Letters, etc

Yes, a brief time in NY altogether. And then, since I'm aware of how much you and Ruth try to accomplish, and because of Ruth's sister visiting that weekend as well, I was wary of overstaying. We would have spent more time together had I taken you up on your offer to stay, but that would have been disruptive and it was easier to bunk with my former house swapee. She felt she owed me some time, and we wanted to meet anyway (as we hadn't). We got along well, a woman about my age with similar taste in books, movies, plays. I met up with friends from Vancouver on Monday, and she joined us at the 13th St. theatre that evening for a pay-what-you-will performance of God's Ear. Another really stimulating experience. I say another, because The Brig worked that way for me, too. I loved the sheer dramatization of the idea in The Brig. No exposition necessary. God's Ear dramatized a serious subject, grief over the loss of a child, in a funny and inventive way. Loved the rhythmic language, the clever theatrics. A little too much, by the end, perhaps, in a different way than The Brig, which left me feeling brutalized. Funny that while the most expensive ticket of the weekend was for Moon for the Misbegotten, and Eugene O'Neill was probably my first big influence as playwright, I found that script dated. Still beautiful in its use of language and the performances were powerful, and I loved sitting in that beautiful old theatre, yet ...
  The night I returned to Boston I had an email from Annie reporting that she'd had an accident near the California border, actually crossed the border in an ambulance, which took her to a hospital in Crescent City, where emerg staff scanned her head and spine, treated her abraded face, gave her painkillers and let her go. She had slid out on a patch of gravel, going downhill at a fairly high speed, landed on her left side - head, shoulder, knee. The doctor told her she could get back on her bike in a few days, which was the most irresponsible piece of advice he could have given her. She had a concussion, a dislocated shoulder and didn't even recover from the shock in two days, so ended up flying back from San Francisco about five days after the accident, when she still was not feeling any better. The post-concussion symptoms are still showing up, to the point where she had such a bad headache last night I had to take her to the emergency room here, because I worried there could be internal bleeding. But she's ok. Just needs to take it easier.
   So that's been going on, along with a return to work, which I'll talk about in a later post, because I want to comment on your response to the letters I brought you. I think you're being too hard on yourself. We were all crazy in some ways back then. I've always liked your letters and returned them to you because I thought you might appreciate revisiting an old self. I'm sorry if they set you off on a round of self-recrimination. First of all, your writing - in the old letters, in the blogs - feels honest and is engaging to read. I always found the content interesting, even that about your plans to market your art. I liked it that you wanted to keep in touch and appreciated your loyalty in that regard, and still do, because you are my only contact from the Sonoma days (daze), and despite the substances that may have shaped a lot of our thoughts and experiences, that was a life-changing time for me. While I didn't use them directly, your letters, you and Linda, and the times we shared in Sonoma County, all inspired me and informed some of the content of my book Centre/Center. Maybe you'll write your own book someday, because you've always had a lot to say and you express yourself well.
   Borderline? One thing I'm learning as I continue with research for my new play is that one shouldn't use labels to describe people. So it follows that one shouldn't try to define oneself via a label, I think. Again, I'm sorry if the letters shook you. Should I send more, or just keep them? Ditch the idea of contacting Nathan? I think I mentioned that I sent a lot of my papers, including original manuscripts and correspondance, to the University of Toronto library last summer. If anyone is ever interested the the life of a minor Canadian writer, the papers are there for them to look through. One day the collection will include your letters to me, so I thought I would let Nathan know that, at least, should he ever become curious, or have a child who becomes curious. I've been someone who is curious about her ancestors and have had no luck find anything about them. The poor Irish didn't keep many records. But my playwright uncle did, and when my aunt died, I tried to get hold of some of her things, which would have included old scripts of my uncle's. No luck. My aunt's sister kept tight hold of everything there was. So this is where I'm coming from. The lives of individuals make up human history. Letters are an expression of some lives, or parts of some lives.
   I looked into ordering The Diaries of Judith Malina, too, but could find only a rather expensive copy. Let me know if you like the book, okay? I may get it anyway. I did order that book you've been reading, The Singularity is Near, but it won't arrive for awhile. Must be the difference betweeen Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. It will be an unusual book for me to read, but I like to do that in summer. Still, I have so much work to do I don't know how much reading time I'll get. We'll see. One last thing, for this post, I was able to delete files, per your advice, and while my homepage doesn't come up when I hit the firefox icon, I can get to it. Mail doesn't come from other servers to gmail, though. Thanks for the tech help. I always plan to spend time just fooling around on the computer, but by the time I finish my work for the day, I want to get otuside, or just away from my desk. That's sort of the reason for my tardy response to your last post. Also, my server was down for a couple of days.
   Made pesto pizza last night and remembered i was going to send my recipe for the crust to Ruth. I'll do it soon.