Passed-Out Pug

The day before we left for India, we had a huge party to celebrate my father's 80th birthday. At this party, our dog helped himself to not one but two gin and tonics that a guest graciously left on the floor for him. This was in addition to all the human food he managed to cadge.

By the time the guests had left and it was time for Mike and me to pack, Baci had passed out on the middle of the bed, drunk and stuffed. He was snoring, with the tip of his pink tongue hanging out. He remained passed out like this, completely immobile, until it was morning and we shook him awake to say our goodbyes.

While in India, my mom and dad are taking care of him. Lucky pug.

Woah. We're in India.

I have always wanted to go to India.

As a child, I was immersed in Indian folk tales and mesmerized by Indian fashions. I read the Ramayana three times over the course of my public school education in Seattle; in the fourth grade, I played Ravanna’s evil sister, Surpanakha, who tries to seduce Rama and steal him away from Sita.

(Other favorite stage roles from that era include the Native American wicked witch Swayook, the vain and imperious goddess Hera, and the baby-stealing, hard-bitten Imogene from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. By twelve years old I’d discovered that playing the villain is always more fun than playing the ingénue, even if they do get to wear a prettier costume. At thirteen I got cast as a girl who kept accidentally beating up boys; we did eleven shows a week, which meant I only had to go to school on Mondays, and the money I made eventually went to paying for the first show I directed and produced my senior year of high school.)

(But I digress.)


In the neighborhood I grew up in there was an older couple who lived a few doors down from us who went to India to do Peace Corps. When they came back they told us stories of their time there, including time spent working with Mother Teresa. I was in awe. And when I said, rather wistfully, “I want to go to India,” the woman punctured my wist with a very matter-of-fact, “Well then you will. If you really want to, then you will.”

And now, here I am.

But it’s a funny thing. I have many friends who have come here. They saved up and planned for this trip for months, sometimes years. One followed her guru here. All of them came as backpackers, staying in humble accommodations, traveling like locals, making their money streeeeetch over the months they had to spend here.

Me? I’m in a funny place. Because I didn’t spend months/years planning and scheming. It fell into my lap. I looked at it and said, Really? But I'm tired. Despite this, it was still in my lap. So I said, Ok. Let's go.

Now, we’ve been running hard this year. In 2010 we’ve been in our Brooklyn home a total of maybe 21 days. That’s it. The rest of the year we’ve been in DC, Tallahassee, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Sydney, Hong Kong, China, Ireland, New Jersey, Cape Cod…everywhere but home. So we were looking forward to a very quiet August. Lots of rest. Lots of not going anywhere.

But then in May we got an email from the US Consulate’s office asking us if we wanted to go to India in August. Five cities, with one workshop and one performance in each, and the monologue of our choice. How could we say no?

We couldn’t, so we said yes, and then we kept running, busy with all our other engagements up until the moment we left, pausing only to pick up a guide book which we didn’t even have time to open until we were on the 24-hour plane over.

And now, here we are.


A well-traveled friend of mine wrote me today with these words:

“And India, man.... It took me two solid weeks before I could even begin to relax just a little bit. But when you do, it's all the sweeter for realizing that in so doing you have accomplished something. You realize that you're still alive. And what's more, that you were ALWAYS okay. And that you're stronger than you'd given yourself credit for being. You're going to be a-okay!”

That’s how everyone I know who’s come here talks about India. As the most intense experience of their lives ever. Like love, like war.

I keep telling myself that our experience isn’t going to be that way. Thanks to coming through the State Department, we’ll be staying at fancy hotels. We’ll have drivers to whisk us from the airport to the classroom to the theater. We’ve given ourselves advance permission to relax, to take it easy, to not cram every moment we’re not working with essential India moments. We are willing to exchange stories like

sitting on the edge of an open train whisking through the countryside while drinking chai out of a clay cup

for

sitting on the edge of a rooftop pool while happily surrounded by wifi.

But I have to report that even as I write this from our HOTEL FORTRESS, I am already overwhelmed. This place has armed guards out front, mirrors to check the undercarriage of cars for bombs, $25 lunch buffets...

Feeling like a caged bird, on the first day I tried to go for a walk.

Took me about twenty minutes just to cross the street. Traffic is intense! Everyone beeping! No crosswalks! I made it across to the meridian, hung out there with a leper before I worked up the nerve to cross the rest of the way. Very Frogger-like.

Then yesterday we went to the theater for a site visit and found out that everything that could be misunderstood about our tech has been. I mean, we decided to make this thing as easy as possible: it's basically lights up, lights down. And yet! Everything becomes complicated! Meetings that were scheduled to take 30 minutes take two hours! During which time...nothing was actually accomplished!

But today is the real test, because tonight’s our first show. And I'm just so curious as to how the audience will receive Mike. They don't have any tradition of this kind of performance; not even stand-up. The interview I heard Mike give over the phone this morning was hilarious in how clearly the interviewer had no idea who Mike was or what he did.

MIKE: No, there's no music. (pause) No, I don't sing. (pause) No, no, no poetry. I just sit there and tell a story. (pause) 58? No, no, I'm 37. (pause) Self-taught. (pause) No, I will not recite a line for you. That's not how it works. (pause) Well, just because it's not written doesn't mean it's not composed. (pause) (pause) (pause) Well if you don't understand why Indians would care about what's happening in China--when you're both competing for the same markets, when corporations are moving their operations from China to India because they want to use your people in the same way they've used the Chinese--if you can't see why that would pertain to you, then you're just blind or have no imagination. (pause) Yes, thank you for your time. Goodbye.

I’ll keep you posted.

July 29, 2000

Ten years ago today, Mike and I got married.

Mike was 27; I had turned 23 one month before. By day, I worked at Swedish Hospital in Human Resources. Mike was mostly unemployed, though he sometimes balanced the accounts at the Century Ballroom. At night we performed and produced our own work. We were in a sketch comedy group together, we both wrote and performed for a local televised comedy show, and we’d worked together to produce Mike’s first two monologues, both of them at little theaters on Capitol Hill.


Money was always tight back then, and we spent the last of our savings on our homemade wedding invitations. Our friend James was the DJ. Rhonda and Carrie made the programs. Sophie and Heidi and Libby and Maureen wrangled our flowers into shape. Many others helped in ways large and small.


We got married at St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill. Our priest was a bad-ass Jesuit who took it as his mission to be inclusive and welcoming. My bio-dad read from the Old Testament and Mike’s dad from the New. During communion, Mike and I stood on either side of the aisle, administering the wine. My step-father, who raised me, walked me down the aisle and danced the first dance with me.


I’ll never forget the feeling of walking down that aisle and seeing so many people I loved, from so many different aspects of my life, all in one room together. I hadn’t realized how overwhelming that would be, and promptly burst into tears.


My mom and dad footed the bill for our enormous wedding, at which 250 of our closest friends and family members danced and ate and drank liberally. Our careful budget allowed for an enormous white dress and an open bar, but not a photographer. My Aunt Ann took photos, and we stocked the reception hall tables with disposable cameras so we could see what the guests saw.


There were many, many toasts. We had cream puffs from Than Brothers instead of a cake. We rocked the Polish Home until Mike and I were the last two people standing in that big, moonlit room. It was an excellent party.


The cover of our wedding invitation had this quote by Mark Helprin:

“The world is a perfect place, so perfect that even if there is nothing afterward, all of this will have been enough.”


Back then we didn’t have any clue what was to come. If you’d asked me, I would have guessed we’d live in Seattle forever. New York was as foreign as the moon. And if you’d told me we’d eventually be able to make a living from our theater, I would have said you were crazy.


Not too many of those original photos turned out well, so a few months ago, I got back into that dress (still hanging at my parents’ house) and Mike into a tux, and my little sister Ruth—who was still a teenager at our wedding, but who is now an old married woman—took a new batch of wedding photos. Everywhere we went, people honked their horns and wished us well. We were only too happy to take their blessings, and hope we get to use them on the next ten years.

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.


~John Berryman

Ring of Kerry

We're in Ireland for quite some time--a whole month! with a car!--but for the first two weeks we've got shows most nights, so there's a limit to how far we can travel before the chain of performance yanks us back.

Last Sunday, however, we had a full day off, and we used that time for an epic drive from Cork to the famous Ring of Kerry.


We were warned in advance that it would be crazy touristy. That if we wanted "authentic" Ireland we should head to the Dingle or Beara peninsulas. But seeing as how visitors have been swearing by the Ring of Kerry for hundreds of years now (really! it was a hot spot even in Victorian times, though I suspect there were less plastic-shamrocks-made-in-China available for purchase), and armed with Rick Steves' invaluable guidebook and a detailed road atlas, we set our alarms for 7 AM.

(This is the cue for those of you who know us to gasp.)


And off we went!

Although we got a later start than we'd intended. Probably because we'd stayed up until 3 AM. So we weren't actually on the road until 10:45 AM.

(This is the cue for those of you who know us to laugh.)


But goodness! It was beautiful even before we'd gotten anywhere near the Ring.

And driving on the wrong side of the road really isn't so hard. Especially with a patient navigator by your side.


City folks that we are, we were delighted by the many sheep and cows and horses along the way. These ones were loose by the side of the road, so we pulled over to get closer...


They were interested until we pulled out our camera. Then they huffily walked away. Tourists, they bleated.


But listen! Our late start proved to be a blessing. All those huge tour buses roust their elderly inhabitants out of bed at the crack of dawn in order to beat the traffic, so by the time we were sailing around, we had many of the roads to ourselves. And with the midsummer sun (it doesn't get dark until around 11 pm), there was no shortage of sunshine to light our path.


This is a ring fortress built around 500 BC that we had pretty much to ourselves. Well, us and the sheep and the horses and cows.


It's hard to capture in photographs how beautiful the peninsula is.



It's in the way the water meets the rocky shore, and in the variety of textures and colors that make up the rolling patchwork of the countryside.



As my husband said at one scenic overlook, "I need an 180-degree lens."


Everywhere you look you can see the obvious footprints of the glaciers that moved through here and grooved the land.


And the beaches are exquisite. Soft sand beneath your toes, but big hard rocks with cockles and mussels and shallow pools with interesting marine life to explore.



By dinner time, we'd worked up a hearty appetite and ordered dinner at this pub in Portmagee.


Seated at a picnic table alongside the small harbor, we ate big bowls of chowder and a hot seafood sampler and washed it down with a few pints of Harp.


It was delicious.

And I have to say, it didn't feel very "touristy." Everyone else appeared to be locals. And if there are a few more places along the Ring to buy postcards then there are in other parts of Ireland, well, I certainly didn't mind it. Especially since those same places have WCs and tend to sell ice cream.


The only thing that would have made our trip better is if we could have spent the night there and driven back the next day. But a morning technical rehearsal beckoned, so we popped our Chieftans CD back in and continued on our way.


Tourists, said the sheep. Why not Springsteen?

Cause and Effect

My father's wife, Kathy, sent me this enviable picture of her first-class voyage to England.


To quote Kathy, it was "the most amazing trip ever. The seats reclined totally flat and every position in between."

Now, here's a picture of them enjoying the lovely midsummer weather a day or so later.


Look how rested and happy they look!

Clearly, this is scientific proof that my next long voyage needs to be first class...

The Big Buddha on Lantau Island

Go to Big Buddha, they said.

Ok, we said.

We took the metro for a 25-minute ride, then got onto this cable car for another 25 minutes.


The view was stunning. In every direction.


Down below we could see the conical hats of fishermen and fisherwomen working on the shore. Were they clamming? Were they crabbing? It was a hot and humid day, and we fanned ourselves as we glided over their toil.

Eventually the Buddha came into view. Can you see it?


There he was, residing over one of the many verdant hills of Lantau Island. The low clouds looked like incense.


To get to the Buddha, you must first pass through a commercial "village" that is packed with gelato shops and restaurants and gift shops and Starbucks.

There is even an interactive ride/show where you can pay to get closer to the Buddha.


It gets worse. There is a fake tree called the Bodhi Wishing Tree, and you can write down a wish and place it there. Which sounds ok, until you read that to get the tag you must spend HK$150 at the gift shop.


I would love to know what the monks at the Po Lin Monastery think of all this.


But once you get past the commercial strip, you arrive at the base of the Buddha, and as yet there are no air-conditioned escalators to whisk you to the top.



It's not such a long walk after all, and at the top there's a cool breeze to reward you for your efforts.


Everyone wants to get their picture taken with the Buddha.


Wouldn't you?


Afterwards we went to the Po Lin Monastery, where the monks are very used to the presence of outsiders.



They served a basic vegetarian meal that happened to include one of my all-time favorite dishes: baby bok choi and mushrooms.


They also served up some wisdom.


After the meal we sat in the courtyard, listening to their chanting and watching the many birds and enormous black butterflies flit around.



Filled up on peace, it was time to head back.