of the problem is they all circled virtually the same issues. We want equality. We deserve equality. We're a community made up of people of all colors, genders, orientations, socioeconomic classes, ages, education levels, national origins and political beliefs. You earn extra points for every category you name, which meant a lot of speeches boiled down to long lists. Discrimination in all its forms (and again, list as many of them as possible) is bad and must be stamped out. Hate must be replaced by Love. I'm sounding flippant here, and I don't mean to. These points are all true, all valid. I'm just not sure I need to hear them five million times, from five million different people, including Lady GaGa (who, it has to be admitted, got the biggest crowd response), so by the time the keynote speaker JULIAN BOND comes on to give an INCREDIBLE speech, people are worn out and starting to wander off. Nothing against Lady GaGa either, I don't doubt her sincerity or commitment (she is reported to have done the entire march in five inch heels, by the way), and I am glad an attempt was made to have as wide a spectrum of viewpoints on the stage, but come ON. JULIAN BOND, for chrissakes!

Okay, to be honest, I don't really see a way around this. When one of the biggest tools of bigotry is silencing people, a good response is to give as many people as possible a chance to talk. Nor am I intending to belittle the contributions of performers and pop stars. Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, and Ossie Davis, just to name a few, had a huge influence on the Civil Rights movement, as artists and activists. When it comes to LGBT issues, visibility is a central issue. The more stories we tell, the more out people we have in every profession, the better things get. Maybe I have to remember that progress, like democracy, is rarely efficient. If I want efficient, I'd better try fascism. The trains run on time, by god.


Do I anticipate huge changes because of the NEM? No, not really. The fact is I rarely expect huge changes. I think we will continue to squawk, kick, sue and agitate, each according to our tendencies, we'll demand sweeping reforms and baby steps will result. The fight for equal rights is always fought on many fronts, and victories are rarely due to one action. Julian Bond's wisdom, experience and generous spirit will move some. Lady Gaga's passion and brash spectacle will move others. Kate Clinton's wit, Urvashi Vaid's articulate brilliance, Rufus Wainwright's wistful music, and Barney Frank's blunt political savvy are all making a difference, even if they also spend some time snarling at each other. Much as we may want to present a unified front (and the Civil Rights and Feminists movements have their own struggles with this issue), our goal(s) will always resist that, thank God. I forget that a lot. Nothing like a good march to remind me.

I've been grappling with some thoughts on acting recently, and what follows is a first stab at articulating a few of them. It is far from polished. I decided to post it in all its rough, raw, redundant, contradictory and poorly proofread glory because I needed it out. Undoubtedly others have said what I'm trying to say much more clearly and concisely. I don't pretend to be breaking new ground here, mostly I'm just trying to understand some things better myself. Read it at your discretion and/or peril.

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Acting teachers, when introducing actors to Shakespeare, frequently will announce "Shakespeare verse has no subtext." Like all such absolute statements, this one is sweeping in its implications, may inspire strong resistance, and yes, probably goes too far. Nonetheless if I ever teach a Shakespeare class, I will start with this statement too. I think it’s a good jumping off point for performers unfamiliar with his work; ultimately what I think it does is show actors that instead of bringing our modern understanding of human psychology to Shakespeare, we might be better off STARTING from his understanding of it. And yes, there are some significant, inspiring differences. At its most basic, this approach teaches actors to trust Shakespeare's language, and realize that richest stuff is in the words, not underneath it.

Right off the bat though, the word subtext is going to cause us some trouble. For one thing it’s a word that has slightly different definitions in the worlds of theatre and literary theory. Since these two groups each feel a strong ownership of Shakespeare, and a certain distrust of each other, we’re already in tricky terrain. English professors generally use subtext to describe a literary work’s underlying themes, the implicit meanings or questions the writer is exploring. It is what gives a work its greater resonance, its timeless quality even. It’s central to why we create or enjoy art in the first place.

Actors, however, use it in a slightly different way. Here, even before I’ve adequately addressed the first big ole can of worms, I have to address one of the big debates within the theatrical world, namely the relative value of Stanislavski. I THINK I’ll be able to duck the whole "which Group Theatre hotshot got Stanislavski right" debate (holy sweet mother of god, please), keep your fingers crossed, we’ve got a lot to get through already.

Stanislavski was an actor, director and acting teacher in Russia who, inspired by the writings of Freud, developed a teachable technique for creating characters on stage that contemporary audiences found startling in their psychological richness, detail, and, above all, truth. His focus was creating art, but he wanted art that rang true to an audience’s understanding of human behavior. Audiences found his results electric and his influence quickly spread. Most American-trained actors have at least been introduced to his approach, and even non-actors are probably more familiar with him than you might realize. Lee Strasberg’s method acting ("The Method") is probably the best known version. Anytime you hear jokes about ‘finding my motivation’ or actors seeking out experiences of the characters to truly portray them on stage, you’re dealing with some elements, right or wrong, of Stanislavski. Like all techniques its reputation has suffered from the abuses of loud people getting it wrong, or using it to justify their bad habits and self-indulgences, but when you strip all that away, I believe you end up with an exceptional box of tools for creating art on stage. It’s a technique, which is to say, it’s a way of creating a structure that improves one’s chances of being visited by inspiration, and on the days when inspiration doesn’t hit, one still can end up creating a decent work of art. (I'm also ducking the whole debate about the relative benefits of the outside-in/English approach versus the inside-out/American/Russian approach. Man, are there a lot of cans of worms out there. Yeesh.)

So, with that slight sketch of theatre history, let’s get back to subtext. When actors use the term, they’re grappling with all the unspoken, implicit communication and experience of a character. She may be saying one thing, but feeling something quite different. She may be saying one thing, thinking she means it, but doing something else that leads an audience to question what she really thinks or feels. It’s even possible she might be suffering no cognitive dissonance at all, what she’s feeling, saying and doing all match up perfectly. Frankly a lot of actors, especially young ones, tend to forget about this last option, because they think it's more impressive to make a character as complex as possible, but even in modern, subtext-heavy plays, it's important to remember that sometimes characters do mean what they say.

Sometimes subtext and motivation get equated, but while they're tightly entwined, they're not the same. Most modern plays (Post-Freud) will have lots of subtext, and actors love this stuff. It's like a treasure hunt; we know what a character says and does, but we may not know WHY she does or says it, and we have to come up with a reason. It's one of the ways personal interpretation enters the picture; if you come up with an answer to the question and it works without contradicting anything else in the play, then you can use it. Audience members may catch it, they may not, and even if they don't, they may still realize something intriguing just happened. When you go out with friends after a play or movie for coffee and find yourselves debating "so what was going on when he gave her that LOOK," you're discussing subtext. The actor definition, that is. (When you're discussing the title image in Brokeback Mountain, say, wondering if it represents the freedom of the natural world, or a prison of isolation, you're dealing with the literary definition of subtext.)

Directors have to handle both definitions of subtext, since they are responsible for shaping the overall experience for the audience. Essentially they help shape the actor’s choices so her character then tells the story that reveals the plays literary themes. For a play to work effectively, the characters' journeys have to support the larger theme. You got all that? You still with me?

Lots of directors believe actors should never concern themselves with things like a play's theme, for fear that this will distract or confuse them, cause them to be outside the character (that is, thinking like a director or audience member) rather than inside her, living her experience. For now I won’t get into why I think that’s a short-sighted approach perpetrated by insecure directors who believe actors must be treated like children, since as I’ve established, I’ve already bitten off QUITE a lot to chew on. Let me just say here that, bottom line, I agree an actor’s first, main responsibility is to her character’s journey, and anything that is too theoretical, or pulls an actor outside the action of the play, is counter-productive. I'll also admit some actors do get distracted by literary stuff, or try too hard to be clever, at the expense of truth. Mature artists though, learn to interprete the whole script, and root their choices accordingly.

Okay, so where were we? Shakespeare, right. Why do I think the statement "Shakespeare’s verse has no subtext" is a useful concept to teach to actors specifically? Obviously according to the literary definition, Shakespeare is crawling with subtext. This is also one of the reasons theatre people love him, of course; we like tackling big human questions as much as anyone, and Shakespeare has us doing it with characters who are psychologically complex, compelling and familiar. Since his characters are obviously driven by passions, urges, desires, and fears, discovering and communicating them to an audience is still necessary, right? Doesn't that seem to require subtext as we've defined it? Won't most of the juicy stuff be unspoken and implicit?

Not necessarily.

Okay, stick with me here. Stanislavski was inspired by Freud, remember. Freud has so permeated our culture that our thought is shaped by him whether we know it or not. Pop psychology is usually Freud-lite, frankly. We may sneer at how neurotic he was, we may suggest he was the king of projection his own self ('Sigmund, are you sure that's just a cigar? I think someone's in denial...'), we may wonder if anyone BESIDES him ever actually wanted to have sex with his mother, but he still has changed the way we view human behavior. His theory of the unconscious is so central to our understanding of human behavior now that most of us don’t realize that wasn’t always the case, maybe don't even realize it is, in fact, 'just a theory', not unlike evolution. Stanislavski’s technique, and the plays of Chekhov, Ibsen, Pinter, early Strindberg, O’Neill, basically most of the great playwrights SINCE Freud really require a theory of the unconscious to work fully. What this boils down to in part is, we believe characters can have strong, driving motivations that they aren't actually aware of.

Most people before Freud (and plenty of them afterward, even still) would have found this idea perplexing at best. The idea that we all had some secret part of our brains busily working away, knitting sweaters, interpreting things, having reactions, motivating our behavior without us even knowing it, well, that would have sounded like crazy talk. I know I’m getting into weird territory even bringing this up. I believe Freud himself said that Shakespeare basically first ‘discovered’ psychology (something about how Hamlet beautifully illustrates the Oedipus complex, for starters). I think a reasonable argument could be made that Socrates, Plato, and Euripides -just to name a few- dealt with concepts that act much like Freud’s theory, but that too is an issue for another discussion. Even the Elizabethans, as heirs to the medieval age, believed people could be motivated by forces they had no control over, but they mostly thought of it as madness, or demonic possession.

Because of our cultural thinking, actors have been taught to distrust what a character says, or at least to question it pretty closely. We’re taught that the important, real stuff, the actual drives of the character lie deeper than words. A character's words may provide a clue to her motivations, but probably won’t tell us everything, and might be misleading. Also because of Freud, but perhaps also because of the proliferation of film (which I would argue is a more visual than language-based medium), we as a culture have started to believe the most devastating or resonant experiences of a person probably can’t be put into words. We believe language is inadequate.

"It’s beyond words" is a concept Shakespeare, and all the Elizabethans, would have most likely found ludicrous. (Interesting side-note. We go to see a play. The Elizabethans went to hear a play.) For them, the human experience couldn’t be understood without language. An experience might be difficult to put into words, one might have to work at it, distilling it down to verse might be the only way to get at it, but everything that could be experienced could be articulated by someone. Post-Freud, even if we believe an experience can be put into words, we still may think that the words and the experience are two separate events. For Shakespeare’s characters on stage, there is no separation between thought, word and action. They are all one thing. The language IS the experience.

This assertion might lead many to think I’m suggesting Shakespeare’s characters lack complexity and depth. Nothing could be further from the truth. They experience overwhelming emotions (good and bad), inner conflicts and ambivalence. They use irony, metaphor and simile. They lie when it suits their purpose. Nonetheless, they never lack the ability to put all those experiences into words, and the words don’t float on top the experience, they don’t report the experience after it happens, they ARE the experience. Far from rendering his character’s facile, this actually gives them vigor. They say what they mean, and mean what they say. Even when Iago is lying his face off (which is to say virtually anytime he’s not delivering a soliloquy) he knows he’s lying, he knows why he’s lying, he knows what he’s fighting to make happen. Most importantly, he needs those words, his actions can’t exist without them. Shakespeare’s characters all need their words. (Frankly any well-written character does, which is part of why learning to do Shakespeare well is a good foundation for learning to act in any other play.) We’re all familiar with the idea that Shakespeare wrote beautiful language, but often people interprete that to mean his language is 'heightened', ethereal, somehow rarified and pure. Actually his language is fully wrapped up with the human condition. Read Juliet's 'Gallop apace' speech, as she waits for her new husband to come to her, to find out just how earthy Shakespeare's poetry can be (some useful information; the verb 'come' had the sexual connotation for the Elizabethans that it does for us, and orgasms were sometimes called 'the little death'. Aren't you intrigued now?). Sure, the characters will sometimes address big issues, but it's never because they're in the mood to philosophize. No, they're grappling with important things because something about their lives right that instant demands it. The sound and the content support each other, and the character saying the lines can’t put it any other way.

Okay, yes, let me reinterate, I know I’m making sweeping, absolute statements here, and even I can start to think of characters who might be exceptions to the rule, but I still believe going to meet Shakespeare at HIS understanding of human behavior rather than dragging him immediately to our Post-Freud/Stanislavki world is at the very least a useful exercise. Sure Mercutio’s Mab Speech seems to get away from him in a way that suggests he’s not in control, and maybe that suggests unconscious motivations (though I would argue it proves him to be of questionable sanity, and as his names suggests, prone to mercurial mood changes). Sure, Regan says her father, King Lear, ‘hath ever but slenderly known himself,’ and self-ignorance seems to assume an unconcious (but I would argue his real problem is a huge ego, a weakness for flattery, and undertanding others but slenderly.) Beatrice and Benedict may be the most clearly driven by unconscious feelings at some points, but I would also point out that neither one of them ever speaks a line of verse. Not one. They speak prose throughout the entire play. Which, yup, you guessed it, is a topic for another time.

Add to the (now gargantuan list) of things I might write about later is how studying Shakespeare has shaped my own relationship with words. When I was a young, closeted, shut-down teenager, his language first came to force me to rejoin the human race. Learning to embody, not just speak his words, was scary, heady, and ultimately very healing. Even so, I needed to spend some time afterwards relearning to trust my body, and that was best done through the medium of dance, mask-work, and physical theatre. I'd learned early on to lie with words, but my body was always a terrible liar. Only in the last ten years have I come to realize how unconsciously I accepted the prevailing cultural concept that strong emotional experiences defied words, that articulation could only render something small, facile or cliche. I'm returning to language, to words, and finding out just how much power they can have.

So my advice to actors and readers of Shakespeare boils down to this; read the words. Start from there. Assume everything you need to know about the character is there in the text. Once you have the structure of the character's journey, then you may start noticing subtext, but don't assume that all the good stuff is hidden under the surface, waiting to be discovered and interpreted. Maybe this approach won’t get you all the way you need to go. But it’s going to be a damn good start.

My sister wrote me an email recently, that gave me a lot of comfort. Contrary to her fears, I think there is plenty in this dream that will resonate for others, so--with her permission--I am sharing an excerpt here.

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(Christmas 1986, Laceyland)

A couple of days ago, I got up at 5:00 AM, after almost NO SLEEP AT ALL, to see Tony off for an overnight trip. After breakfast, I tried to stay up, figuring that was the way to hope to sleep that night. But I couldn't do it: I gave up around 8:00 and went back to bed, where I remained, with a couple of bathroom trips, until 5:00 PM. I slept most of the day, with Eddie curled up next to me, and Bob and Ray playing quietly on the CD player... Late in the afternoon, I [dreamed] about James, and the dream has made a real difference to me. The story began without warning, just me on the dog couch at Laceyland, crying and crying and leaning into thee, also crying, saying again how much we miss James. Thy arms went around me and we sobbed for a few seconds, but then I opened my eyes to discover that thy flannel pajamas had changed into HIS flannel pajamas. And when I looked up, the hug was with James, and it wasn't grieving for anyone. It was just Christmas morning and we were settling down after breakfast, waiting for the others to come in and open presents. I looked to my left, and thee was on the other couch, grinning. And then in that miraculous way that dreams work, several other things happened--in succession or simultaneously. I saw Brian in the dining room. I heard Mom and Dad in the kitchen. I saw my darling friend Eileen, and she was meeting thee and James for the first time, but as little boys--the ages her boys were when Tony and I first met them--and she swung James up on her hip and said, "Someone needs a diaper change!" And he gurgled and we all giggled. And I could feel myself coming to the surface again, with a clear insight that I was trying to put into words. As I woke up, I knew that the closest I was going to get was, "All times exist at once. Love is the continuum." The dream seemed utterly explicit, for once in a goddamned long time: that love is linked to that love and linked to that love and linked . . . and everything is happening then, now, and forever. I know it wasn't a vision, as such. And I also know that a sad tired me could cook up any number of things in a dream state. But it matters so much to me, to have had that transformation--grief into joy--then into now--with all the anachronisms and impossibilities just part of the whole. I got up, got dressed, and wrote my precious wisdom or sappy self-deception down and stuck it in the zipper compartment of my purse, had something to eat, washed the breakfast dishes, read the mail . . . I am still so sad, and will be, but the comfort is real. Someone else's dream is so rarely any use to others! But I knew thee would get it, and I thought thee might like to know, especially since one of the photos on the blog mentions the flannel PJ's.

(Christmas 2002, Laceyland)

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I don't really have much to add beyond "yeah, what she said." That, of course, won't stop me from babbling though, as most of you must realize by now.

This past year, and especially this summer, I've been relearning just what a force of nature love is. It's a word that has been cheapened from overuse, sentimentalized (or is it commodified?) by Hollywood, Hallmark, and Harlequin, but that's the problem with deep, archetypal forces. Because they're fundamental, maybe they're beyond our abilities to put them into words. Or maybe love is like oxygen; we're most likely to notice it in its absence, or its purest, most intoxicating form. In any case, I've had many opportunities to see love at work, in all its messy, clumsy, unrelenting beauty. Recently more of those opportunities have been in the form of a coming together of communities (weddings, births, reunions, anniversaries, memorials) as opposed to the passionate romance often identified as love at its greatest. I'm not belittling that expression of it (it's just a distant memory, boo-hoo, poor me, cue the violins), but I'm grateful for the other ways I've experienced it in the last year.

Yup, not really saying anything new here. Mary said it better already. Love transcends space and time. Whether it's evidence of a sentient higher being, an evolutionary tactic for propagating the species, or a universal force akin to gravity, I've been feeling its presence in palpable ways lately. I wouldn't say it's always been FUN, per se, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

I'm always delighted when more greenery is added to an urban environment. Turning previously unusable space--with a minimum of fall-out for locals, I hope-- into a public park is inspired, I think. Next time you're in town, Greg, we'll be sure to go. I hope your recovery is speedy and painless.