It's not getting better

I am not getting a perspective on this election. I am not getting back my knee-jerk hope for America. I'm just stunned. I listened to Bush this morning outline his plans for this presidency. He was cocky and arrogant. He told a reporter that now that he had political capital and he was going to spend it, that was his "style." And that’s what he had after the 2000 election. Then he snickered. It's so cruel and indecent. Can you imagine Kerry saying something remotely like that? Really, I feel I am living in a nightmare - like I'm going to wake up and this will not have happened.

The topic of the day on the news was how morals and family values swayed the election. I just don't understand how people can think that preventing two consenting adults from making a legal agreement to each other, how that offends someone’s morality? No one is forcing them to join in a homosexual union. Do they think that if gay marriage is not allowed that homosexuality will not be practiced? How is it moral to prevent a marriage between two people who want to commit to each other? How is it moral to force a woman to have a baby when she cannot provide for it and when the world is already vastly overpopulated? How is that moral?

I can't bridge the divide in America by coming closer to their point of view on these values issues. It’s frankly immoral to me that they hold such picayune, small minded issues to be ones of morality. When they mask a deep immorality. Bush said the top things on his agenda were reforming Social Security and the Tax code, both things that have deeply dividing, immoral consequences if done the way he wants them to be. Democrats have to take back the corner on "morality" and "values." What a convoluted distortion of truth. What a misunderstanding of what morality is. It's like our populace is ethically bankrupt. They cannot distinquish between ethics and religion. They think being religious is being good. It's so desperately sad that this is what so many people think.

For the first time I am glad my father is dead. On the whole run up to the election, I wished every single day I could call him and discuss something. The debates, we would have talked and talked about the debates. But my father would have been so deeply disturbed by this election. I am glad he is spared of it.

The reports keep saying that ministers in church's helped tremendously in getting out the moral values vote. I am filled with anger at these people. They have been so badly used and they think it's in the name of God! They have cheapened spirituality and led their congregants down a dark tunnel where they can concentrate on small issues that do not effect them, and while they are feeling "good" about being so "moral" their preachers are allowing them to be robbed and their children to be robbed of their future. I wonder if this can be rectified.

I just want to move to Hawaii. I want to live on Kauai and just look at the sky every night and have a garden. And I want to move to D.C. and do something about this horrible mess. I am so disappointed in the Floridians. And the people of Ohio – my goodness. This is just very, very sad. Things can change dramatically from small wrong turns.

I keep thinking I'll get some grounding, some perspective. But I just can't. And obviously I keep saying the same things over and over here. But I just can't get far enough away from the dissapointment and hurt and anger to get some clear grounding yet. And I want to.

Frozen

I am so sad. And angry. And surprised. And embarrassed. And worried, so worried. My eyes sting from crying. My back aches from constantly watching TV and reading the internet and I want to be around others and I want to be alone and I want to talk to those who are as outraged as I am about the election results and I am also tired of talking to people who agree with me and I want to rush to a red state and just force them to see the world clearly! Yes, yes, how arrogant of me, right?

Also, I have a writing assignment and I have to write and I just want to turn the clock backwards and have it all happen the way it was supposed to happen! The way it should have happened!

These are the things I'm thinking about:

1.) People like me should not have moved away from the small towns we grew up in to big cities where our ideas are ghettoized. Washington State overall is liberal and democratic, but in Spokane, it's like Idaho. Very conservative. And yet, of course, I moved away. To be around other people who thought like I did. And so did millions of us. That's what people mostly do. And yet, it would probably be better for our country if we stayed in our small conservative hometowns and kept talking, talking talking. Teaching, reading, writing letters to the editor, etc. I mean, I know plenty of democrats in Spokane, outspoken democrats, but there's a lot of misinformation too. I just was in Spokane the weekend before last and I kept hearing over and over how Spokane was such a great place for kids to grow up. But is it a good place for a kid to grow up where morality is measured in religiosity? Which brings me to...

2.) morality vs. religiosity. It makes me so deeply sad and frightened that people in America think that being moral is being religious. My friend Jim Emerson said to me that he didn't think morality was even possible if you were religious. At first I scoffed at him, but now I think he's right. Religion requires submission to a higher authority and an abandonment of reason for faith. And that act in itself is immoral. Because morality is not about obedience but about looking clearly at the real hard facts and making choices that take those facts into acoount. To me, that is what morality is. And yet, most people who voted for Bush voted for him because of what they consider to be his higher values and morality. It's so simple minded, and it's such a blatant disregard for true deep morality. Morality isn't doing what you are told to do, being obedient and well behaved. Morality is acting in ways that benefit the common good after taking into consideration the facts. Morality is not allowing yourself to succumb to the wishes of big business or the government that supports it unless it can be demonstrated that it effects the good of everyone. That's what government is supposed to do. In a way, it's genius the way big business got the average american to believe that the moral choice was to go with them!

And I can't stop thinking about the Supreme Court. This may not be undone in my lifetime. I looked at Mulan sleeping this morning and wondered what kind of world she was going to live in. What kind of world we would both be living in.

I just want to look at the stars. I want to lay outside in the dark and look up at the stars and remember how small we are. How little and unimportant we are. Even though I know we are amazingly precious. And we may be squandering this accident of us, the wonderfulness of us to our deep irrational fears and excesses.

Today I drove behind a large black SUV with a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker. It was like driving behind a wall of black steel. How cocky. How arrogant. And now they have the American people behind them. The Republicans have a blank check -- the House, the Senate. My word, they can do anything they want to. It can all change so quickly, our long fought democracy, our freedom of speech, our freedom of privacy, our freedom of worship. There's a tipping point where it could all be squandered very quickly.

This is the darkest day in American politics that I have ever known. As I walked on my hike this morning, I passed by people who were laughing and talking and I wondered how anyone could be laughing about anything? At least before the election the world didn't hate the American people because they knew that most of us didn't agree with George Bush or even like him or even vote for him. But now, all that is changed.

Oh dear, I think I'm going to cry again. DAMNIT. This is so bad. This is the worst possible scenario.

Taking a breath

Okay. The show is open. It's going well. Tickets are selling. Reviews are good. Whew.... Whew.... Ahh.... For a second I can breathe.

O my house. My poor house. It's like a hurricane hit it. Every drawer, almost, is stuffed with odds and ends that have no connection to each other and are only randomly assembled. The dining room table is covered with things. And I am so tired. I just want to sleep.

So, the show opened on Oct. 10th. I had three friends staying with me for the opening. It's only now that I can look back on the month and feel somewhat relaxed. I think opening shows is a bit like having a baby. I can't be sure, since I've never had a baby. But it's like...everything gets put off -- everything is secondary to this big event.

I am so happy and proud of my show. Ha! I realize how self-important that might sound. But I really think of it as such a collaberative effort, so many people came together to make it work. It's soooo not just me, but a collection, a history of effort. Oh, the L.A. Times review made me so happy. There are so many awful moments in show business, so many people who don't get it, or so many failed efforts, so many flawed projects. And this show is not free of all those things either. But it's so nice when, for the most part, definately for the most part, it all comes together. I love my crew who works on the show, I love the designers, my producer, Pam did such a fantastic job.

I have found that most of show business is about dissapointment, or about things not turning out like you wished they would. So, when it does turn out good, I think it's important to take a moment to just feel... just feel...good. And so, here I am feeling good.

Wow. Maybe I shouldn't be saying all these things. I'm just realizing, maybe this will seem arrogant. And not every critic loved the show, so it isn't a success in everyone's eyes. But I guess I just feel as if the baby was born, it's healthy and it's going to live and...hurray! Hurray! Hurray!

Now I have to concentrate on other things. The book. What else I want to do. All the details that go into keeping a show going, people coming, etc. But for now I am going to take a few naps.

Last weekend, I didn't do the Saturday show because I had promised a long time ago to host this Catholic Children's Cancer and Emergency center for Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. So, I did the show on Friday night and headed up to Spokane at six a.m. on Saturday. I had to just pick up Mulan in her pajamas and carry her through the airport fast asleep. She woke up as we were getting on the plane. Let me tell you, carrying a sleeping 35 pound kid and luggage is basically, impossible. I was feeling pretty alone at that moment. Or rather, not alone at all. It felt actually, heavy.

The event was really fun. Several of my high school girl friends were there and I sat with them after I hosted the event. There was a pumpkin carving contest and all kinds of things like that. I think they raised a lot of money. Mulan spent time with her cousins and my mother and brother while I was there. Then, I got home at midnight and turned around and flew back to L.A. with Mulan and then went straight to the theatre for the matinee. I was so tired after this weekend, I couldn't believe it. Then, on Monday night I did "In The Family Way" for the Groundlings 30th anniversary celebration. So, I was really looking at this weekend as the end of this big push this month of getting the show up and then doing all this extra stuff. And it's over! It's over!

I have never come so close to knee-jerk praying as I feel now as the election draws near. Oh Kerry just HAS to win. He just HAS to.
Mulan's fifth birthday is on election day. I have sold her on the idea that her birthday party this year will be having cupcakes at her pre-school with her classmates during lunch. I went so all-out for her birthday last year, and I am so exhausted and out of time and I don't really feel like spending the $. So, I told Mulan that birthdays weren't always a big deal, sometimes you have a small celebration and sometimes it's a big one. She seemed totally okay with it. So, on election day, I'll take her to the polls with me, and then to school and then bring cupcakes to school during lunch. Then, I will be glued to the TV set for the rest of the day. Oh! Oh! Oh! Kerry just has to win, he just HAS to win. Okay, now I am repeating myself.

My Fantastically Inefficient Life

Today I withdrew my daughter from a school which is about 25 minutes away. It's a good school. We worked hard to get into it. I went to interviews, paid lots of money, wrote essays about how much we wanted to be there. She's in pre-Kindergarten. So, it's already sort of funny to me that it would take that much to be in any school at that age. It's so different than when I was a kid. But then, blahddety blah -- everyone says that.

Anyway, I withdrew her from this school because it takes me one hour to take her there in the morning and one hour to pick her up and bring her home. And her school is not on the way to anywhere for me, I work at home and even where I work-out, it's another fifteen minutes in the opposite direction of my house. In the last month she's attended this school, it's cut into my ability to work by ten to fifteen hours a week. Ten to fifteen hours a week! And it's just too much.

And I feel so bad.

I realized a couple of weeks ago that if I did nothing but be a mother to my one child, who is in school, it would be a full time job. So, I'm trying to squeeze my career on top of my mothering. And it's a career that I really love and want. If only I had a wife! Oh, how I would love a wife! Oh, how my appreciation of wives has escalated! I honestly used to wonder what wives and full time mothers did. Now I know, no matter what their husbands do, their wives work harder and longer. So, I wish I had a wife. If only I were attracted to women. If only I were attracted to men who were interested in being a stay at home dad. Actually, I am much more open to that than I used to be. BUT WAIT A MINUTE. The thing is, I want to be the mom. I want to take Mulan to school, I like to pack the lunches, I want to pick her up -- talk to the teachers, know the other kids. I want to read to her at night and iron her clothes and spend lots of time, the not rushed time, but the serendipitous time that is the pleasure of mothering. The whole reason I became a mother to begin with! I want to floss my teeth with her in the mornings and not skip the flossing because we are already late and it's taken too long to brush. I want to make my bed, or her bed, or even get her to make her own bed, just once during the week!

So, today is her last day at this school. This lovely little school, 25 minutes away. Actually that's the optimistic estimate, last Friday, it took me an hour to get from her school to the theatre that "Letting Go Of God" is at, which is less than a mile from my house -- and a mile closer to her school. Tomorrow she starts again at her old school, three blocks away. The one we used to walk to. The one we will be walking to again.

Okay, I know this: she must go to school very close to where we live. It's just...got to be that way.

When I was growing up, my dad used to drop all us kids off at school which was a mile and a half away. On his way to work. Or my mother would drop us off and then take him to work. Because they had only one car. I know that wasn't an easy thing. They had five kids. It must have been brutal. Now the hysteria and drinking all make so much sense. Now I don't know how parents don't scream and drink every minute! Now I see my parents as heroes for even managing to keep us alive at all. My parents were so upset when I stopped believing in God, but they didn't realize that my non-belief was so good for them. Because I completely changed the way I viewed them.

I used to wonder why God gave me these parents. Not that they were terrible. No! They were not terrible by a long shot. But I wondered, why would God give me these particular parents? It must have been for some reason. I was to learn compassion, I was to learn humor, I was to learn tolerance. I was born to overcome certain obstacles. This was God's test for me. The cards He dealt me, knowingly, specifically. And I always felt I was failing that test, or I was resentful that my parents were not better parents.

But when I gave up all that magical, egotistical, religous thinking, I unexpectedly felt only thankful to my parents. I was amazed I was alive at all. I was overjoyed that my parents even fed me and kept me safe enough to live. Just the mere fact of my conciousness became so thrilling. I let go of all the resentment. I saw my parents as people, with wonderful attributes and flaws, just like everyone else. Just like me, too.

Anyway, I know so much more now about family. I know what it takes to have kids: what kind of time, what kind of devotion, what kind of unrelenting demands. Dr. Phil said on a recent show (I watched the show he did with the George and Laura Bush -- oh, I could go on about that show for a long time!!!) and he said he did a survey for his upcoming book and that 40% of the people he asked said if they had to do it over again, they would not have had kids at all. Wow. 40%. I believe it.

If I knew then what kind of work it was going to be, I probably would not have done it either. But then, I wouldn't have also known about the rewards. So, it's really an unfair test. The truth is, it's more work than I ever dreamed, and it's more rewarding than I dreamed too.

I live each day behind a gun of what I need to do, NEED to do, versus what is possible for me to do. I have ten things that have to be done every minute. I wake up running, doing, serving, organizing, and end each day almost the same way. Well -- I hit a wall around seven or eight o'clock. Then I just watch The Daily Show and feel bad about how messy my house is. It's almost comical how I get out of bed and start working immediately, as fast as I can, as cheerfully as I can be. Oh my god, how did my mother do it?

So here, I am, musing on the reconcilliation between knowing I wouldn't have become a mother if I had known how hard it was going to be with the very true fact that becoming a mother is the best move I ever made. It's given my life more meaning than anything else, by an enormous margin. (I used to joke, "Meaning is over-rated.") But motherhood is now how I define myself, it's the prism through which I view and relate to the world.

Last night I couldn't sleep after watching the Vice Presidential debate and I was surfing the web at two a.m. and read this article about this mother who's son died in Iraq and how she died within the same week. Her grief was so enormous, so huge, she simply died of a broken heart. And I was thinking, as I'm sure most parents think as well, that I would be the same. I wouldn't be able to live if anything happened to Mulan. I think of it, what would I do? I wouldn't be able to breathe. I wouldn't be able to talk. I would just feeze, my whole body would resist life with every fiber and cell. I would be just like this mother.

And yet, there are moments in every day when I think, "This is too much!" Man, I so get it now, now important family is. This is one way in which I have become so much more conservative as I've gotten older, and particularly since I've become a parent. Of course, I don't base this on the blind authority of religion. But I get the importance of family. I get it, you need two parents. Two people commited to a kid. Family should be close, on hand, invested, willing to help out, building those relationships. How did I think I could do this on my own? I used to think: if people you are married to or are related to drive you nuts, why don't you just leave? If your husband is a bad influence, why not hire someone who is a better influence? If your family sucks, why not move to another city and start over?

And now I know why. Because family makes it easier, better. Even when the family isn't all that wonderful. They still are better than hiring someone or making it all up later as you go along. Most of the time.

Last night when I told my mother about my school change (which she was thrilled about) she said, "All those guys you dated, even the worst ones, at least they could have shared the driving a few days a week." Oh, it was like a shot in the gut. To be honest, she didn't say the "even the worst ones" part. I added that. But that's what she meant. And I can see from my mother's perspective that it would make sense. It made me feel like such a collossal failure. But then I thought, "So, being with someone who is not a good partner for me, someone who would make me miserable, would be worth the driving being shared?" Maybe this is a bargain my mother made. Maybe she didn't think about it so much, but just dealt with her situation in the way she could. Staying with the husband, sharing the driving, just feeling resentful and angry almost all of the time. I don't know. I certainly have not made the best choices. I cannot throw stones. I can't even throw pebbles.

I read an article in Salon this week all about how girlfriends are the new husbands. The author was writing about how, since we've delayed parenting by about ten years over the last generation or so, we've developed our friendships during that time and not our marriages. It's the friends we rely on, it's our friends who we weave the intricate web of familiarity and solidarity with, not our spouses -- at least not for those ten years when we are being single and dating with abandon. But the truth is, once you are a parent, you really should have been investing that time in becoming intimate with someone who is invested in your future children. Because your girlfriends are not necessarily the ones who are going to be there to help out, seriously involved, taking the child to school, being there for the child's school plays.

Even though I have actually found a friend, who is also a mother, who is doing that a lot for me. And her name is Julia, and we are the two Julia's. And I am jealous of her smart and funny and talented and hard working husband and her mother who lives with them and who is a doctor (!!!) and her big crazy house of kids.

So, now, after today, Mulan will be at the school three blocks away. I will get ten hours back in my work week. We will be able to walk to school. Then, I just have to figure out what to do next year. The school that makes the most sense is 2.1 miles away (Oh yes, I have map-quested it) but it is a religious school: Episcopal. Could I? Would I? This is how I justify it: since I am outspokenly non-religious, she would get to see what being part of a religion is like, from the inside. She would still get me telling her that I don't believe in that mumbo jumbo, but that the ethics and compassion that are learned at some church's are important. And the hymns are nice to sing. And that the community is great.

Oh dear. What to do.

My life is inefficient because I do not have a husband to share the load, Mulan has no father to share the risk of me. And what I get back is a life without any resentment. And instead I feel like a victim on days like today. Even though it's me who victimized me. It's great not to feel resentment, but it's also feels pretty isolated.

My brother is moving his family from Long Beach to Seattle where he has just gotten a great job. It makes me want to move to Seattle. I would have long, long term friendships there and lots of family who cares very much and who I adore. But Seattle is expensive. Almost as expensive as Los Angeles. And I would have much less opportunity to make money. Plus, I have to say, I have sort of fallen for Los Angeles: this big, gangly, smoggy, overgrown, ugly town. I feel my arranged marriage in life has been with Los Angeles. It's made me grow up and given me my whole identity and feeling of accomplishment. I love having the studios nearby. When I walk on the Paramount lot, I get a thrill, each and every time. I still have ambitions in TV and movies. I couldn't let go, I don't think.

So, here I am.

It's funny. I always thought I would not want my child to grow up around other show business people. I automatically concluded that this would make them spoiled and snobby and not exposed to the real world. But now I have to say I feel the opposite. I have come around entirely on this one. Now I think I do want Mulan to go to a school with other kids who's parents are in show business. It makes them live in a company town. It makes show business a business. When their mothers or fathers go off to shoot something or to do a play somehwere, it's just what parents do. Like if the coal mine started night shifts or something. It makes it all understandable. I want to be the least famous person at my kid's school.
Oh dear. My kitchen is a mess (I managed to make broccoli and egg omeletes this morning) and I haven't looked at my mail for a week. And wait a minute, I think I'm opening a show this week. Yes, yes I am.

My new opening date: Oct. 9th. Oct. 10th special performance with reception after 3:00 p.m. matinee!!

All right. So, I am moving my opening date from Sept. 17th to Oct. 9th. After tech rehearsals this weekend, I realized that I had had my writer's hat on for months, years! And my actress hat on for a few weeks. And I had never really had on my director's hat for as much time as I needed to. It's very labor intensive for me, I have to video tape the show and then rewatch it. I guess I never figured that part out in advance, how it was going to take me so long, so much longer than if I'd just had a director there. The bad news is that I should have known that and I have to reschedule everything, which is a hassle. The good news is that I recognize this and I can make the change and give myself more time. It's funny, it wasn't until 3:00 a.m., early Saturday morning that I suddenly became aware that I could single handedly change the opening date. There are only a few times in show business where that is possible, and I'm going to take advantage of it.

Also, the actress in me realized that while I could have a good chance of memorizing my lines before the show opened, performing them well --- finding all that I expect and plan to find in them, well, that was something that was simply going to take more time. But I have to say, other than not being as ready as I want to be for critics and the like, I am so damn excited about this show. I mean, even if no one comes, I am so thrilled to finally have it up and running. That I get to get all this off my chest, I get the pleasure of performing it, it's just so exciting.

My technical crew, my lighting person -- Steve Young, and Drew -- oh Drew Dalzell, they are so amazing. And the set looks so much like my living room -- well that's because it's all furniture right from my living room, rug, piano bench (my grandmother's piano bench), Stickly chair, end tables, books, the whole thing is transferred into the theatre. It's sort of amazing to see it all there. We constructed this big tall book case in the middle that looks great, like a Christmas tree of books. And I keep thinking of little things I want there: a globe, for example. My friend Jim Emerson (cinepad.com) came down from Seattle this weekend and took notes and gave tips and it's just all coming together and it's just...I have to pinch myself that it's all finally happening.

So, I just went to Moab to do a small (very, very, very small) part in this Wim Wenders movie. It was just wonderful. It's so mind blowing to be in that part of Utah -- it's just like a lunar landscape, so otherworldly. I was there for three days. We worked way out in the...I was going to say "countryside" but that isn't the right word, I guess the right word is "landscape." George Kennedy is also in the movie and had scenes in which I was present and talking. I don't even want to say I was in scenes with him, my part is that small. Also Tim Matheson plays another producer (it's a film within a film kinda story) and I got to be with him (he's hilarious) and it was really one of those jobs where you feel so lucky to be in show business.

Also, I got a trilobite fossil, a rare one, 550 million years old, from Utah. I'm so happy to have it on my mantle. It may even make it's way into the show, well onto the table next to the chair in my show. We'll see. I feel like my trilobite is auditioning for me right now... Seeing if he can really stand the pressure. Well, I figure if he's withstood 550 million years of pressure in the earth -- oh jeez. See, I couldn't help myself from writing that. AGH.

Dreams. I'm sorry, yes...a dream.

Monday 5:30 a.m.

I had a dream. Forgive me for writing about my dream. Don't read this if you, like me, glaze over and gird yourself when anyone else says they have a dream to share. But actually, when I think about it, I don't mind reading about dreams other people have had. In fact, I like it. I just don't like hearing them. I guess the fact that I'm reading it makes me always feel I have the freedom to stop. But if someone just tells me a dream, I feel I am trapped and there's no way to gage how long the dream will go on.

So, I just had this dream: I was in West L.A., or closer to West L.A. and I happened to visit a woman, a woman I had known a long, long time. I had met her originally in Seattle at college, through my friend Greg. Or maybe it was when I first moved to L.A. She was so young then, she had jet black hair and made art -- big pieces and little pieces, a lot of day-of-the-dead pieces. She had silver jewelry and was funny. But I had forgotten all about her. I couldn't remember her name.

I don’t know why I went to her apartment in West L.A. She was packing up to move. She had lived in this apartment for 20 years. This apartment was my dream apartment. It had four small bedrooms and a living room along a narrow layout and a galley kitchen. I loved how it was decorated, lots of colors, lots of Mexican art. She said she felt like she had to buy a house. Her landlord was George, my old landlord on Sierra Bonita. I suddenly remembered that my whole family had been in this apartment many times. She had been a good friend of my brother Mike, and my parents had attended many parties here. My father had said he enjoyed being at this apartment, it made him feel comfortable. He had said that when he was in there he always knew someone interesting would show up: someone who spent all their time doing something or thinking about something he hadn't realized someone could spend all their time thinking and doing.

The woman had a boyfriend. Someone who was with me in the dream -- maybe it was Greg -- told me that recently, after years of resisting a committed legal relationship, the boyfriend had asked the woman to marry him. The woman had said no. But they continued to hang out together all the time. But the boyfriend did not live with her.

Suddenly the boyfriend was there, he was thin, he had black hair too. He had a bracelet of rope, a thin, woven rope. He was rolling a cigarette. He had a sweet boyish face that was now older. He looked depressed, but friendly. Mild. In fact, he looked a little like my college boyfriend, the one who was a projectionist. But I felt really glad he wasn't my boyfriend. Yet, I was jealous of how comfortable they seemed together, like old familiar blankets -- some holes and frayed edges -- but trusty and sure.

I asked the woman if she knew if George had rented her place out to someone new yet. She said she didn't know, but she didn't think he had. I wanted to move here. I wanted to live here. I began to look at the apartment with covetous eyes, like I could possibly move in. The woman got excited about it. She said, this would be perfect! It made so much sense that I would live here. I wondered if I could stand it to have George be my landlord again. I knew he was so cheap, that he would never fix anything, but that the rent would be inexpensive.

Mulan was with me. I took her to the bathroom and found that there were another two bedrooms in the way back. One of them had a fireplace, it was cozy. The other bedroom was this little kids room that was right off the bigger bedroom, not in a hallway or anything. It was almost like a big closet off the bedroom. It was perfect for Mulan. Then when she was older she could move to one of the other bedrooms. I realized I would have a guest room! My dream come true! I was so excited.

The woman called George to see if he had rented it. I imagined that I was going to have to sell my house and move. I felt a little sad, I love my house. And this apartment was farther away than I had planned, it was farther from Mulan's school.

But then we went out the backdoor, and there was the ocean. It was beautiful, this gorgeous lagoon, just off the whole ocean. And to the side of it were all these beautiful apartment buildings and houses, small little houses, up a hill. It did not look at all like Los Angeles, it looked Italy, like pictures I have seen of Uffizi. Or maybe Florence. But it was so beautiful. I thought, I had no idea that West L.A. was so gorgeous. And it's not even far away.

Other people, other friends came over. They were all old friends, people I've known for years but now that I think about it, I didn't recognize any of them. But I was so glad to see them. It was like my old life. Like when I first moved to L.A.

I was suddenly so relieved to sell my house. Not to have a yard and a pool to upkeep and deal with and pay for. I wondered if it was a good idea to sell a house and just rent. But I knew it was a good idea. I just had to convince some people, like my business manager. But I knew he would give his blessing.

This apartment felt like I was coming home. That something had finally fallen into place. That it was going to be much simpler, just renting, not owning. That this would give me so much time to think and write and maybe become an artist myself.

I remembered that Mike and my Dad had spent a lot of time over the years in this apartment. They had been to so many parties, I could suddenly see them, sitting in the big living room, with drinks in their hands, in a spirited happy conversation with other people they clearly liked being around. And I caught their eyes as I walked through the room, because now I was the hostess of this party and now I lived in this wonderful apartment. And in their eyes I could see how happy and appreciative they were that I lived here and had all these wonderful friends.

Then I woke up. But I was woozy.

I realized I had this dream all the time. Not exactly in the details, but in finding the dream apartment that was bigger than I thought and seemed like it was waiting for me. And it was always right next to water.

Then I just lay there in my bed, and tried to figure out if I could find the right words for this sentence I want to put in my show, near the end. It’s when I'm looking at Lourdes Cathedral (in Spokane) and I say, "I wish there were a beautiful building where I could mark the transitions in my life and my daughter's life, with ancient rituals and great art. Where we could feel like part of a long continuum of people for generations. Where we would know that our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents had participated in the very same rituals. But not have to pretend that myths are literally true. And not have to lie to myself and others about God. And not have pay the price of being lulled into complacency about our acute, visceral, realness of being awake and alive."

No that doesn't sound right. Too many words. That sentence is too preachy, and overloaded and has too many adjectives, but maybe I could make it work later.

Oh...Mulan is up.
Monday 5:30 a.m.

I had a dream. Forgive me for writing about my dream. Don't read this if you, like me, glaze over and gird yourself when anyone else says they have a dream to share. But actually, when I think about it, I don't mind reading about dreams other people have had. In fact, I like it. I just don't like hearing them. I guess the fact that I'm reading it makes me always feel I have the freedom to stop. But if someone just tells me a dream, I feel I am trapped and there's no way to gage how long the dream will go on.

So, I just had this dream: I was in West L.A., or closer to West L.A. and I happened to visit a woman, a woman I had known a long, long time. I had met her originally in Seattle at college, through my friend Greg. Or maybe it was when I first moved to L.A. She was so young then, she had jet black hair and made art -- big pieces and little pieces, a lot of day-of-the-dead pieces. She had silver jewelry and was funny. But I had forgotten all about her. I couldn't remember her name.

I don’t know why I went to her apartment in West L.A. She was packing up to move. She had lived in this apartment for 20 years. This apartment was my dream apartment. It had four small bedrooms and a living room along a narrow layout and a galley kitchen. I loved how it was decorated, lots of colors, lots of Mexican art. She said she felt like she had to buy a house. Her landlord was George, my old landlord on Sierra Bonita. I suddenly remembered that my whole family had been in this apartment many times. She had been a good friend of my brother Mike, and my parents had attended many parties here. My father had said he enjoyed being at this apartment, it made him feel comfortable. He had said that when he was in there he always knew someone interesting would show up: someone who spent all their time doing something or thinking about something he hadn't realized someone could spend all their time thinking and doing.

The woman had a boyfriend. Someone who was with me in the dream -- maybe it was Greg -- told me that recently, after years of resisting a committed legal relationship, the boyfriend had asked the woman to marry him. The woman had said no. But they continued to hang out together all the time. But the boyfriend did not live with her.

Suddenly the boyfriend was there, he was thin, he had black hair too. He had a bracelet of rope, a thin, woven rope. He was rolling a cigarette. He had a sweet boyish face that was now older. He looked depressed, but friendly. Mild. In fact, he looked a little like my college boyfriend, the one who was a projectionist. But I felt really glad he wasn't my boyfriend. Yet, I was jealous of how comfortable they seemed together, like old familiar blankets -- some holes and frayed edges -- but trusty and sure.

I asked the woman if she knew if George had rented her place out to someone new yet. She said she didn't know, but she didn't think he had. I wanted to move here. I wanted to live here. I began to look at the apartment with covetous eyes, like I could possibly move in. The woman got excited about it. She said, this would be perfect! It made so much sense that I would live here. I wondered if I could stand it to have George be my landlord again. I knew he was so cheap, that he would never fix anything, but that the rent would be inexpensive.

Mulan was with me. I took her to the bathroom and found that there were another two bedrooms in the way back. One of them had a fireplace, it was cozy. The other bedroom was this little kids room that was right off the bigger bedroom, not in a hallway or anything. It was almost like a big closet off the bedroom. It was perfect for Mulan. Then when she was older she could move to one of the other bedrooms. I realized I would have a guest room! My dream come true! I was so excited.

The woman called George to see if he had rented it. I imagined that I was going to have to sell my house and move. I felt a little sad, I love my house. And this apartment was farther away than I had planned, it was farther from Mulan's school.

But then we went out the backdoor, and there was the ocean. It was beautiful, this gorgeous lagoon, just off the whole ocean. And to the side of it were all these beautiful apartment buildings and houses, small little houses, up a hill. It did not look at all like Los Angeles, it looked Italy, like pictures I have seen of Uffizi. Or maybe Florence. But it was so beautiful. I thought, I had no idea that West L.A. was so gorgeous. And it's not even far away.

Other people, other friends came over. They were all old friends, people I've known for years but now that I think about it, I didn't recognize any of them. But I was so glad to see them. It was like my old life. Like when I first moved to L.A.

I was suddenly so relieved to sell my house. Not to have a yard and a pool to upkeep and deal with and pay for. I wondered if it was a good idea to sell a house and just rent. But I knew it was a good idea. I just had to convince some people, like my business manager. But I knew he would give his blessing.

This apartment felt like I was coming home. That something had finally fallen into place. That it was going to be much simpler, just renting, not owning. That this would give me so much time to think and write and maybe become an artist myself.

I remembered that Mike and my Dad had spent a lot of time over the years in this apartment. They had been to so many parties, I could suddenly see them, sitting in the big living room, with drinks in their hands, in a spirited happy conversation with other people they clearly liked being around. And I caught their eyes as I walked through the room, because now I was the hostess of this party and now I lived in this wonderful apartment. And in their eyes I could see how happy and appreciative they were that I lived here and had all these wonderful friends.

Then I woke up. But I was woozy.

I realized I had this dream all the time. Not exactly in the details, but in finding the dream apartment that was bigger than I thought and seemed like it was waiting for me. And it was always right next to water.

Then I just lay there in my bed, and tried to figure out if I could find the right words for this sentence I want to put in my show, near the end. It’s when I'm looking at Lourdes Cathedral (in Spokane) and I say, "I wish there were a beautiful building where I could mark the transitions in my life and my daughter's life, with ancient rituals and great art. Where we could feel like part of a long continuum of people for generations. Where we would know that our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents had participated in the very same rituals. But not have to pretend that myths are literally true. And not have to lie to myself and others about God. And not have pay the price of being lulled into complacency about our acute, visceral, realness of being awake and alive."

No that doesn't sound right. Too many words. That sentence is too preachy, and overloaded and has too many adjectives, but maybe I could make it work later.

Oh...Mulan is up.

August morning

It's early morning on Friday. This is surely the most sacred time of day. I have been up since 5:30 and got enough sleep. When the world converges to allow me to get to sleep early and up early, before Mulan gets up, I can almost hear the monastery's Gregorian chant in my mind as I walk through the house. It's simply perfect. I have been off coffee for five days and I believe the headaches are gone. I am drinking tea. Oh! How civilized life can be!!!

So, I am in the throws of the hysteria of getting this show up and going. This is my third time to do this, my third monologue, so I sorta know the drill. It's frightening. And it's so exciting. This show is two hours long, an hour first act and an hour second act. I don't even know if I'm capable of memorizing two hours worth of show. I mean, I guess I will figure it out. "In The Family Way" is like, about 60 to an 65 minutes. "God Said Ha!" vacillated between 90 minutes to 95 minutes. Everywhere I go, I am memorizing. In the car, on my hike, walking around the house. I have a new approach to memorizing this one, I'm going backwards. I am memorizing it bit by bit from the end. It's like I keep adding to it. I don't know, it makes me feel safer, like...if I get to opening night and I'm scared I might go up on my lines, I will feel most confident about the end.

I feel so vulnerable. The show is costing a lot more than I thought it would. In fact, it needs to run for 14 weeks and sell most of the tickets in order to just break even. I am constantly justifying to myself how this risk is okay, even if the show goes bust. I think my business manager thinks I'm a little nuts. I mean, I've chosen a very unpopular topic. Or maybe it's a popular topic, but I come to a very unpopular conclusion. So, jeez. This all puts my mother in a very awkward position. She doesn't like what I'm saying, but she doesn't want me to lose money, so I think she vacillates between how she wishes it would turn out.

I have really great designers. A wonderful sound, media designer and a great lighting designer. It's so exciting! I mean, this is about as fun as it gets. Yesterday I spent the whole day picking out music for the first act. I am going to use mostly Vivaldi's Mass in D Major. I got a great recording from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and I have been playing it on my ipod while I hike and it's just perfect, conveys all the feeling in all the right places. It's sort of an obvious familiar choice, but I think it works. Today I go through the second act, which I have less pre-determined ideas for.

Things are hectic but going better than they were. I finally figured out how to control my dog, and mostly, my kid. All with the same concept. It all started when I went on the Runyon Canyon hike with my neighbor, Marc, and his two dogs who are playmates and friends with my dog. And when Arden would start to misbehave, or even seem like he was going to misbehave (like smell some other dogs butt too long -- Arden, like all dogs, says "Hello" by smelling the behind of another dog, but honestly, Arden takes it a step further. It's like he tries to stick his nose in and then Arden goes into this reverie, and the other dogs are like, "Okay, buddy, jeez." Sometimes it can get heated as some other dogs feel justifiably violated.) Marc would say, "Arden!" in a deep authoritative voice. And Arden would immediately back off and run to us! And when he seemed like he was in a group of dogs who were on the verge of either playing or scuffling, Marc would do it again and Arden would look almost thankful and come immediately to us. WELL.

So, I figured I had to try that. I figured my previous way of calling Arden, saying in a sing songy voice with no malice whatsoever: "Arden, what are you doing? Don't do that to the other dog...don't you think that the other dog doesn't want to have your nose up their ass? Ha, ha, ha." wasn't the best approach.

We started hiking together and I would try the lowering the voice thing. AND oh my god! It worked immediately! It was amazing. I can't believe it. I mean, I guess I knew about the tone thing, but it was so dramatic. And most surprising was the feeling that Arden wanted me to control him. I mean, that's probably projecting, but still! Then I started this with Mulan. It didn't work as well, but it did work. I think the thing with Mulan is to make eye contact. But again, I realized how much she also seemed to secretly want me to discipline her, like she herself could be afraid by her own misbehaving. Oh, I am learning, slowly but surely.

I went to a parenting class and it was really helpful. But at one point the teacher was telling us how we shouldn't laugh "at" our child. That feeling humiliated or shamed was very bad. And even if our kids did something like fall down or walk into a wall or inadvertently say something funny, we shouldn't laugh. We should only laugh when they were trying to be funny.

I can't stop thinking about this. Because I don't know if I agree. The fact is, when a four year old is trying to be funny, it isn't all that funny. Like it's not funny at all. When Mulan tries to be funny, she is often obnoxious or just goofy. And I feel it's my responsibility to not laugh. I don't want her to grow up thinking that stuff is funny. I think it's my job to laugh when it's genuinely funny. She often says things that I laugh at and she says, "Why did you laugh?" and I try to explain how it's the way she said it, or how it's the context of what she said given the situation, etc. I try to explain that I laugh just to show appreciation and not always just because something silly happened. In fact, I don't laugh at things that are silly, most of the time. (Unless it's in a Preston Sturges movie...) If I encouraged her to be "funny" by being goofy, I fear she would turn into Carrot Top.

Mulan is attending a summer school, this ballet/tap/hip hop school. She hated it at first. She sobbed for half an hour on the first day. And then when she finally went into the group, it was like she was walking to her execution. The next day she cried for fifteen minutes, and then next day five. Yesterday , she just walked in with no problem. There is one other Asian girl in the class, a couple of white girls and then about 25 African American girls. Yesterday, when I picked Mulan up, about four or five of the African American girls surrounded Mulan and said to me, "We all think she looks just like that girl, we can't tell them apart!" They pointed to the other Asian girl, who then came up to us. They said, "We think they look like twins!" Of course Mulan and this other Asian girl, to me, look nothing at all alike. All the kids, naturally, being just beautiful. But I laughed all the way home that they were so blatant about not being able to tell them apart.

Sometimes I am full of fear that my show will be a bomb and I will have to sell my house and move back to Spokane. Then I think about how much I love Spokane and how I could go work at Auntie's Bookstore and how happy I would be. And then I calm down and just settle in for the ride.

Weepy, Confident, Insecure, Optimistic, and blah blah blah

This is one of those days. I feel so sad. I feel defeated. But I also feel optimistic. How does anyone describe how they feel at a given moment? It always seems like such an impossible number of emotions all at once.

Yesterday it occured to me that I am an ineffective authoritarian. And when looking over my life, I realized that I had never picked up any good coercion skills. I would make a very, very bad dominatrix.

Let me explain: Within 24 hours I had my daughter hit me as I stood in line at Sears buying T-shirts. Then, less than one day later, I had a stranger scream into my face, "Control your dog!"

Incident #1: the hitting in Sears. We had gone to buy some shirts. I am trying to be more frugal, I am trying to stay away from expensive stores. I had a T-shirt I bought there a few months ago when I got my new stove (very exciting, my new stove, btw, it's a whole new world cooking) and the T-shirt was $4.99. And I really liked it. It had a good weight, a good color, I liked working out in it. I found myself sad when it was dirty and glad when it was clean. So, I decided that I had to get more of these T-shirts. Also, I am letting my gray hair grow out (yes, I have a crazy reverse strategy for looking youthful wherein I confidently am gray) and I realized that my "colors" have changed. I no longer look very good in vivid colors. Like my hair, I needed softer colors, baby blue, gray, sage, etc. And this new T-shirt was a good color of blue. So, I picked Mulan up from school and we headed to Sears.

I try not to shop with Mulan. I just don't like the idea of us spending time together shopping. I don't want her to think of shopping as a leisure activity, as something fun. I want her to think of shopping as something special and necessary. I try not to let her be in situations where we spontaneously decide to buy things. I want her to learn to shop with a specific agenda. But sometimes shopping with Mulan is unavoidable. I try to use every minute she's in school to either be writing or working out, and that means food shopping, clothes shopping, basically everything else has to be done together. So there we were at 5:00 p.m. at Sears hunting down this blue T-shirt.

But Mulan's head was exploding in Sears. She wanted this dress and that dress and some sandals and pants and a necklace. I had to explain to her every three minutes how everything costs money and she didn't need any more clothes and she had several necklaces and we just bought her new sandals (that cost $50!!!) a few weeks ago, etc. She got angrier and angrier and she started saying she was going to run off and that she hated me. It made it very difficult to find what I needed. Eventually I did, AND we also got Mulan a new dress that was $10.99. Then I saw the line to pay. I have this theory that the cheaper the items you are buying, the longer it will take to pay for it. There's one big place to pay in the middle of the whole floor at Sears. There were about 15 or 20 people in line. I knew I was in for it.

While we waited to pay Mulan thought of another thousand things she wanted. I said over and over again how she was already getting a dress and I threatened to not get the dress if she kept whining. She said, "Fine!" I put the dress aside. That's when she hit me, really hard. I grabbed her hand and said that if she didn't behave we were leaving the store. Which in retrospect was the crappiest threat, of course she wanted to leave the store! She naturally said, "Great." I, confused, tried to think of what to do. Then she kicked me. A weak little kick, a half-hearted kick, but it got the attention of everyone in line. Now I was on the spot and had a nightmarish kid.

One thing I've noticed is that in upscale stores or neighborhoods, the fact that I am a white mother with an obviously adopted child goes without much notice. Unless it's smiling approval, which is a little creepy as well, but still, it's approval and understanding. But when I'm in a downscale neighborhood, or in a very specific immigrant neighborhood, like Thai Town, or in Hispanic neighborhoods, we are more of a curiosity. People say, "Is she your daughter?" And then, inevitably, "She dosn't look like you." Sometimes I say, "No." And sometimes I say, "She's adopted." I vascilate between saying more than I want to and being polite but cold.

The woman in line in front of me, with three perfectly behaved children said, "Is she your daughter?" I said, "Yes." And Mulan said, "No she's not. I want another mommy." I gave a weak little laugh and leaned down and whispered in Mulan's ear, "I want you to behave properly or you are getting a big time out when we get home. And no ice cream. And no TV. " I knew I was dilluting my threats by throwing in too much. Mulan said, "Then can I have my dress?" And then I was there in the middle of a negotiation that I didn't want to have. I said, "Okay." And we retrieved the dress from the counter where we'd laid it.

The rest of the time went without incident. When we got home, I gave Mulan a time out in her room for ten minutes and she screamed and cried. But I wasn't even sure if she knew why, at that point, she was getting a time out. I went in and sat on her bed and we talked about hitting and kicking and how wrong and bad, bad, bad it was. And how she could take some deep breaths and use her "words" to tell me how she felt. Although, I have to say I am reluctant to tell her the oft-used slogan of "use your words" because JEEZ, that's all Mulan does is use her words. The kid talks A LOT already. When it was over, I didn't really think she understood. She apologized and said she'd never do it again, but it felt like she just was saying anything to get me to stop being mad. I am not confident this will not happen again. In fact, I'm sure it will happen again.

I felt defeated and embarrassed and ineffective. I do not inspire submission.

Sometimes Mulan will say things like, "Mom, are you still mad?" And I get overwhelmed with guilt. Usually I am not mad at all. But it makes me remember when I used to think my mom was always mad, all the time. And I fear becoming her, and at the same time, in retrospect, I have so much compassion for my mother.

I think I need a parenting coach. I know a person's name. I 'm going to call her today.

Incident #2. The next incident which exposed my inability to force obedience happened when I walked the dog in Runyon Canyon with my trainer, Roberto. I work out with Roberto three days a week. It's a big expense and extravagence, but I like it, and I totally, totally, totally wouldn't work out like this if I were trying to do it on my own. After my work out with him yesterday, we went to my house and picked up my dog Arden and headed off to the hike. It takes me about fifty minutes to do the whole loop. I don't go very fast. People with handicaps often pass my by. Usually I am listening to my iPod. Actually, I just finished listening to House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger. Ohmy, ohmy, this administration is so bad. I almost would use the word "Evil" to describe them, even though I resent Bush for using that word so often. It's absolutely horrifying, the illicit collusion that exaserbated the problems with fundamentalist Muslims. And the whole congressional report that had the 28 pages exorcised from them about the Saudi's. Anyway, I recommend it. James Naughton reads it -- he's great, it has this fantastic fatalistic, authoritative, investigative feel. Which is exactly right. Because it's all true. I even scoured the internet one night looking for contradictions to the facts in the book. Nothing. No challenges. It's true and it's terrifying.

Anyway, Roberto went a lot faster than I usually go on this hike. A lot, lot, lot faster. Like, we did the whole hike in 30 minutes. I felt bad because Roberto kept telling me how this hike was not hard in any way and like, how could I ever consider this hike a work-out? I felt wimpy. Arden scrambled along and kept up and I didn't put on his leash (it's off-leash for a big portion of the hike...no I mean, walk...) until the last minute. Then we went through the door to get into the park. I wasn't paying all that much attention, there was a woman and her dog going through the door at the same time. Arden sniffed the dog, the usual. But then he started growling and barking at this dog. And the other dog was doing the same thing, I wasn't sure which dog started it, actually. In any case, I moved quickly through the door saying something completely ineffectual like, "Oh Arden, what are you doing? Arden, stop," all wimpy and passive like. I was not prepared and not authoritative. The dogs didn't bite each other or anything, just growled and barked. That's when the woman put her face close to mine and screamed, "CONTROL YOUR DOG."

I was so embarrassed. By that time, the dogs were sufficiently away from each other. Roberto turned to me and said, "You have to make sure your dog knows who's boss."

In retrospect, I wasn't sessing out the situation. I shouldn't have walked through the doorway while another dog was walking through. I was all in my conversation with Roberto and feeling weird, crappy and bad already. Then I was confused about what to do when he growled. I should have jerked his choke-chain, screamed at him, something. I failed. I failed.

We drove back to my house and my hands were almost shaking and I tried to make the weakest small talk. "So...what are you doing this weekend? And how many clients do you have tomorrow?"

I came in the house and my eyes filled up with tears. I have not made it into adulthood with the skills necessary to be in charge of anyone! Dogs or kids. Cats are good for me. I should have stuck with cats. SHIT. But now I'm in love with my kid and in love with my dog, so I just have to learn to dominate, control and have authority and all these things which are completely unnatural to me. I think my whole strategy for control in my life, subconciously, was to get the animal or person or child or whatever to like me, and then they would do what I wanted or behave because of their "like" for me. Now I understand what an ineffective strategy that is. I mean, it works okay for adults, but not for kids or animals. I am so in over my head. I am so not that good at this.

Oh dear. Oh dear.

This morning I felt a little teeny bit better. I resolved to inspire the respect of my child and my dog. It may require the very expensive consultation services of experts. I am in awe of anyone who is good at this.

I mean, I was basically afraid of my mother. But is that good, to be afraid of your parent? My dad was completely passive and my mom had to do any and all disciplining. But for the most part, with one big exception, we were all very dutiful, well-behaved kids. And I worshipped my dad. So, what gives?

This morning I got up early and had about an hour to work before Mulan even woke up. I listened to my new favorite CD, Nellie McKay's, "Get Away From Me". It's so good. I just got it last week, and I've been listening to it non-stop. My favorite songs are "Ding Dong", "Inner Peace", "Sari", and "The Dog Song". She's really hilarious, this combination of Peggy Lee, Elvis Costello and... M.C. Hammer.

Then I listened to NPR's "Morning Edition." There was a report on a young Puerto Rican boy who got killed last week in Iraq. He was 3 credits away from getting his physics degree and he had aspirations to teach science to young people and he was very enthusiastic about it. He was in the National Guard and he was called up. I was so overwhelmed hearing about this boy -- he'd come so far, all the way from a big family in Puerto Rico, and his teachers loved him. I couldn't stop crying. I just broke down about this boy. He seemed like he was such a fine human being. All his effort, all everyone's effort in his advancement and accomplishments, all a big waste. Now that I'm a mom, I cannot hear about anyone's death without the images in my mind of them taking their first steps, running into their mommy's or daddy's arms, sleeping with their parents when they were scared, learning how to read, discovering how the world works. And then shot. Dead. And for what? For what? I was so sad about this kid. So depressed.

Mulan woke up and came into the kitchen and said, "Why are you crying, Mommy?" I said I had just heard something very sad on the news.

This morning Mulan went to the dentist for the first time. The dentist was so good with kids. He gave her a balloon and he had a great way of engaging her and getting her excited to have her teeth cleaned. She had her hair in pigtails and the new dress on she got at Sears. They put these sunglasses on her so the light wouldn't be too bright. She was so cute and polite and sweet and responsive. The attendant kept saying, "She is such a sweet little girl." I was so proud. Then I thought of that Puerto Rican boy. And how he went to the dentist too, and his mother probably sat next to him just like I was with Mulan. Suddenly, my eyes were filled with tears. I kept thinking about how much dental work this Puerto Rican boy had had in his life. It was a strange musing, but impossible to avoid. My eyes were once again filled with tears. I widened them trying to get them not to spill. I coughed trying to distract my face from crying. Then Mulan said, "Mom, why are you CRYING." I said, "Oh, you know, you are just so cute lying there getting your teeth cleaned." I swear Mulan rolled her eyes. She looked at me like, "Give me a break, Mom, jeez."

Oh dear. Oh dear. Sometimes I think life is too fragile for me to go through it without anesthesizing myself. I used to do it with God, and then I did it with sugar, and fried food. But now I just feel it, and it feels pretty damn bad sometimes.

On the other hand. letting myself feel all the sad stuff makes me also feel the great things. It's weird, I would say that as I get older, my mood has leveled off substantially. In spite of this blog, I am fairly even keeled. I don't walk around in emotional panic or despair or blind optimism anymore. I've learned to be "cautiously" optimistic, and "cautiously" pessimistic. But at the same time that this mood leveling out has happened, I also feel I have deeper, and more profound appreciations for what I have in my life, and deeper awarenesses of how sad things really, truly are. Reality is sad. Reality is beautiful. Reality is full of fortune. Reality is full of injustice. I can't properly explain this vortex. This awareness accompanied by a leveling off of mood in general. Maybe it's just what happens to everyone as they get older, me included.

I just took Arden on the..."walk" again. I made sure that his leash was very much in my close control around other dogs. Just the fact that I was doing this made him nervous, I think. He growled at a dog from a distance. But when he's off leash he's great with other dogs, wouldn't even think about attacking or barking or growling at all. Hmmm...

I relistened to the last hour of "House Of Bush, House Of Saud." Wow, it's really good. I'm so glad Craig Unger wrote this book. I think I will download Richard Clark's book next. I see that he recorded it himself. Cool.

It's so disturbing how much the media is glorifying Reagan. When he first died, last Saturday, NPR, at least, had objective reporting about the positive and negative legacy of Reagan. I spent the entire 80s hating Reagan, but when I heard the clips of him speaking, I realized how much better he was than Bush! But then, from about Sunday on, the objective reporting went out the window and it was all idealization of Reagan, even on NPR. How could this be? My friend Jim Emerson sent me this link. It's just amazing how much the media is distorting the truth about his popularity. However, today on NPR, the reporting appears to have returned some balance. I can't wait for this whole thing to be over.

Early Morning in May

It's 6:15 a.m. and I've been up for an hour. Oh me, oh my, I haven't written a blog in so long. So much has happened. My dad died on March 20; a little over two months ago now. I just realized the last blog I wrote was on March 15. I had no idea he would be gone in the next five days. He had been terribly ill, of course. We were waiting for him to go, actually. It was excrutiating, watching him be in so much pain, so frail. My poor mom hadn't been able to leave the house for a year without finding someone to be with my dad. It was hard. I feel very sad to lose him. I miss him a lot. In a way, it's gotten sadder for me in the last few days. At first, when he died, we were all so relieved. We were terribly sad of course, but we had been so concerned about him. His death meant that we could stop worrying about him and begin to just miss him. So, I've been missing him. Last week was a particularly hard week. It seems like every couple of days there's something on NPR's Morning Edition that makes me want to call my dad. We used to speak about three times a week about the news, and sometimes every day. Today I wanted to call him about Bush's speech yesterday so we could fret about the state of the world together. Then I wanted to talk to him about all those Boston Catholic Churches closing. He would have been sad about that.

I'm going to make a tribute page to my dad with a slide show that I showed at his wake: pictures that I was able to gather together in a day at my parents' condo. I'm going to put in a letter I wrote to my dad a year ago and a letter a co-worker and dear friend of my dad's wrote to me (and my brothers and sisters) after he died.

Since the funeral I have been here in L.A. working on my monologue and working on my book. Right now it seems like I work on it all day, every minute I can, and I get nothing done. I have to turn in the first draft of my book on June 1st. I will make that deadline, but barely. Oh, there's so much work to do.

I am so excited. Yesterday was a big day. I rented a theatre for my show, "Letting Go Of God." It's at the Hudson Backstage. I was going to rent the Court Theatre, my favorite small theatre in L.A. But it's very expensive, and I would have to bet on my show being a hit in order to break even. I don't want to have ticket prices be greater than $20. So, my accounting hat has been on, figuring out how it's going to work on every random piece of paper around the house. My assistant Pam Keller is going to produce, and I'm going to put up the money, which is the first time for me. It's scary, but I really am excited too. So, yesterday Pam and I went over to the Hudson and sat around the theatre and tried to imagine my show there. At first, it seemed like the worst space. It's not an intimate setting at all -- brick walls, it's 42 feet wide, the stage is not raised. It's a rather imposing, downtowny type feeling -- not at all what I was looking for. But, it has these five big flats on wheels that can be part of the set, and my mind began to imagine images that could be projected onto those flats. Also, when I sat up in the back seats and looked at Pam on the stage, she looked so small amongst the flats (which are about ten feet high, I think), and suddenly, I realized that this was exactly the feeling I wanted. I could project things like Biblical passages onto the flats, and I would look so small amongst the books or the passages from the books, or the images. It's a more in-your-face feeling, but I really think it might work. Now I have to keep working on the script and begin to assemble the images. It's so exciting, I can barely stand it. My head is exploding with ideas. This show is going to be so much different than my other two shows, much more visual, I will move a lot more, it'll be much, much, much more physical. I will have more music in the body of the show. It's going to be a feat getting all the images I want organized and on a central computer system. Last night I went to bed at ten, but then got up again at midnight to reread the first act and imagine music and imagery and it was like coming out of me so fast, like a symphony, I couldn't stop it. That is such a rush. I hope it turns out okay.

My show will go into previews in the third week of August. I believe I'll have two weeks of previews and open the show on Sept. 10th.

Wow, Mulan is still asleep and it's 7:15 a.m. I have been up for amost two hours. I better go get her up. We put up her bunk beds this week, and she's been sleeping in her top bunk surrounded by all her stuffed animals. It's so cute, you could almost explode when you see her up there. She comes into bed with me about three or four a.m. usually. But last night she stayed in her own room.

I have been up late at night the last couple of nights, scouring the internet for the Catholic Church's view of the Bible, how the Church justifies it's sacred nature. It's all very interesting. It turns out that at Vatican 2, in the mid-sixties, the Church made a big leap forward, (in my opinion) and accepted officially the historical nature of the Books of the Bible. But now it's all changing as Cardinal Ratzinger, (the Karl Rove of the Vatican) drafts all these encyclicals that reinstates the inerrancy of the Bible. The Church is getting so much more conservative from it's intellectual hey-day of the sixties. It makes me wonder what some priests must think. I would be very disillusioned and depressed.

10:30 a.m. Okay, now I am back home after taking Mulan to school and then working out for an hour and a half. I have to rework my first act of the show today. I am trying to get a dialogue going that's funny -- how the priest tries to tell me how you can read the Bible historically AND see it as inerrant sacred scripture at the same time. I remember the priest who taught me at the Bible Study class kept saying, "Well, if you look at the Bible with historical, modern eyes, then of course, it's very disturbing." Like historical modern eyes were some CRAZY MIXED UP way to look at the Bible. But then he wanted the flip side too, he wanted to be all informed and understanding of the critical literary nature of the Bible, telling me how the books were put together, and the "P" writer and the "E" writer and "J" writer. I remember it was very confusing to me at the time, and now I'm trying to remember it and make if funny.

I am doing Weight Watchers. So far I've lost about ten pounds. Well, about eight pounds in about eight weeks. I am a slow, slow, slow loser. When I do my big workout, I usually treat myself to a scone (which is six points) afterwards. I get it at Susina Bakery which has the most amazing scones. I figure, if you're going to splurge, then have the best. I get to add 6 points to my day if I work out for an hour and a half. So it's a swap: 1 1/2 hours of sweating for one delicious scone that takes about ten minutes to eat if I really eat it...s l o w l y. Hmmm... Tonight I am going out with my friend Bob Blumer, who is a chef. He's on the Food Channel, his show is called The Surreal Gourmet. I was a guest on his show a couple of years ago and I may be one again this summer. He shoots the show in Toronto and now he's headed there for six months or so. Oh, I will miss him. I'm not sure where we are going or what we are eating.

Oh my, this blog is so chatty. I am wondering about this whole blog thing.

I keep having to pinch myself, because I feel so lucky to be working on this book and this show. I feel so fortunate to be able to concentrate on the topics that are the greatest concern to me. For so many years in my working career, that was only a dream.

Every week that I've been doing Weight Watchers, I make this zero-point soup -- it's a vegetable soup and it ends up not being zero points because I roast the vegetables in a little olive oil before I put them in the soup and I add garbonzo beans and kidney beans. Anyway, last night I had Mulan be my sous chef. She picked up all the chopped vegetables and put them on the roasting pan and then sprayed them with oil. She was so happy with her job that she said she was going to change her name to "Sue."

I have to read more about Cardinal Ratzinger. He sounds really scary. Except first I have to write. Then eat vegetable soup. Then write. Then go to a meeting at three. Then pick up Mulan. THEN I can read about Cardinal Ratzinger. (I can't believe his name is "Ratzinger" -- it's like Edward Gorey invented him. It's like, if you were inventing a name for a character like his you couldn't use the name Ratzinger because it would be too obvious. The studio exec would say, "Come on...Ratzinger? Too on the nose..."

The Catholic Club

Hi. I'm taking a lunch break from working on my book. This weekend I spent a lot of time rereading the New Testament. Those parables are strange and odd. So much odder and stranger than I remembered them from my Bible study class and even from when I reread the New Testament a year or so ago. Take the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew, Chapter 22. So, the idea is that heaven is like a wedding feast that God is giving. God's messengers go out and invite people. Some of the invitees ignore the invitation, and other invitees kill the messengers -- just for inviting them to the party. Okay, that IS bad. I get it. You shouldn't kill someone for trying to invite you to a party.

But, then God (or the King in the parable) sends an army to destroy, not only the people who killed his messengers, but the ENTIRE CITY that these people lived in. A city filled with people who didn't ignore the invitation. They didn't even GET an invitation.

The Bible is filled with stories of entire cities being wiped out because of a few bad apples. That seems unethical to me, but let's just let this part go. So far, I get it. God comes and invites people to a way of life, and those that ignore the message don't get to come to the party (eternal life in heaven). Okay, okay.

But then what happens next? God (the King) sends his servants out into the street and they ask a bunch of other people to come to the party, good and BAD people. Okay, that's strange, because what do they mean by "bad" people? But okay -- let's just go with this -- good and bad people, OTHER people get to come to the party because the first people ignored the invitation. At this point I am asking myself, is there a limit on the number of people that can come to heaven? Does someone not responding to Jesus allow room for another person to come who wouldn't have been asked if the first person hadn't declined? Or been murdered when their city was destroyed?

But now comes the bizarre part. Since the servants ran into the street and hauled people into the wedding party, good and bad people, at the last minute, there was one guy who wasn't properly dressed for the wedding. Okay. Well, there's all kinds of people there -- good and "bad," and they were all asked to come at the last minute. But what does God have his servants do to this person who is badly dressed? Ask him to change? No. Ask him to leave? No. Give him some proper clothes? No. Explain to him how to dress properly for a wedding? No.

No, God (the King) instructs his servants to: (this is from my New American Bible version) "Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the night to wail and grind his teeth." So, I'm thinking, even if you are a BAD person, but wearing the right outfit, you go to heaven. But you could be a good person, in the wrong outfit, and you get thrown into Hell.

The moral of this story according to the bible: Many are called, but few are chosen.

OK. So, I get how a story illustrating how many people may hear the message and few of them RESPOND to it properly could be important. But why the clothes part of it?

So, if you hear the word of God, and come to the "party" but aren't wearing the right clothes, you still get thrown into hell. I imagine a priest from my childhood would say, "The clothes mean how prepared you are to enter heaven, i.e. go to church, are in good status with confession/your soul, etc." But the story goes out of it's way to say that these secondarily invited guests were invited off the street and some of them were bad people. Isn't this a convoluted, confusing, and strange story, given the theme "god" is trying to express?

Now, when I was a Catholic, I barely paid attention to these parables, they seemed dated and odd even then. I just figured it was some benign way to explain a moral concept using a story. My teachers would probably have said that this story means, "Listen to the word of God, but even if you are listening to the word of God, you have to be in good standing with God in order to go to heaven. Just listening isn't good enough." Or something like that.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? Well, the Apostles ask him this very question in Matthew as well. Even though the Apostles seem constantly confused by Jesus's message, even when he is straightforward, Jesus tells them that the reason he speaks in parables is that the people, the general public, don't understand him, "They look but do not see, they listen but do not understand." (Mathew 13) Okay. Why? Why would stories be clearer for people who have a hard time understanding than outright lessons? Jesus does give a lot of outright answers to things, like about divorce and how people should sell every last thing and give it away to the poor. Why are these stories so special? They don't seem special. They seem confusing. And it seems as though even the Apostles are confused by them.

All right. That's enough for now. What I wanted to write about today is this whole idea that I'm against the Catholic Church. I got an e-mail today from an old friend who I adore, this wonderful and delightful person, who is doing work for the Catholic Church in Seattle, and she said, "I know you are against the Church." And I've been thinking about this all morning. I am not against the church. (I'm totally confused about when I'm supposed to be capitalizing Church and god, or church and God, or even Apostles, or for that matter...bible.)

I have a lot of affectionate feelings for the Catholic Church. It's my birth culture. I honestly am not sure that if I lived in Spokane, I wouldn't be sending my daughter to St. Augustine's, a Catholic school. Because I think Catholicism, at least as it's practiced in my home town, is a great club. I know that might sound flip, but I really think it's a great club. It has rituals and meetings and solidifies a group and creates history between people. It provides a place for the dispossessed, rituals for births, deaths and weddings. It organizes charity events. It has excellent schools. Great club.

I'm not "against" the Catholic Church. There are a lot of things I like about it a lot. I just don't believe in the dogma. I was on the plane recently with a high school friend who has a few kids in Catholic schools in Spokane. And he was telling me how he and another friend of ours, who also has kids in Catholic schools in Spokane, revealed to each other that they don't believe it either -- the whole dogma, god, catholic thing. But they went to those schools and had a good experience, it's where the people they know send their kids, there's this whole history and community for them there, and that's where they want their kids to go to school. And I totally get that. When he told me this I was nodding my head, like, "Yes, yes. That's how I would feel too."

But now that a few weeks have gone by, I am still thinking about it. Would I? I don't know. I don't know if I could casually not believe like that. Not believing in god and Catholicism in particular changed my world view so dramatically, it's not like I could just take god and religion out of Catholicism and have it still be okay. I don't think, anyway. I guess I'm still coming up with my take on it all.

I guess what I'm coming to grips with, especially as I talk about letting go of God more and more, is how outside the accepted norm I am becoming. And I'm not sure what to do about that. I know that my mother would say that the best thing is to not believe in God and not say anything about it. I don't think this is necessarily hypocritical. She has said to me, lovingly and sincerely, that "People who don't believe in god keep it quietly to themselves." I don't keep it quiet anymore. And I found that a lot of people, lots and lots of people, feel the same way I do. We accept a wholly natural universe. We don't accept the idea of a God who is concerned with us personally and who is in control or who orchestrates or reacts to anything that happens. We believe we evolved, with all the haphazard, accidental, wayward, opportunity-seeking moves that is the hallmark of evolution. Which, by the way, makes us humans so lucky and remarkable -- but that's another topic.

But what I'm really trying to get comfortable with is how this point of view I have colors how others see me. If I met a guy who was writing a book about how...how...say, how the Twin Towers were not brought down by Al Qaeda but by the United Nations instead, I would automatically think this person was a nut-case. And that's how people view me when they ask what I'm writing and I say this book all about losing my faith in God.

I guess that in our culture, and probably all cultures, there are certain beliefs that are the accepted norms. Whether they are true or not isn't important. But people who do not hold these beliefs are immediately flagged as outsiders or crackpots or, as in the case of Los Angeles therapy-speak, obsessives. I can see how efficient this way of thinking is. I can see how it would develop. I can see how I use it in other areas, myself.

Like say, take the...9/11, the terrorist attack example. If someone told me it was the United Nations behind it, I would think, "My not-fully-investigative, but casual research into this topic makes me confident that Al Qaeda was behind it and not the United Nations. I am going to label this person a wacko and avoid them or at least this topic with them." And that would be an efficient and, most likely, a correct move to make.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I can see how the average person who accepts that there is a God, but hasn't put a lot of objective, investigative research into it (And why should they? The entire culture behaves as if this God does exist and they probably have no reason to doubt that ) I can see why they would see me as a nutcase because of this book and this show that I'm working on. I get it. I totally get it.

But what am I to do? I am a monologist. I write about my point of view. And this was a deeply life-changing experience. And, IN my point of view, it's dangerous what is happening in our world and in our society because of this belief in a god that, I think, is not well considered. And I think that not believing in God makes awareness, true awareness in the beauty of our world possible.

But if I try to explain this, then I come across even stranger! Oh me oh my. Ah well. Good thing I care a little about what people think about me, but not a lot. Enough to bathe and get haircuts, but not enough to change my world-view. So, I guess I will avoid talking to people about it, even if they make comments, unless they ask me a question directly. And I can write about what I think here! In my blog!

Oh dear. I wrote through my lunch hour. Back to work!

Wait.

Now I'm feeling bad about saying that the average person has not fully considered the existence of God. I guess I just think, how can they, when the facts are so obvious? But then, maybe they aren't all that obvious. If you are a casual observer of the intricacy of this life we are in the midst of, it seems sufficiently complex as to have to be created by a creator. Also, we humans are so much different than other animals that it must also seem obvious that we are created especially. But the thing is, now we have the facts, we've got the theory of evolution and DNA, we can observe how evolution behaves in things like viruses.

Maybe I need to just quit everything and go be a high school biology teacher.

The other thing is that if you are coached, like I was, to feel God's "love" all the time, then that's another tangible piece of evidence that someone might have to believe in God. Hmmm...

Life in the Slow Lane

What I'm doing: I'm writing a book. So far the title is going to be: "Letting Go Of God". It's hard. To write a book, I mean. Letting go of God was also hard, but I did that a while ago, so it doesn't seem so hard now. What seems hard now is to write this book. I am working on the outline. I have finished a preliminary one. I am terrified and overwhelmed. I have been doing the stage show of the same title, here and there, around and about, for almost three years. This is definitely my hardest show to do.

What's new? Well, I read this wonderful book, "Uncommon Sense" by Alan Cromer. His idea is that scientific, objective, abstract, rational thinking is not natural to us. But, as he says, "...when you think about it, monogamy, honesty & democratic government are unnatural human behaviors as well...." And I have to say, after reading his book, I agree with him. He also says that "Our claim to greatness is that we have at times gone against the grain of our own egocentrism to forge a higher vision of the world."

Also this: "Science is the end product of two unique histories: the biological history in which human beings evolved from anthropod ancestors, and the human history of the discovery of objective thinking and its application to the study of nature. The second history wouldn't be possible if the first didn't endow us with the capacity of abstract thought. But why do we have this capacity? What were the specific environmental factors that selected for high intelligence? Were they the same ones that first caused the hominid line to diverge from the ape line? If so, then science was the destiny of our line. If not, the hominid line from which we descended arose from extraneous factors having nothing to do with heavy thinking -- then human intelligence itself is a fluke, an unpredictable event along the chaotic trajectory of life. Maybe we got to where we are by such a tortuous path that it's likelihood of being repeated elsewhere is very small."

I loved the book, underlining things all through it. I tried to send him an e-mail but it seems he is alive but not able to get e-mail through the university he used to teach at (Northeastern University).

I think it's true, that science asks people to veer away from a passion for believing in spirits and gods and it's difficult. That scientific thinking comes, not naturally, but through formal education. In the end, that was the biggest transformation for me. I thought I was just seeking to find God, and what I ended up with was an entirely new way of seeing the world. It wasn't just God I gave up, but also my confidence in anything that I couldn't pass through my new method of finding truth, which included evidence and objectivity and probabilities and a deep attempt at freeing myself from projecting my own personal wishes and needs into ideas and concepts. Not only out went a personal God, or even any non-personal God, but a lot went with the bathwater -- from astrology, psychics, untested herbal remedies to ideas like transformation through transcendence. But I gained so much more.

This week a friend said to me, "You don't believe anything." And I couldn't stop thinking about that. Because that's not true. In fact, I think it's the oppposite. It's that I believe in so much. I mean, if you define "believe" as in "have confidence in." I have confidence in the laws of nature. I understand how objective truth is arrived at. I have a method that allows me to "believe" in things.

What else? I was in Spokane to visit my parents. I went to a Christian concert -- I took Mulan. I felt a little guilty taking her to her first big concert and having it be a Christian one, but I was curious. The first band was a local one, called Sittser. I couldn't detect any overt Christian references to their songs -- most of them having vague possibly religious themes, like "When you are confused, look up for direction," which of course, could mean looking at the stars or something. The second band was Newsboys, and they were yelling "Praise God!" as soon as they got onstage to a packed Opera House filled with believers yelling "Yes!" and "Praise Jesus!" back at them.
Mulan asked me, "What does 'praise' mean?" and I said, "It means...it means...adore or like...give a compliment."
And she said, "Why does God need a compliment?"
Ha. I said because he's omnipotent and omnicient and also really insecure.

The lead singer of the Newsboys started telling the audience a story. He said, "You know how it's easy to pray when things are going well, when times are good? But it's a lot harder to pray when things are going bad." Then he told about how his wife died of cancer the year before and how he and she used to pray. It felt very manipulative. I looked around at the audience. Couldn't they see how manipulative that was? Plus, it's not true. People pray much quicker and easier when times are tough. It's when they need something and the idea of a loving merciful God who has control or even just comfort is appealing. When things are going well, people usually don't pray. (Although I have to say, I used to pray all the time, good times and bad. I liked to pray in good times because it gave me the idea that there was someone to thank). In any case, this was about the time that I decided that we had to go.

As we were leaving the Opera House, I saw the lead singer of Sittser. I asked him if he considered his band a Christian band. I could tell he couldn't tell where I was coming from, and so he tried to have it both ways, saying that he didn't want to get pigeonholed, but that his band had deep faith, blah blah blah.

I went because I was curious. The radio station that promoted the concert is one of several Christian stations in Spokane and this whole, new, Christian music is a phenomenon. I wanted to see it up close. Mostly, I have to say, it was pretty boring. I mean, almost any gospel music has many times more "soul" than these two bands had. And more vocally appreciative fans.

Stop Skipping!

I am playing hookey. I should be working on the outline for my book. But Mulan was home from pre-school, sick, today. Wow, I just realized that I only write in my blogs when either Mulan or I are sick. In fact, we aren't sick that much. In fact, this is the first time Mulan has missed school because of it. I feel weird talking about school when it comes to a four year old. It's more like day care with an educational element to it. In any case, I don't know how full-time moms do it. I can't get anything done when Mulan is around. It's a miracle if I get to read e-mail and keep the house from turning into a dump. I have no idea how someone takes care of more than one kid and does things like... oh, make dinner. OHMYGOD. I am so glad I became a mother because I think I would feel uppity about at-home mothers. Now I know it's the hardest job in the world.

Even though we had fun today. It rained all day, hard. I had a fire in the fireplace and we set up a little table and chairs in the living room and played "Chutes and Ladders" and "Candy Land." About a jillion times. Which of course means three times. The top of the Chutes and Ladders game says, "The most fun up-and-down game in the world!" I wondered how many jokes are made at the Milton Bradley factory about that claim. Then we played "Old Maid." I have taught Mulan that if you end up with the Old Maid, it means you're the winner.

I wonder if she'll be in therapy talking about me and remember this. I suppose I deserve it, I spent hours on the couch talking about my own mother. It's pretty dramatic, how much forgiveness you have for your mother after you become a mother. Sometimes I think about how I teased some specific line, some awful thing my mother said once, and then spent time in therapy talking about it. Now I know that when you're a mom, every day, there are probably several lines that someone could pull out and justifiably spending time in therapy over. As a parent, you know that it's impossible to not say something stupid, you just try to keep your percentages as low as possible. Three dumb things to 75 appropriate things. Like that.

For example, whenever Mulan holds my hand as we walk down the street, or really anywhere, she swings my arm and skips wildly. This might sound cute. And it was cute, for maybe the first fifty five times it happened. Now it drives me crazy. This thirty pound kid using my arm as a balancing bar.

I imagine Mulan on a therapist's couch in the future, describing what kind of mother I was. Using the example of me on a busy street, holding her hand, angry, seething and barking, "STOP SKIPPING. I MEAN IT! STOP SKIPPING THIS INSTANT!"

And she will have reported it all accurately.

Oh well...

How much TV is wrong? When is it wrong? I try to keep it to an hour and a half a day. I know! That's a lot! One half an hour show in the morning while I make breakfast and one hour at night while I do, y'know, everything that has to be done to just keep up with the daily demands. We TIVO "Oswald" and "Dora The Explorer" and "Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat" and "Blues Clues." I think the new Blues Clues guy is cuter than the old Blues Clues guy. But I think the old Blues Clues guy is sexier. Go figure. Weirder still: I had an erotic dream about the new Blues Clues guy. And I woke up astonished. Why not the old Blues Clues guy who I actually think is sexy? And another question: Why am I having these types of dreams about the Blues Clues guy?

How can anyone think pornography is inherently bad when we involuntarily write, direct and star in it for ourselves while we sleep?

Back to children's TV. I never knew I'd have opinions about this stuff. We are thankfully beyond Telitubbies. That show was so hypnotising, I found myself watching it after Mulan went to sleep -- just mesmerized. It reminded me of college when we would all go get stoned and then go see the midnight show of "Eraserhead" . So far I have only watched Telitubbies after two glasses of wine. I do think Tinky Winky is gay. Which, of course, I love.

Okay. So... I finished Jamy Ian Swiss' book, "Shattering Illusions." The last chapter made me cry, it was so good. It's all about mystery and the nature of mystery. It's about so much more than magic. It's inspiring me to think differently about the end of my monologue in progess -- which is all about me losing my faith. Here is a paragraph from it that I love: "Magic tells us that life is filled with mysteries, both grand and trivial. There is little doubt that we cannot face every mystery in the same fashion. There will always be some mysteries we wish to solve, and some we don't; some we are driven to solve, and do. I believe that how we face these mysteries says a great deal about us as individuals, and how we make our way in the world." And then later he says, "When you put the truly impossible in front of someone, and you place them firmly and uncompromisingly into that experience -- not the puzzling or the briefly distracting, but the deeply impossible, the impenetrably mysterious -- people react. Things happen. And it can be very interesting to be a part of it when they do." Wow. That's how I feel about experiencing close up magic. And it's how I feel about experiencing art.

And I love this: "For myself, I like that look in someone's eye when he has run smack into the experience of mystery, and there is no escape, no longer any way out but to face the fact that mystery is now right in front of him, as well as all around him."

And then...

"I am less interested than ever today in being a light amusement or a pleasant distraction. Leave that to others. I have within my reach -- not readily or easily, but with great effort, at least potentially -- the power to create a unique experience."

And then...

"I shall not merely amuse. I shall not merely distract. I shall bring upon them the experience of mystery, and with this commonality between us now, we will go forward and explore our humanity."

This is what I am aspiring to in my next work. It's such a tall order, one that I may not be capable of. But I can try.

The second to the last chapter, "The Elements Of Style" is a great chapter about persona on stage. If there's anyone who wanted to read something about the process of what I do, as a monologist, this would be the thing for them to read.

It's too quiet in the house. I better see what my daughter is up to.

Ohmygod, she is asleep on the sofa. She really is sick. Her fever is gone, but she's wiped out. Wow. It's raining, my beautiful daughter is sleeping in the living room under her favorite blankets, I am drinking cocoa in the kitchen and listening to NPR. I think this is a good moment. Life should have a lot of moments like this one.

I think it's gonna be Kerry/Edwards ticket. Very exciting.