So many talented friends

Two nights ago, I drove to a town 1 1/2 hour north of home to see our faux grandson play Brad in The Rocky Horror Show.  This is the tall, mop-haired, goofy, sweet young man who played my grandson in a series of commercials I was hired for in Boise last year.  He no longer has grandparents, so Sweet Hubby and I have sort of adopted him, or he's adopted us.  He's come over a couple of times for movies, and we took him tunnel flying once.  He's still young and unfinished, but he's going to make a terrific and admirable man as he matures.

This was my first time see Rocky Horror live, and it was quite the hoot.  More than half the audience were in costumes, and the theater handed out bags of props for those moments in the show which have come to call for them (squirt guns, phony coins, cards, etc).  Those member of of the audience also knew the show well enough to shout out questions at different moments of the play.  The costumes, both in the audience and onstage, were outrageous - a lot of bustiers, corsets, fishnet stockings, loads of cleavage.  (Too bad Sweet Hubby wasn't feeling well and couldn't join me.)  The cast members really threw themselves into their roles, totally committed.  It's hard to beat Tim Curry, though, for outrageousness and commitment to a role.  I actually met him once, and he seemed absolutely nothing at all like Dr. Frank N. Furter.  He was a quiet, modest English gentleman who loved to talk about gardening.  (Of course, I don't know what he's like in private.)  Anyway, this was a delightful, raucous evening.

Last night I went with friends to a town not quite an hour south of home to see one of our mutual friends in a very old (1923) play about a supposedly haunted train depot.  Our friend was terrific; we hardly recognized her when she first appeared onstage.  Too bad her character ends up sleeping through a lot of the play.  The actors showed different levels of skill, but it was an enjoyable enough evening.

Tomorrow SH and I are driving 3 hours to Portland, OR to see yet another friend in yet another play.  This friend is someone I met decades ago in acting classes.  Like me, she has never quite been able to create a sustained, successful acting career and, like me, she continues to look for opportunities to scratch that performing itch, which never seems to go away for some of us.

So those have been and will be my Something News for these few days.  New plays, new theaters, new experiences.  I do have so many talented friends, and not just actors.  Because of all the writers in my sphere, I feel as though I'm always reading a new or in-progress play, novel, essay or poetry collection.  What a treat.  I try never to miss supporting a friend's accomplishments, and not just because of course I love for them to support mine.

Back from travels

Here I am again, back home after an absolutely fantastic week of family and friends, old and new.  My niece's wedding was so beautiful.  The weather was cool and bright and windy.  I had written out the ceremony I wanted to lead, but found that trying to memorize it made me feel stiff and artificial, so I just made note of the points I wanted to touch on and then allowed myself to be in the moment.  There was much laughter during the ceremony, and also a lot of happy tears.  And best of all, my family is just wild about the man who became part of us that day.

There were loads of folks from my family, but fortunately a lot of friends and family of the groom also showed up.  It was delightful getting to know some of them at different gatherings throughout the several days.  That was pretty much my Something New for the week.  I was in a familiar place, with the familiarity of my family around me, eating at favorite restaurants, walking a coastline trail I've walked hundreds of times in the past.  The newness was meeting the groom's family and friends, having jolly, inquiring conversations, some of which went deep and some of which danced on the surface.

I find that I enjoy big hooplas, but also sometimes find them tiring, having to rise to a continuous flow of socializing, often having to speak loudly to be heard and strain to hear.  The smaller, quieter gatherings were my favorite.  Best of all was when another niece and her husband stopped by the house where Sweet Hubby and I were staying.  They are new parents (Baby was at the hotel in the care of her grandmother), so it was a treat for them to be able to be out without carrying baby and all the stuff stuff stuff that comes with her.  It was about 11pm when they knocked, and the four of us stayed up until almost 3am, talking and talking and talking.  I haven't had a lengthy conversation with this niece for ever so long, and this was my first chance to really get down with her husband, who I continue to fall in love with.  What joy to be with them in a private, quiet setting.

All in all, the week was satisfying, nourishing, exciting, fun, and best of all, I got to share it with Sweet Hubby.

Familiar and strange

It has felt so very familiar and also so very strange to be in Monterey and Pacific Grove again.  So much of my life has been spent here, but not for a long time.  I'm having to become reacquainted with the streets and stores and restaurants.  It has been interesting to notice which have survived through the years and the pandemic, and which have been replaced.

It was a day of many Somethings New.  My motel is close to a park that I and my family have driven past many x8 times, but until today I had never stepped foot in it.  It's a large park that encompasses a long pond, a cemetery, an astounding children's play area, and lots of trees and grass.  I walked the periphery until I got to the playground.  Then I gave in to the urge to have some fun on the varied and inventive play stations.  I slid down 3 slides: a curvy one, a spiral, and one made up of red rollers.  There was a maze path, and an arched bridge, and a suspension bridge, as well as a merry-go-round (not a carousel) on which were installed cages one could stand in and twirl on an axis.

When I told Sweet Hubby about this part of my day, he asked if any of the kids gave me the stink eye.  I said maybe a parent or two might have but that I hope they would just think this old lady is still young at heart.  The playground and the walk were wonderful fun, and I'd already gotten almost 8K steps on my  Fitbit by the time the next part of the day started.

My Santa Cruz friend Liz came to pick me up and we went into small, homey downtown Monterey to look for a lunch spot.  We ended up at a Thai restaurant, not exotic but new to us both, and after real food, finished with ice cream from a place famous for its odd flavorings.  I had a scoop of honey/cinnamon/quince ice cream, which tasted good and had a strange, grainy texture.  New thing #3 already.

After an afternoon of driving along and then sitting by the rocky shoreline together, Liz went back to Santa Cruz.  I read for a while (Brideshead Revisted), then took myself into Pacific Grove for dinner at a new (to me) restaurant.  I even ordered a salad with an ingredient I'd never heard of: lardons, which, it turns out, at this restaurant at least, are cubes of smoked salmon.  (The dictionary defines lardon as a piece of bacon used to lard meat.)

Tomorrow SH and lots of family members will be showing up in PG and the pre-wedding hurrahs will begin, probably involving many meals, many games, many, many conversations.  I'll check in when I can, but now must go practice the ceremony I've planned for my niece and her fiancé.  Let the fun begin!

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Traveling again

It turns out I do have access to my blogs when I travel, so here I go.  I'm in beautiful Monterey, CA to officiate my niece's wedding.  I've come a few days early because I used to live here and still have friends in the area.  When I left Los Angeles in 2000, I moved for two years to nearby Pacific Grove to live in the little beach cottage that had been my family's vacation home since my childhood.  After an intense romance with a bitter ending, I moved on a whim to Seattle, where I immediately felt at home.  Soon after, my parents had the cottage remodeled, modernized, and expanded, and this was their home 'til their last days.

Even though I was only in Pacific Grove for two years, I came away with some very close friendships. and am happy now to have a reason to come back to visit in person.  The wedding will take place in a park just across the street from what was our parents' home, which is now a vacation rental owned by others.  In fact, six of us in the wedding party will be staying at that house for the next few days, which will no doubt be both familiar and strange.  So much of my family's life was lived in that house; so many memories, mostly good, of holidays, vacations, honeymoons, gatherings of all kinds.  I'm feeling very nostalgic for my mom right now.

But on to Something New.  I have a confession to make.  I'm very disappointed in myself.  The day before I left on this trip, Sweet Hubby and I went to a new (to us) Chinese restaurant, a place so authentic, we barely recognized anything on the menu.  There were, on the back page, some dishes listed as "standard" Chinese food, meaning food Americans would recognize, and my confession is that I ordered from that page instead of daring some of the more, shall we say, ethnic and colorful dishes.  So I am determined that we will go to this place again and I will order one of the pig ear/beef tendon/black fungus/I've-no-idea- what-this-is dishes.  Most of them look pretty chili-fied, though, and my little white bread tongue doesn't always do well with a lot of spicy heat.  But I'm going to give it a try.  I'm so embarrassed that I didn't the first time.

Still looking for the new

It's been challenging lately to do/see/experience Somethings New because Sweet Hubby and I have been staying inside most of the time to avoid the smoky air.  I'm grateful not to be closer to the fires raging around us.  I believe this smoke is currently coming from Eastern WA.  It has been almost a month of bad air, which is a shame.  We missed a lot of the last of the warm days when it would have been good to be out on the deck, and it has been difficult to get in as many steps as I usually do because of not taking my nice long walks.

SH and I did venture out on our final couch-hunting expedition.  After sitting on many, many couches covered in many different fabrics, we finally found the one we both really like, as well as the fabric to cover it.  It won't arrive for several months because it is being custom upholstered.  This is the first time we've looked for and bought a brand new piece of large furniture together, so I'm counting this as Something New.

I've also begun writing a new short play, my first play based on a fairy tale (Something New!).  I've been slogging through a couple of difficult, somber full length plays and needed to take a break, so this new one is going to be light and funny (or so I hope).  It's about Prince Charming telling his father that he has met the girl he wants to marry (Snow White), and the king's reaction to learning that she has been living with seven male dwarfs.

I also went through, cleaned out, wiped down, and re-organized one of my desk drawers, the one which holds a  hodge-podge of brads, tacks, rubber bands, new pencils and pens, glue, head lamps, calculator, etc.  I discovered 8 thumb drives, some of which seem to be empty, some of which carry videos from early early tunnel flying sessions.  One has my photos from the trip to Palestine, and another is a video of a movie version of one of my short plays, starring Ed Asner and Barbara Baine.  (Sadly, not a very good movie, although it won a couple of awards at minor film festivals.)  I want to go through these thumb drives with SH to see if I'm missing content on the ones which seem to be empty.

And I bought a purple, almost black, bell pepper and a Japanese cucumber.  Neither of them terrible exotic, but still, I'd never tried either before because I tend to go for what I already am familiar with.  Both were quite tasty.

I'm setting out tomorrow on another trip to CA, this time to officiate my niece's wedding.  It's going to be a big family gathering, and I'm excited about it, but recognize that I may not be posting every day.  Still, I'll do my best to keep stretching and exploring and experimenting.

Home from travels

I was traveling for several days and didn't have access to my blogs, but I was doing many Something News every days while I was gone, and since I've been back.

I was in Los Angeles with the double intention of seeing a play of mine performed and catching up with some of the friends I left behind when I moved to Seattle.  It was an almost perfect stretch of days.  The weather was good, not too hot, not too smoggy.  The performances of my play were pretty good, good enough that I wasn't embarrassed for friends to see it.  And best of all was getting together with one of my best best best friends, plus good friends I haven't see in quite a while, plus finally being face to face with a writing colleague I'd only met online up to now.

It was my first time going to the theater that produced my play, even though this theater has been in existence for 60 years.  So that was new.  Driving the streets of Los Angeles was new because I was in an area in the San Fernando Valley I didn't used to frequent when I lived in Hollywood.  Even the car I was driving was new, my first time driving and parking an SUV.  It wasn't huge, but it did take some getting used to.  Happily for me and the rental company, no accidents nor dings.  All of the restaurants I went to for meals with friends were new.  (When I was on my own, I went to the Denny's across the street from my hotel.)

Since coming home, I've done several new things, including going to some consignment stores with Sweet Hubby to look for a new couch for our living room.  I have to say, I'm going to feel some sorrow when we move our old couch downstairs.  That couch was the first big piece of furniture I chose and bought all on my own.  I've had it for 20 years, and it has served me and us very well.  I like the way it looks (denim blue), it's comfy for sitting and for stretching out on for a nap, and it is by now soaked through with memories of me and SH sitting on it watching movies with cats in our laps.  We've found the new couch we want and are now in the process of deciding what fabric we want it covered in.  We're also on the verge of finding new kitties, so the time for making new memories is approaching.  Still, I love my old couch and will miss it when it's out of sight.

One other Something New: I tried a bottled drink, Honey Water with Ginger.  Yuck.  I drank it because both honey and ginger are supposed to be nutritious, but still - yuck.  Once was enough.

Another singer I've never heard of

Today I listened to a CD by an artist named Skye Dyer.  She's a lovely young woman with a sweet voice, sort of  Mindy Smith-ish sounding.  Her father is Wayne Dyer, an author famous for books about self improvement and self actualization, although that has nothing to do with her music.

This was a short CD, only six songs.  As I said, her voice is sweet and the songs are sweet, with a slight hint of country.  Listening to her got me thinking about why some singers (or artists of any sort, but I'll stick to singers) become famous and some, who have perfectly nice faces and voices, do not.  How is Skye Dyer different from, let's say, Dolly Parton?  What does Dolly have that Skye doesn't?  (This is not a set-up for a boob joke, by the way.)  For one thing, Dolly is, or was, a prolific songwriter.  And while Skye's voice is sort of blandly sweet, Dolly's is distinctively sweet, with a cute little vibrato.  Skye is pretty, and so is Dolly, but Dolly went farther with her looks, going to spangles and fringe and showy outfits, at least in the first part of her career.

So is it how they look and sound that has made the difference in the trajectory of their careers?  I do wonder, often, about what brings fame to some and not to others.  There's obviously a lot more to it than talent.  Is it more a matter of drive, ambition, commitment, unwavering hunger for success?  I have no way to measure that factor in these women's careers, but I do tend to think that drive may, or must, be the single most important piece of the puzzle.  I have talent.  I have persistence.  But I do not have drive.  Never have had.  I don't know that I've ever been 100 percent committed to anything besides my marriage.

Sometimes I wonder if my life has been too easy, and that's why I lack the ferocity that might have taken me further in my careers (writing and acting).  I just haven't had much to push against, and it's pushing against something (poverty, discrimination, abuse, bullying, tragedy, loss, fear, etc) that makes us strong.  I've certainly had my setbacks and difficulties.  There was a stretch of several years when I was paying my rent in chunks because I never had the whole amount at one time.  But I always knew that my family would catch me if I started to fall, and they did step in to help when I needed it most.  I was mugged about five times, but never harmed.  I've had illnesses and accidents, but none that caused lifelong pain or limitations.  I've had heartaches by the dozens, but very little actual grief.

Maybe this is where the charming myth about artists starving in garrets comes from, the fact that starving artists are more driven to succeed than the well-fed.  Or maybe that's bunkum.  Maybe circumstances have nothing whatsoever to do with one's success.  Maybe some become successful and some don't and there's no telling why.  But it is a fascinating subject to someone like me, who has nibbled around the edges of success without ever making a whole meal of it.

Pop songs and cold soup

This evening I listened to a CD by Tanika Tikaram.  It was one of the ones I had snagged at the library book sale.  I'd never heard of this artist, couldn't tell from the cover photo if she was male or female (female), didn't know what kind of music to expect.  But because of the exotic name, as well as the title of the CD, "Ancient Heart", I was expecting something international or meditative, maybe chanting and droning with drums, something along those lines.

Nope.  She's sort of a pop singer/songwriter, with a very ordinary voice, and not particularly deep, insightful, nor poetical lyrics.  It was for this sort of artistic experience that the term 'meh' was invented.  I don't mean to dismiss her too callously.  She did get a CD made, after all, and wrote all the songs herself.  But still, meh.

The other Something New today was a bowl of cold cucumber soup at a friend's house.  Probably very healthy, and the other friend at table seemed to really enjoy it and even asked for the recipe.  But for me, meh.  The rest of dinner was terrific, and the conversation as we dined was far-ranging and full of fun and deep thoughts alike.  And that made the evening very much not meh. 

I wonder how it tastes

Today after breakfast and Sunday paper, Sweet Hubby and I went to a Farmers Market.  I decided that today I would get some produce I've never tried before. 

These included an ivory pepper, a slightly smaller member of the bell pepper family, a lovely pearly color.  We had some slices of it on a vegetable sandwich.  Quite tasty.  I also got an 8-Ball zucchini, which is round with a speckled skin.  Had that steamed for dinner, along with corn on the cob.  Got to eat as much fresh corn as we can while the season lasts.  The 8-Ball has a gentle squash-y taste.

The most unusual of the new items was a clump of lion's mane mushroom.  It's a strange-looking fungus which looks sort of like solidified foam.  I hadn't the slightest idea what to do with it, so the vendor suggested tearing it into small pieces and mixing it up with egg and bread crumbs, like a faux crab cake.  So that's what I did, although I put some jalapeno relish in the mix, which rather over powered the taste of the mushroom.  I'm glad I tried it, though.  I'd seen it before and always shied away because it's so different from anything I've eaten before.  I'm enjoying this exploration into new sensation.

Also new today (which is now yesterday) was listening to a Lenny Kravitz CD.  I'd heard of Kravitz, of course, and knew he is a musician, but my exposure to him as been in his role as Katniss Everdeen's sympathetic, doomed costumier Cinna.  I didn't care for the first couple of numbers, which are harder rock than I usually listen to.  But I'm glad I stuck it out for the rest of the CD, which is more to my liking.  A talented man for sure, who wrote (writes) most of his own music. 

Jina langu ni nani

Sweet Hubby and I didn't leave the house today because of the smoky air from fires around us, so today my Something New was taking a Duolingo lesson in Swahili. 

Really fascinating to attempt to learn a language so very different from mine.  If I were going to pursue this study, I would have to review the first, most elemental, lesson, maybe a few times.  The lesson was all pronouns and whether someone is Kenyan, Tanzanian, American, or Dutch.  The title of this blog entry means "What is my name?"  Pretty much all I have retained is that 'ni' means 'is'.  I'm still not sure which of these words is 'name' but I think it's 'jinu'.  

I have friends who lived in Africa (can't remember which country) and became proficient in Swahili.  Maybe that's why I chose that over the other languages Duo offers.  Talk about a mind stretch.  I'm starting to wish I had infinite time available.  I am so hungry to learn, so hungry to read more books, learn more languages, listen to more music, visit more parks and neighborhoods and countries, write more plays.  I want to know at the end of my life that I said "I love you" often enough.

I still feel younger than my age, but I finally know for certain and for sure that my time is temporary, limited, finite.  I saw that recently all in a flash, that every summer will keep rolling over into fall and fall into winter and winter into spring.  I see now the inherent cascading of one year, one season, one day, one moment into another.  Time isn't speeding up for me so much as it is becoming clear to me the inexorable progression of seconds that make up my life, every life.

So yeah, Swahili.  Interesting.