JANE

Jane Fonda opened in a new play called 33 Variations (I think) by Moises Kaufman (last night).
The play involves my undiagnosed terrible disease.

A friend who runs a nonprofit for cancer patients (she has had cancer)
knows of my situation. We friended on FACEBOOK.

She sent a message through FACEBOOK, NOT to see the play. To avoid it.

I messaged back a short - "thanks for the heads up!"

(And feel weird that she knows what's going on with me and she's afraid for me and
is taking steps to protect me)

I've never liked people stepping in,
but in this situation, I can't help it

The play is reviewed in the Times today.

I skim the review, and spot the words terminal, race with time, physical disintigration and rebuff it.
Instead I read one of the countless articles about how people with means aren't spending money, worsening
the recession/depression.

I can' t put away my dishes, shave and dress myself, go to work, figure out my taxes and rent,
get food to my stupid high-rise hanging over the Westside highway and then ignite a
terror about the tragic and predicted ending for people with a terrible disease.

I'm holding onto the idea that we're all individuals.

They don't know.
Moises Kaufman and Jane Fonda don't know.

SAUGERTIES NEW YORK

saugerties Catskills
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Black Soap

Black Soap
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

There's a men's bathroom on the 7th floor of the Tisch Buiding at NYU. It's a public bathroom. I've always used it for my dressing room when I do plays there. There's always a bar of black soap on the sink. Year in and year out.

WHITE NOISE

I decide to go to Apple on 14th Street to look at laptops.
The bike ride there is difficult because of traffic on the westside along 9th, 10th and 11th Avenues.

I'm infuriated.
It's 5pm on Sunday.
There is public transportation.

(It ignites my growing rage about Americans lazy ass driving habbits; wasting gas, clogging up the roads,
wasting resources, ruining my world! I walk and use public transportation... SO CAN YOU!

(in your dumb-ass BMW SUV'S)

Traffic is so tightly packed, people can't cross the streets.

I learn today (in the Times) that there was a real estate fore-closure auction at the Jacob Javitz Center.
The biggest one to date.

I try to squeeze through cars on my orange vintage Schwinn bicycle.,
but I get stuck between cars, lose my balance, and fall onto the hood of a car.

The young driver puts her hands to her mouth in horror.
I right myself, and mouth silently to her, "I'm okay".
She drops her hands and releases her scrunched shoulders, making it a big gesture, like she's doing it for the camera.

But I'm NOT okay, I feel the familiar pain of a sprained ankle.

I bike down to Apple at 14th street and interview a child about Apple's next generation of computers.
I feel alone and suspect.
Jason Bourne in THE BOURNE IDENTITY.
Like, I'm a menace to the streets because of my terrible secret.

This morning I cancel a VO audition and work.
I lie on my sofa with a grocery bag of ice cubes on my naked ankle and read WHITE NOISE by Don Delillo,
a post modern novel. Funny, but not easy to read. Dense, comic, smart and detached.
It's a great book to read if you were in Manhattan during 9/11. (And thinking about mortality)

As I read, a distracting voice wonders if my ankle can heal.

LAZY TALK

I step aside for New York's mover's and shaker's, continually stop and let people pass.

My inability to get a move-on has led to
lingering conversations with odd-balls.
I find myself having lazy conversations with people I would normally ignore.

Having my bike fixed on 39th and 10th,
leaning over the counter, slack jawed,
I learned that my bike mechanic used to be fat.
He's slim now.

On the elevator my blonde preppy lady neighbor (who I hadn't spoken to in 9 years) confessed she gave up her dogs to a young couple on Riverside Park.
Her daughter left for prep school this year and it was too hard to take care of them by herself.
I nod in solemn agreement.
Loss, change, what is best sometimes hurts. Yes.

And at the MOMA, at the members desk. Talking to an off beat young man (art major I presume).
He looked like Eddie Monster and kind of sexy in a loner unsteady way.
He answered my questions about the film I was planning to see, with shy intensity.
As if most of his life he'd been told to shut up and was only now getting over the humiliation.
He talked a lot about the film. Looking away and down through all of his information giving.
Since I was tired and didn't want to go to my film, (just yet)
I asked him,

(not really caring- I just wanted to see sexy, shy Eddie, articulate information)

"hey uh, ...who picks these films, anyway?"
Maybe he knew what I was up to because all I got was,

"the curatators"

and I walked away nodding but unsatisfied.

On the buses of New York, EVERYONE talks to each other.
Old ladies who are skin and bones and have tall yellow hair living in walks-ups in the east 30s with no dish washer, washing machine or air-conditioner. (I imagine)

6TH AVENUE BUS

MAN PUSH CART

I work in investor relations.

I work there because the hours are flexible.
It's good for auditions.

I sit in a cubicle with six other men and call share holders on the phone.
There is a sliver of "boiler room" to the place.
For some reason, it's okay for me.

Today we are calling for a company that stores umbilical chords so they can be used for stem cell research.

In today's Times, it's announced that Obama will reverse Bush's limits on embryonic stem cell research.
My undiagnosed disease is not mentioned in the diseases that it could help.
I feel giddy about it, anyway.

On one of my calls, I speak to share-holder Richard Clark of Morton Illinois.
Mr. Clark sounds garbled and impatient on the phone.
Like he's a hundred years old and a little touched.

He tells me he'll take the deal because,

"I can't afford to be messing around with this stuff. I'm 72 and have Parkinson disease"

"I'm sorry"

(I'm sorry - my professional pat response for death, disease, backruptcy)

Mr. Clark isn't receiving sympathy today.

"Sorry?"

"Oh... well, I'VE done alright, SOME people drop off in their thirties and FORTIES!"

(Touche' Mr. Clark)

After work I bus to the MOMA and have dinner at cafe 2.

Butternut Squash Gratin with
caramelized onions and sage for $7. Really good.

and then to a film called
"MAN PUSH CART" about a Pakistani who pushes a coffee cart around midtown Manhattan.
The pakistani actor wrote, directed, edited the film.
It was at Sundance in 2005 and on Roger Ebert's top ten list.

The push cart man is too sad and had too many problems (for me). I take a nap.

Walking home (near 53rd and 6th Avenue) There is (a block long line) for a food cart (middle eastern).
The crowd is docile and patient. Like the same group of people meet at this food cart every Saturday,

I ask a teenager and his date why he is standing in a line of 200 people ('m not kidding) for rice & chicken from a food cart.

"I came all the way from Brooklyn" he says.

The girlfriend offers "it must be the special sauce".

I'll remember that food cart for next time.

At Times Square,
I look for the x42 bus.
A father with three kids in tow, knock into me with his baby carriage.

Normally, I would have been tipped slightly and recovered my footing.

Today I go over like wax.

I am wax, tissue paper and kite string.

I imagine this father was yelled at his whole life (for things that weren’t his fault)
I imagine he was parented with no empathy.

Because the father starts to berate me.
I lie on the busy sidewalk.

"This is YOUR fault, not MY fault, YOUR fault, you need to look where you’re going!" And so on.

A cop helps me up,

"Welcome to New York" he says.

To the cop, I'm a tourist lying on 42nd street. I like that.

TEMPLE IN THE VILLAGE

Thursday is about NYU.
I travel to NYU near east 3rd & Broadway.

(There used to be a Starbucks on Astor Place where you could sip your latte gazing at two OTHER Starbucks)

I give myself plenty of time to get to NYU.
I take the x42 bus to the subway, take the C to West 3rd, and brace myself for the processional walk across
Washington Square.

(I used to swoop through the city)

Today however,
I'm in a slow parade, waiting for the floats in front of me to get a move on!
Or it is though I walk as if I just received very sad news and am slowly taking it in.

I walk slowly enough that I can't escape the crazies who engage you in conversation but it also allows me to stare.
(Something that comes easily to me)

I eat at "Temple in the Village" on west 3rd. I'd been there before and now that I am a slow walker I rediscover it!
It's healthy food, cafeteria style.

I buy spoonfuls of organic glop from a steam table . It comes to $8. I saw a headline on Yahoo that people are leaving New York City because of the rising cost of living.
Whenever I eat out in New York, I imagine I'm paying the rent, not for the price of food and service.

As I enter the reception area of the seventh floor of the Tisch building,
I stop and stare at a super cool poster for the reading I am in tonight.
A cute, young kid behind the desk notices me admiring the poster and dares me to take it.

He is grinning.

He is giddy in life.

He loves being a student, loves his student job as receptionist,
trusts anyone who walks though the elevator doors. (You can tell)

The goofy goodlooking kid has no thoughts of death.
He is in the heady throws of feeling apart of the machinery of the University.
He's just where he's supposed to be.
Optimism and trust radiate.

Like Richard says in O'Neil's Ah Widlerness!

"I love the stars and the grass and the moon and the trees!
It's all in me, and I'm in it!"


The seventh floorof the writing department is lined with sofas, chairs, and coffee tables for writers, directors and actors to meet.

It's emptyish. But it feels alive. Like a ton of students just left to go have a smoke.

I fall into a couch and go over my lines.

It is old home week for me.
I’ve been through six months of grief but the last time people saw me here... I was fine.
Now I have a secret.

Various types glide by. A teacher, a teacher's aide, an actor who is now a writing student, acknowledge me.
I've been acting with this department for six years and I'm happy they don't know about my plight.

(Maybe that doctor is wrong. The staff at Depart of Dramatic Wriitng don't detect any neurological problems)

I feel reprieve.

There's an exciting element to the halls of a theatre department. I remember it from Northwestern.
It's an icky judgmental feeling mxed woth huge hope. Your peers may not believe in your talent, or they may be afraid of their own inadequacies, but it is tempered with the idea that we're all on this joyous ride, we are all riding this big lucky hopeful boat. So happy sailing.

The young girl who wrote the play I am to perform tonight (and her father) enter my little couched world.
We nod to each other but don't talk.

The young playwright looks dressed by the Olsen twins.
She has healthy blond hair (long and thick like a wig).
She wears $500 new knee high black leather boots and a felt grey coat with butterflies embroidered on the pockets.
She is cream rinse and perfume.
She is catalog chic.

The father answers his cell phone and I learn they just had a sirloin steak dinner with chocolate cake for $45 (a steal compared to Pittsburgh prices!).

After the phone call,. they're awkward with each other. As if she has always lived with her mother but her father has been paying her tuition.

It occurs to me that I am playing the father in the play tonight and the father in the play is a creep.
What will her father think?

I wonder how a father is able to pay for leather boots, NYU, a sirloin dinner.

MY BIKE & SCRIPT

FlAT TIRES

Today I got two flat tires.
When it rains or snows, the glass on the street floats to the top.
My day was about getting two flat tires.

And, I fell over again.
I fall over every day and I have to say that If I wasn't in such good shape to
begin with,
I would be a mess.

I biked (and then walked my bike) to a Voice Over auditon in the Flat Iron District.
I mumbled at the Voice Over, I was a shoe-in. They asked for me.
My mouth and voice are crap.

Tonight, I went to a rehearsal for a play reading.
When I go to a rehearsal, it's like Tiffanys for Holly Golightly, I feel safe for a little while.
That must be why I do these readings.

The rehearsal was at Shapiro Hall at Columbia University on 116th Street.
The play is written by an 18 year old girl.

In the play, I play a f*cked up father with a meek wife, a demanding mistress, and a suicidal son.

The play requires me to puff myself out to be what I am not...
a used car sales man with lost dreams of becoming a professional football player.

I'm a 40ish man, they are happy to get any 40ish men for plays because most 40ish men
aren't around to do play readings. So even if I'm not quite right, I'm available. Even with my crap voice
they are happy to have me.

In one scene, I get to be drunk and it is a relief.

The director is a nice young woman (named Mark!) who is (on the ball) and a Northwestern grad.
We chat about NU.
She tells me that a teacher of mine did not retire but was forced out because of sexual misconduct.
Things just stay the same (really).

When we rehearse the reading, it is staged (which means I have to walk around).
Tonight, I weaved like I'd had a few highballs before rehearsal.
I imagine my fellow cast members on the subway ride home gossiping about me.
(I would).

After rehearsal, I stopped into a grocery store to pick up a few things because that is the way New York is.
It's hard to get things to your apartment so you have to be on the look-out for hunting and gathering opportunities.

In the cracker and cookie aisle, I ran into a woman I met five years ago doing a play for a feminist theatre company.
It was odd to run into her there because she lives down town.
She was visiting her son who is a freshman at Columbia.
Her younger son has a role in Steve Martin's latest movie.
I know both of her sons. When they were 13 and 6.
Her husband is in the kitchen business and is now suffering with the economy.

She asked me what I was up to and I hemmed and hawed and changed the conversation to the dangers of dairy and gluten.
It turns out she raised all three of her kids with no wheat or milk!

I bet diet is actually huge. I bet cutting out dairy and gluten and sugar and eating organic really would make a difference.

I took the train and then the #42 bus home.
I'll be a bus rider (I've decided).

FOLLOW UP

I called Columbia Presbyterian today, and made an appointment for 2 pm next week for my final meeting
with the Doctor,

and so,

there


it



is.

$5 PAINTING

WEEKEND IN SAUGERTIES

I spend the weekend with Peggy.
Peggy owns a two-family brick federal house on winding road off the village of Saugerties.
The house is ice cold, and we often stand with our backsides against the radiators.

Peggy collects things, so I like spending time in her house. Its shaggy elegance reminds me of a Truman Capote story.
There is mid-century furniture, throw rugs (that need to be cleaned) art and theatre books, china, silver (sterling from her first marriage, oil paintings (thrift shop and valuable ones from her days as a gallery owner) modern and traditional landscapes, anitique clothes, candlesticks, candelabras, small art projects and sculpture, pots and pans, coupons, magazines, mirrors, dressers, pillows, family photographs, table cloths, and vintage gloves. There is a room stacked with mid-century, dressers and chairs that she intends to sell or redo. Corbusier, Breuer and Nelson drop into her sentences with the hurried assumption that you know who these people are.

I arrive on Friday night. The bus ride there is disappointing.
Too much stopping and starting turns my stomach sad and unsteady.

We eat tinned oysters on corn chips with diet ginger ale and watched "Lars and the Real Girl" on TV. (Disappointing)

Saturday morning (bright and early), we have bacon and eggs and coffee and grapefruit, (Peggy carries it up on a tray to her formal dining room table off the living room.

The kitchen is down the rickety wooden stairs.

We use sterling silver and cloth napkins.
We are Noel Coward on Skid Row.

Later, we set up a booth at a local flee market. We create a U shaped booth made of rusty folding tables and unhinged doors. We drape colored sheets over the U shape and display the chipped china and other odd items. She sells an old fire place mantle for $100, odd bits of her clothing, ceramic bowls, tea cups, an Irish linen shamrock table cloth (never used) for $15 dollars and a set of gray colored every day china (probably from the fifties) for $9. At the end, she tries to give stuff away, Including a used (slightly broken) rear-view window for your car.

The flea market is crowded. Everything is cheap. The people look like they are from a different era (to me), they scour the tables as if they are buying food for a family of six during the Great Depression.

I sit in a folded chair and haven’t combed my hair this morning. I wear my parka and read the times.
When people ask “how much? ”... I intone…

"Peggeeee! How much for the white tea pot? "

and hand the tiny conversation over to Peggy and go back to reading the paper.
I imagine that I look like a bored husband who would be watching the game if he could.

Peggy and I decide that since no-one can afford to go to the malls these days, they are having fun spending a little cash on silly things.

“Look what I got!”

It’s a temporary lift. Like my audition for the TV commercial.

Peggy at 61, has the same hopeful, crafty energy of a ten year old.
She has no use for practical adult authority suggesting ... that selling a broken car mirror on her tattered sheet table cloth is well… stupid. If you said that to her she’d curl her lip and that would be that.

I found a 5 dollar painting and I liked it, and I knew she would like it so I told her what booth it was at and without uttering an “I’ll be right back” she was off for the painting returning minutes later with that very painting and two others. No credit given to me.

Later she did give me credit (and I was relieved for some reason).

I liked the painting, but lately I’ve decided nothing looks right for my boxy apartment. My apartment looks like a convenient place to live while looking for your real apartment.

Peggy and I talked the rest of the weekend.
I love to hear her stories.

She was Richard Gere’s girlfriend in the ‘70’s.

I want to ask ALL about it but I don’t want to feel cheap, so I let her leave me hints and clues about what it was like, but I don't follow up. I let it (the juicey fragments of the story) lay, and let my busy mind figure out the rest.

Sunday morning (agaian over bacon and eggs) we talk about improvising scenes for "Coming Home" with Jane Fonda.
About having to weep on cue for her small role in "Endless Love".

These conversations transport me, even with no heat and limited coffee.

I cirlcle her parlor in my bare feet taking pictures of Peggy with my digital camera... and as I circle, I resemble someone teetering across a gravel driveway in bare feet.

“Ooh, ouch, ouch …Yowh!”

“I wish I could walk, damn it”

I say snapping pictures off the cuff.

And the conversation turns to my terrible disease.

There's a moment when I consider derailing the conversation.
But avoidance won’t help me gain objectivity.
So I give in, (like characters do in the movies on the witness stand.
I let my answers to her pointed questions fall out with abandon).

The viewer thinks, “no, NO! you can still lie your way out of this!”

But the character on the stand (like me) knows there is no going back, no use in trying to weasel your way out, so you relent to the line of questioning with the plain bald truth.

After a brief monologue of my terrible story, Peggy is fueled with stories and reprimands. I am angered and uncomfortable but have learned that anger can lead to a sort of relief for the body, a change that might feel good later. And if you reject other opinions right off the batt, (no matter how cock-eyed) you're guaranteed to stay stuck in your box of sad tricks.

Peggy becomes enlivened with the idea that I am sitting around and doing nothing.

“What am I waiting for?”

I tell her that it’s a pretty big thing to take in and she says "I'm not impressed".

She relates a story about a friend who dove into an empty pool on Fire Island and currently teaches and directs from a wheel chair.

She tells me that life is a string of individual moments and that like an actor creating a character in a play, one can shape these moments.

She reminds me to stay in the moment since I have no control of the future or my outcome.

She reminds me that we are all individuals and there is no set plan for anyone and if I listen to statistics I am guaranteed to follow the results of those statistics.

She tells me a story about the time she threw away some new jewelry while staying at an LA hotel. She went down to the trash bin (the size of a small building) stood on it and thought it was hopeless but then realized that she didn’t have to go though ALL the trash, just HER trash, and she looked down and spotted her own trash and retrieved the jewelry.

She talks about the body being perfect and thinking of the body and my physical problems as working things out.

She tells me she rejoices at a headache because she believes her body is going through some deep cleaning.

She points out that this is an opportunity, neither good nor bad, but an opportunity.

I am receptive and hopeful and then
I mention that I had been pretty depressed before all of this occurred, and Peggy gets a gleam in her eye and talks about the body and mind.

I tell her to stop. I tell her I’m not willing to follow a line of thought that gives me ALS because I allowed some depression to happen to me. I tell her to stop right there.

Ansd she stops. Sort of.

I give her a tea cup that I bought on Cape Cod for a dollar and she is delighted.

"I know I was getting rid of old things but I like NEW old things."

She gives me a sweater from the fifties with some holes on the sleeves. (It looks great on me)

Before she takes me back to the bus, we go to her brother's who recently redid a fabulous barn in Woodstock.
We watch a pixar cartoon on his 50 inch flat screen TV on his new West Elm sectional couch over looking his brand new (tarped for the winter) swimming pool.

I want all of this (I think). I could have all of this. But now I can’t have ANY of this because of my terrible disease.

Peggy’s brother invites me to walk his property with him. I totter along (he has no idea). There are deer running about, frozen gardens, beautiful views.

We say goodbyes, and Penny drives me to the Bus station.

We stop at a deli and I buy some recommended chicken salad for the bus-ride home.

As we continue our drive, I shout ...

“Peggy! Watch out for the Deer!”

Peggy slams on the brake.
Wrong thing to do (I note to myself) your supposed to PUMP the brakes not SLAM the brakes.

We skid, making a squeal that is heard for miles.
We spin 180 degrees and are now on the opposite side of the road facing the other direction. We sit in silence as if the accident HAD actually occurred and are stuck inside the folded metal of the car.

Then...

at least a dozen more deer gallop across our sightline.
And as I look around I spot still another, frozen by a back door, like space-aliens that have landed out of no where.

Penny turns the car around in silence.

Finally she says "Nothing like a jolt of adrenaline".

and I say,

“for a moment I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about my terrible disease".