Dear Aisha -
It's Monday night and not much time left to rehearse for the audition taping in your final Trifecta acting class on Thursday - memorizing a few dinky lines - funny how tricky that can be:
"I have some letters to get out for the foundation. Unless you need me to lend an ear."
"Did Fred get a chance to talk to Raymond Bache?"
"I figured - since you hadn't mentioned it again. I just thought I'd check."
"I'm so unhappy."
"Like what?"
"You should see how the mothers steer their daughters clear of me. It's like they'll catch it!"
"Why do you think I started the foundation? You were all busy having babies."
"Why didn't anyone ever want to marry me?"
"I feel so pathetic."
"You should go in. You're exhausted."
Eleanor feels disenfranchised from the "normal" 1950s marriage-and-family life passing her by around her and the well meaning attention of friends doesn't make it all better. I feel out of synch with myself without my life-roles: an AF career and a mother. Just me-ness.
There's a powerful scene in Grendel (John Gardner, 1971, high school English), when the young monster's mother goes above ground to forage for food and doesn't return. In desperation, Grendel climbs laboriously through the depths to the surface, looking around him the whole way, beseeching the darkness to reveal something other than "not-my-mother." He doesn't know what the things he sees are; he only knows what they aren't.
Eleanor doesn't know who she is because she's focused on who she isn't, but should be.
I don't know who I am because I'm focused on who I'm used to being but am no longer.
Poor, poor pitiful Eleanor and me. I should take us to lunch. Or for drinks.
Oh, right - I DID take us out for drinks. To The Dive. The theme is diving, as in underwater in an old-fashion metal-head diving suit, but it is a dive: black walls, blacked out windows, neon, 70s and 80s rock, a nearly deserted bar - a lone man with "Ray" embroidered on his uniform and a couple drinking bottles of Coors Light, Monday night football and Will Ferrell reliving his high school football glory days, a 30-something woman bartender in shiny black g-string shorts (man, that looked uncomfortable!!!). An ad kept showing up on the big screen: poor-woman's version of a George Clooney-ish-looking man, hint of a gut, scruffy facial hair, grubby wrinkled shirt and pants, selling some kind of home and garden product. I thought, "Heck, I can do commercials at least as well as he does!" Hollywood, here I come!!! (hah!)
Eleanor and I practiced our lines over a couple of V&Ts and a chicken parmesan burger (naturally, I didn't eat the bread) with fries (THOSE were very tasty!).
I've been listening to "I Didn't Do the Thing Today" (Madeleine Dore) - but sort of "skimming it" if I were reading it. Tuning in periodically, mulling over phrases and concepts to see if anything sticks. Today what came through was the connection between "trying to do too many things at the same time" and being a "one trip wonder" - stubbornly refusing to be reasonable about how much is comfortable to carry without going off balance and dropping stuff when opening a door. I mean, WHO SAYS I have to do the among of x, y, and z? Just because Kat gave me four parts to learn and tape doesn't mean I have to master all of them. I can pick two and call it "good." So there.
Also did some heavy-duty confrontation with myself about Catherine: what do I want, does it matter what I want, is that just being selfish, my fear that if I wait till she comes around, that if it IS ten years from now, then we'll be sad that we missed all those years we could have had with each other even if they were rife with working through our bullshit, and what would she do if I were to show up at her front door tomorrow morning, and why do I have to have a solution RIGHT NOW, and "she's just a person; I've made her into someone I can't live without," and "Am I trying to be right instead of happy?" and "Does it even matter what I do or say - would anything "get through" to her?" In THIS now, I'm letting it go.
The Thing I didn't do today was my singing exercises. But I meditated - twice. And was patient with myself (after some talking-to) when I realized how scattered my thinking is about producing the EAL Playbook and briefing slides. And memorized one scene for the taping. And wrote my second blog post. And got an appointment for November 3rd with a new psychiatric nurse practitioner/LSW/counselor who does med management and I can see in person every other Friday. And got Dr. Drogin to send in scripts for all my meds. And picked them up. And had only two cigarettes. And didn't eat the bread on my chicken burger. (smile) And am turning lights out to get to sleep by 10:15.
A good day.
With much love,
Aisha