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".

HAIRCUT ON 23RD & 10TH

DISCOVER CARD

I finally emailed Dr. Ranjan yesterday to get the results of my spinal tap.
The spinal tap would reveal if I had certain diseases.
Diseases that are treatable.

I realized that they were not going to contact me, I had to contact them.
Whatever is going with me and this terrible disease, doesn’t live in the same time constraints as the rest of the world, certainly not New York.

I have plenty of time, because my terrible disease really has no treatment!

If they had discovered I had a different disease, a treatable disease, they would have (I suppose) contacted me (right away) to begin the hopeful and happy treatments and medications to stem this horrible but treatable disease and my story could have turned into a tale to be repeated often by friends and office-mates of how one shouldn’t believe what doctors initiallly say, it’s not always as bad at they predict, look what happened to Charlie Roberts, (my fake name for this blog) they misdiagnosed him and he’s alright!

(Good ol' Charlie Roberts)

Instead I get an email back from the Doctor as follows;

Hello,

We should certainly meet. Please give Aisha a call at 212-325-1317 and she will schedule you for a follow up visit with Dr. Mitsumoto.

Ali A Ranjan, MD


Ugh.

So...

I called my sister last night to tell her about the visit.
When I speak to my sister she is cautious, reserved and kind to me.
She is slow and methodical in her responses, like she’s on the witness stand and doesn’t want to give away information that may lead to persecution of the defendant.

She wants to be there for me for this final visit,

“another pair of ears, one’s fight or flight instinct naturally kicks and you simply can’t hear what they are saying”.

My sister has taken care of most of my medical appointments.
During my intitial appointments, when they told me I could be in trouble (serious trouble)
I simply couldn’t take it in at one time. It was information overload.

For me.

If I had been accused of a serious crime (which is kind of what it felt like)it was as if my sister was my top drawer lawyer who was processing the information for me and telling me which court date I needed to show up to.

My sister speaks to me on the phone in a low-vulume, measured voice.
This is not normally how we would talk. My sister is an emotional animal like myself and I imagine is getting coaching from a therapist on how to speak to me. I appreciate this.

She apologizes for having to deliver the harsh factual reality of my situation. (I've done no research myself, and she has done some (a lot?) and I bet this is somewhat pressureful for her.

I tell her " I’m FINE I feel FINE, and those doctors don’t know!"

My sister (using her controlled even voice) has to push back, “that's what terminal cancer patients say”.

There are pauses (long) as we move along the conversation not wanting to say things that will put the idea into my head to hang myself.

“Well, I say, I’ll have to think about all of this” which means the exact opposite, which means (I will put this our of my head forever and make a turkey burger and finish the last thirty pages of Slaughterhouse Five)

The reason I’m reading Slaughterhouse Five is that about twelve years ago I did DISCOVER card commercial with Kurt Vonnegut. I hadn't read one of his books, except the Wand Jane play.

I didn’t have much to do in the commercial, I played a tailor fitting him for a suit.

I put it on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XZMq9KtHYg

(You have to cut and paste it in your browser to watch it)

I remember the casting director called me directly for the job. (Usually they call your agent)

I refused to return the casting director's calls because I thought it was a salesrep from the Discover Card offering me a deal.
He kept leaving messages. "I'm calling regarding the Discover Card" at which point I'd hit delete.

The booking was easy, Kurt Vonnegut was nice and I wanted to ask for his autograph but I thought a professional New Yorker doesn’t risk such things.

At one time, part of being a true New Yorker was to be unimpressed in any situation.
I think that’s gone now (that New Yorker attitude) The City is so livable now, it’s invited a whole cast of wholesome and polite types that would have brought CATS CRADLE had him sign it, taken a digital pciture with him, posted it on facebook and so on.

Now that all I do is eat and pick up after myself and read novels I'm catching up to my Kurt Vonnegut experience.
It's a really enjoyable book, Slaughterhouse Five. Took me until page 150 to get into it because of figuring out the rules of the world of the novel.

THE CUPCAKE CAFE

MARY BAKER EDDIE

I talked to my friend Peggy today while I was drinking coffee at my coffee shop in Hell’s kitchen.
I talked to her on my I-phone which has become my security blanket.
I polish it in my hand like a worry stone.

Peggy is an odd bird. I like to talk to her because she is opinionated and philosophical. She’s led a complicated and messy life. Peggy was a famous film actor at one time. Now she’s selling real estate in the Catskills and redoing an old federalist brick house. Something I'd like to do,

We met in an acting class. She was Gertrude to my Hamlet.

Pegy is a Christian Scientist. When I told her about the terrible disease thing, before I could even go on about symptoms or prognosis, she was urging me to serve others and get outside myself.
This irritated me. I’m barely aware of the repercussions of what may become of me and she seemed to be sending me on a path of rote extracurricular activities.

But since I am annoyed by the terrible disease thing, Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddie kind of support my stubborn defiance.

Peggy suggested that...

physical ailments are a perceived thing

you are as healthy and as vulnerable as you decide

ask yourself how your problems serve you

(I have to admit that I’d like to leave New York and change my life)

She also brought up the Buddhist idea that there are no real problems, it's your perceptions of the circumstances that creates the problems.

That’s true. I see that.

Oh and also… be careful of being fearful.

Hmmm…. A lot to chew on and I appreciate it. I think that it takes discipline to have the proper outlook. If you don’t have it, religion, support groups, and education can put on the right path.

My friend John Don just called and interrupted me here at the computer.
He wants me to come to his wife’s sixtieth birthday party on the upper east side this Saturday night. She is in New Zealand right now shooting a commercial.

He asked how I was doing physically (I’d hinted in past conversations that I had some serious issues) and I guess I could have just keep my mouth shut and put him off.
That was my instinct actually.
But then I’m not having a genuine relationship with my friend.
There is some righteous voice telling me to spill. I’m supposed to include people.

The drama of my disease is so big that I kind of get a charge out of telling people.
But after I tell them I feel tainted somehow, like I confessed that I once accidentally killed a small child.

Something about "the reveal" that puts me on the other side of my listener. No matter how strongly they assure you " I’m there for you", they’re really just shocked at what you’ve told them and relieved that they're still standing on firm ground.

All of this is unacknowledged for my sake and their sake but from where I’m standing it just makes me feel further and further away from my friend.

John said he wouldn’t tell anyone (though he’ll have to tell his wife,right?)
And if he felt compelled to say he wouldn’t tell anyone, if it is a thing to be kept secret, should I have told John?

ugh.

John said he HAD a friend with ALS.

Had.

There is no conversation to pursue there.
We talked about his wife’s birthday.
And wrapped up a difficult conversation like we were talking about a lost job or a broken foot. But both of us are changed. The status of our relationship is changed.

I feel far away.

COFFEE SHOP

Sent from my iPhone

PEGGY'S HOUSE IN SAUGERTIES

AT SAG

After eating lunch at S'nice in the west village,

(where I spotted the “verizon guy” eating lunch with a handsome man I went to college with -I hid behind my book- I'm reading Slaugherhouse Five)

I bike to Screen Actors Guild to pay my dues. On the ride there, I topple over on my bike in Times Square because when I lean over with my toes to steady myself (when I am compelled to stop) my weak leg gives way and I neatly drop over like I’ve been shot by an invisible bullet.

This often elicits sympathy from the nearby New York crowd. As I’m being pulled up, I cast my eyes down and feel like a wet cat, vulnerable and ashamed. But there is nothing to do it about it because I walk like a very old, old man because of my terrible disease.

At the Screen Actors Guild, I take an elevator to the twelfth floor with a young actor who I imagine just moved to the city because he is so cordial and nice to me, and the guy at the front desk, and later to the SAG receptionist. He had that (new in town) manner that is polite and respectful to everyone because you never know who might help you on your way up!
I respect this, but having lived in New York for 22 years, it's a hard to keep up.

I pay my dues to a bald black man who sits behind a glass partician (is it bulletproof?) and began my sad tale.
I look sour and tired, and my attitude is ... well here goes nothing.

“Hey um, I know this is odd, but uh, as it turns out I may be disabled. So, um, is there anything SAG can do for me?"

The bald black man has heard it all, so he is all business and points to a hallway where there is a door marked COMMITTEES.
I thank him and he GIVES me a quick once over and adds, “good luck man.”

This makes me think, ah shit! this is really happening to me.

There is a curt woman at committees, she is also black. She’s on the phone, (with a friend I imagine) She has zero time for me. My question about the disabled committee doesn't even induce eye contact. She hands me some xeroxed papers.
I notice they are forms to fill out if I have an interest in working for a committee.

Then I bike to my coffee shop in Hells Kitchen. It is packed with artsy types. They all look like actors on a TV show about New York. I stare.

And as I stare, I understand (for the first time) the energy and focus it requires to talk effusively with a friend.

I watch.

Hands out, heads nodding, eyes connecting, half smiles, thwarted interruptions, confirming, identifying, so many calories being used! It's just beautiful to watch, like a slick Hollywood picture, like Benjamin Button! The music swells and Benjamin and Kate Blanchet talk and laugh and eat and fall in love over dinner in New Orleans or Paris.
But the viewer doesn’t hear what they say, the viewer sees their mouths making shapes, giving into lazy laughter, stealing romantic glimpses as the soundtrack plays out.

That’s what it was like for me at my coffee shop in Hell’s Kitchen. And as I stared, I began to stew and let the creases on my sad face deepen and give into a lost slightly opened mouthed look of amazement.

I was so tired. Tired because of this terrible disease (I think).