memories

Pinter and the practice of pause

/ autumncircles / 5 Comments

It has been a long time since I studied Harold Pinter’s work in a scholarly fashion and yet I was saddened by his recent death.  I love the seemingly simplistic dialogue in his plays that were anything but simple.

Pinter had the miraculous gift to put ordinary people into misleading situations that often brought about emotionally brutal results.

And, of course, the pauses.

Cannot help but love the pauses.

When I was an actor, interpreting the air and being alive during those pauses was more than an exhilarating challenge – it was akin to  becoming a prima ballerina.  To get it right could take years of experience and training and yet it needed to appear effortless to anyone watching.

It could be as basic as letting the directed time pass until your next line or it could be as difficult as thinking of the eight million things you want to say until the sound of the scripted words makes the journey from the bottom of your diaphragm through the saliva pooling at the back of your throat where it finally escapes through your possibly trembling lips.

Those are the pauses I remember.  Those are the pauses I have more experience with in my real life.  I have never, ever been even remotely adequate at allowing time to pass without marking every second with a blistering bombardment of questions waging gangland warfare on my conscious state.

Fortunately, as I’ve gotten older and have less time in which to participate in these paralyzing games, the previously determined pauses are fewer and their duration far shorter.

The unexpected pause, however, still, well – gives me pause.

A comment from one of my kids that pierces my sternum because it comes from someone too young to couch it behind anything but the truth.

A pointed remark from someone I had believed was not capable of tossing them out at me especially when it is repeated and shared with others.

The extra wrinkles, continuous pain from a distant surgery, and rapid mood shifts that I was not warned about occurring so early in my aging age.

The moment unimaginable news is delivered about someone I love that absolutely alters my cellular makeup.

The intensity and reason for the pause may have varying levels of degree and importance within whatever hierarchy the linear part of my brain has placed on my life while the pause itself reverberates the same Pinteresque array of colors in the other.  Together, they create an internal conversation akin a stage play performed by extremely talented actors without an audience.

Voice on the Phone
You know, it was our anniversary on Monday.

Pause. [Me thinks “oh, shit” what do I do now?  How mad is she? I really did mean to call – even picked out a present but just ran out of time to get it done.]

Me
Oh. Yes. I am sorry. I forgot.

Pause. [Me thinks the Voice on the Phone is thinking, I cannot believe you didn’t call – what does that say about you?  What does that say about your relationship with me?]

Voice on the Phone
Yes.  Well, I almost forgot, too, until he reminded me.

Pause. [Me thinks well, crap, you forgot my birthday more than once.  I didn’t realize we were keeping score but now that I know we are I guess it’ll have to be game-on.]

Me
Well, I am sorry I forgot – Happy Anniversary.

Pause. [Me thinks I don’t want to fight with this person.  I want to love this person and have this person love me without conditions like I thought it was supposed to be.  Will it never be possible?]

Voice on the Phone
Thanks.

Silence. [Me thinks I won’t outlive this one either.  It will be added to the ever-present grade-book that I don’t know where it is hidden nor the grading system in which to get a passing grade.  I guess that’s okay as long as I remember the rules I was never told.]

Me
Okay.  So, I’d like to order a large sausage pizza with light sauce and black olives?

Voice on the Phone
Will that be for pickup or delivery?

Egocentricity

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

It has come to my attention that all of my posts have one major concern – Me.  I write about My feelings, My desires, My fears, My angst – pretty much, if it has to do with Me, I’ll write about it.  I’ve written about childhood humiliations, mid-life crises, relationship joys and woes, every kind of female “issue”, and parenthood challenges – all from behind the very specific Kathleen-focused pinwheel of topics.

Honestly, I did not set out to write a blog with an all-you-can-eat buffet of my emotional stew du jour.   I have some indication that I am a bit of a decent writer with a solid ability to express myself in ways that engage other people.  I intended to marry this expandable skill with the numerous social, economic, cultural and world-wide issues that face the human race, thereby bringing about a crisp commentary from one of the ordinary class of humans – middle-middle class working woman with a husband, two kids, a dog and a mortgage.

Instead, I have a series of blog posts filled with metaphorical anecdotes concerning my hormones, insecurities and day dreams.

Is there something wrong with this?

I must have decided there is not since I continue to write about these things that fill my ever shrinking cognizant capacity.

Clearly, even in this confessional opus, my number one concentration is My inability to write about someone other than Me!

However, before I toss my garbley goulash into the pig trough and start writing about other subjects where I have some great authority like the best ways to get cinnamon gum out of a washing machine, or how to collect old baby food jars until they overflow into the outdoor shed, or remain at a job you don’t like for nearly a decade without literally jumping out the window – I should like to state that I don’t believe any one of us can truly write about anything other than our own experience.

Even if I were to write about the life and times of Mickey Mouse, it would be colored with my intense personal impression of said rat based upon everything that has occurred in my life up to this point.  Suppose Mr. Mouse and I differ in opinion on how to bring about peace without using violence?  Would it then be possible to write objectively about Mr. Mouse’s career in which he engaged his country in not one, but two extended wars?

Maybe a better human than me could, but I am pretty sure I have given up trying to be objective.  (Especially where Mickey is concerned – don’t even get me started on a grown mouse who has a clubhouse full of perky sidekicks who only know how to sing his praises.)

So, I’ve decided – if anyone is 1) actually reading this and 2) in a place of even remotely caring about it – that I am going to continue to write about what I am faced with each moment on a cellular level – Me.

After all, stew is a meal in itself!

Proof of my proving abilities

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

I have perfected an annoying art form of attempting to prove the unprovable.

For me, trying to do something – anything – in order to prove a point I have neither been asked nor have any reality-based need to prove is like trying to force an elephant through the exhaust of a mini-cooper. I might actually be able to get it to fit, but I would have to chop up the entire beast into small pieces, stick it in a blender until liquefied and then let it boil into a gaseous state. By that time, there is nothing left of the originally magnificent creature I so desperately wanted to prove I am of kindred benevolence.

I know this because I have metaphorically killed more magnanimous creations than I am admittedly capable of calculating.  I will either make half-failed (or half-successful, depending on your optimism vs. pessimism tendencies) efforts to do it myself, actually do it myself with varying levels of success (or failure), or sit paralyzed in fear of not doing it perfectly thereby not doing it.  The only way I won’t do it is to let someone else do it for me.  I have some switch inside that pulls the choke out at the slightest indication that I may feel left out of whatever wondrous triumph is about to occur.  Unfortunately, I pull so hard that I open up too much and inevitably stall out creating a self made vacuum bag full of words never shared, works of almost art, plays produced in my head, and songs never sung outside my car.

Want proof?

Hollis and Jolleen – a children’s book about two best friends and their adventures through a knot-hole in a tree to the world below filled with talking frogs, daisies and a mole.  Partially written with a TYPEWRITER.

A Way Home – a play I began writing while living in NYC and had a staged reading of in like 2003.  It still needs final edits.  (PS – I lived in NYC from early 1995 to early 1997…;o|)

Bhogobaan ekane ache – a written account of my spiritual journey – first written in 2003 with minor updates over the years.  Sent to some publishers and a monologue from it got me cast in Ochen Chotto Schpiel (see next point).

One Woman’s Voice – a compilation of about 40 poems of mine up until about 2004.  Sent it to a few publishers but figured work got in the way.  And my playwright’s revival in Ochen Chotto Schpiel (which did generate quite a bulk of very short plays that now reside only in my memories – both cranial and hard disk.)

Dreaming Tales of This and That and a Splashing Humpback – another compilation of over 30 poems for kids of all ages.  24 are done, the rest almost – but I need to illustrate it, although I don’t really draw very well.

Numerous visual arts – paintings, fabric, mixed media – that I have more supplies for than actual completed pieces.

Very brief foray into the possibility of an artistic tye-dye business.

This blog which I almost started for years and now only update periodically.

And, oh yeah, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Drama – emphasis Acting.

Whew!  That’s a lot of almosts to cram into one old four-drawer metal filing cabinet stuck in my home office!  And it doesn’t even include the lists of aspirations I swallow deep down underneath rolls of Tums and diet coke – dancer, singer, cellist, elected official, world news anchor, race car driver, motivational speaker, smoking hot babe with perfect cha-chas, covert spy and mime extraordinaire.

Okay – really sounds like I’m headed towards the typical mid-life crisis, doesn’t it?  Yipes.

Katie – Bar the door.  No, seriously – bar it, lock it, nail it shut – goodness knows where this line of opening up and spreading my mid-life cheer will send me!

P.P.S. Truly just kidding about the mime part.

P.P.P.S.  See my point?