The eighth day*.
We’ve already been to the playground on this, yet another, glorious Seattle spring day. Declan has a fairly rigid agenda at each of the two play grounds we visit. I won’t list regimens here here. But I think it’s fascinating how toddlers instinctively build a routine around themselves. No one needs to tell them that the path to enlightenment consists of “chop wood, carry water.”
So how do we lose of the path?
Scroll down from my last daylog and read Iceowl’s. I’m merely vamping here: filibustering until a baby comes out of my wife. Iceowl, conversely, is in touch with the angels. He warns us not to do anything from anger. He knows, for instance, that writing from anger is a waste of time. For my part, I know that sometimes, a lot of times, anger is all that I have. There was a noder here who asked me to look at something she was working on, thinking of posting. I gave her my thoughts. Several days later I saw her in the catbox. She hadn’t yet posted what she asked me to take a look at. As far as I know, she still hasn’t. It was glorious stuff. Really gutsy. It pissed me off that she hadn’t posted it, so I started beating on her in the catbox. It’s what I do to artists, including myself: I beat on them, in the hopes it gets them to shit or get off the pot. In cases other than my own I find it’s rarely particularly constructive. As I said, she still hasn’t posted it.
I’m not even sure if it’s ultimately constructive when it comes to me, and this is no small part of the reason that doubt makes up so much of my relationship to writing. If I really dig at myself, I’ll start to pose the really cancerous questions, like: “Why do you write plays primarily, when the theatre is the most moribund museumified art form of the 20th and 21st centuries? Have you put yourself in this trap on purpose? Out of anger? Are you writing from anger for an impossible world of anger, so that when nothing comes of it, well, at least you can stay angry? And safe?”
I wish I could hardlink other noders’ writeups, because if I could I would hardlink the third sentence in the second-to-last paragraph of Iceowl’s May 28, 2005 to “bodhisattva.”
I wish the angels talked to me, but they don’t. They talk to Iceowl, though. And he talks to me. So that’s almost just as good. Maybe better?
Yeah, I think maybe better.
It’s my good friend Jason Kravits’ birthday today. Jason did a season on The Practice, playing the nasty nebbishy assistant district attorney Richard Bay. He was hoping our baby would come today. It could still happen. It’s only 10am PDT as I write this. But given that Heather’s previous labor lasted 21 hours, the odds aren’t looking great given that she hasn’t yet felt a twinge.
Sorry, Jason. Have a fabulous birthday anyway.
Late breaking update: about 4:30pm today, I notice Heather wince slightly and touch her belly. I asked her what was up, and she confessed that she'd been getting slight contraction-like cramps all day today, ever since mopping the kitchen floor while Declan and I were at the playground early this morning. She didn't say anything because they've yet to form any regular pattern.
So stay tuned!
*An excellent novel, btw, by my favorite American playwright, Thornton Wilder. I can’t recommend it enough.