I have joined the army of Nanowrimos. A country of adjective accumulators. A land of language listers. The territory of writing terrors. I am writing a novelette of 50,000 words in 30 days and tonight, right on schedule I have competed laying down 3400 of the little demons. So why do I feel a need to write even more in this blog, when tomorrow’s goal is another 2,000 words or more? Ah, but I know the answers to mine own questions – - – it just gives me a power boost to ask the question and then say, “Aha, here’s the answer coming right now. I am writing tonight to show off.” Yes, I have written the first 3400 words and I’m proud because goals like that make me freak. I gather control by brushing off deadlines until the last minute, knowing exactly what I can accomplish in exactly what amount of time. I’m on top of my own little schedule and proud of it. And see, I still had 165 words in me to put on this blog. And now I am spent. Good night and Good Luck other Nanowrimos – God Speed your little fingers and fertile imaginations – 28 more words. See, I can do this – 7 more! 200 words Score!

Zooey is how Halsted spelled kitty’s name at the vet, instead of Zoe. I thought it was so adorable that I still spell out Zooey when I call them. I put it on her tags. But Tom has changed it to the standard spelling so yet another bit of fun is gone from my life.

Zooey is not well, but she isn’t sick. She has a very nasty looking growth on her lower abdomen and the doctor thinks it may be cancer. She says that Zooey has about 3-6 months to live. No one has told Zooey because she still jumps on my desk every morning to be petted and praised (“Pretty Kitty, Beeuty-ful kitty”). She still tries to beg food from me no matter what sort it is. She still checks on me in the morning and waits outside of the bathroom for me and for all of these I love her.

My cousin’s wife passed away this week. She had a cancerous growth and tried to treat it with holistic medicine. By the time she decided to live and give in to standard medicine, it was too late. Only a few days before she died she told her sister-in-law that she didn’t want to eat and get fat, nor did she want to lose her hair. She weighed 80 pounds and hair is just what’s under your hat, not what’s in your heart. She was scared but she lived out her last months as she wanted.

We could take Zooey to a cat oncologist. Or we can let her live out her remaining time skinny and scraggly furred and waiting for treats and cuddles. We don’t know what she wants but we have to imagine that we do. We try to put ourselves in her place. We think we’d be happy to have 16 years (about 64 people years) and make as little impact at our departure as possible. We’d want people to remember us jumping up and nosing their hands to get more petting and resting our weary little head on their shouders and heaving little sighs between the purrs.

Hell, we don’t know what she’d want. So we make the selfish choice, denial. I can’t even look at her tummy. When she goes I don’t know what I’ll do. I think for the rest of my life I’ll expect her to be with me and I imagine I’ll love her as much then as I do now.

Yes, that is part of the title song of the musical we saw in previews a few nights ago. I probably shouldn’t comment here because we know one of the actors who worked very hard to make unworkable material work. I could review it here but I haven’t the strength. I had a hard time even laughing about it because it was so wrong. So here’s the thought I posit. When do we reach the point in our own work that we cannot see the flaws, cannot hear the criticism, and cannot understand that we are not only not reaching anyone but actually aggravating them? When do we know when to hang it up and keep some musicals to ourselves or for the private salon, if you will. Perform it in a place to be raunchy and stupid without forcing people to pay money to see that we are mindless. Never again to ask the audience to sing, “Me and my clitoris, my clitoris and me.” Never to parody Martha Stewart as Martha Skrewit, a home help guru who recycles the by products of sexual liaison, into slickers and penis-shaped lolly pops. We did not need an entire stage filled with a Swami and his “posse” teaching us to “Keep your rocket in your pocket and your mouse in the house.” If you are laughing at this perhaps you can explain to me when everything, and I do mean everything about sex, became a bad pun? Yarrrrghhhh. Kama Sutra? I think not.

Reading The Old Curiousity Shop by Charles Dickens and I’d like to share an excerpt from Chapter the Fortieth:

“He had already had a misgiving that the inconstant actors in that dazzling vision had been doing the same thing the night before last, and would do it again that night, and the next, and for weeks and months, though he would not be there. Such is the difference between yesterday and today. We are all going to the play, or coming home from it.

I was working in the office the other day and the television was tuned to WTTW. It was pledge week. Most of the time that’s a pretty okay thing. Lots of Monty Python and other special programming. But there is a dark side. NPR often has self-help “gurus” (when did that become an expression?).

I vaguely heard this man talking about his son listening to hip hop and he conducted an experiment. He asked his son to hold that hip-hop CD close to his heart and he would try to move the son’s arm (sorry I am very vague here but remember, this was all going on at the fringe of my cognitive space). He could not move his son’s arm or he could, oh, whatever, it was weird. He was saying that the CD held negative “energy” (essence) that prevented the son from realizing his potential. Okay, you’re right, I should not be trying to talk about something I hardly heard and barely understand. But it bugs me. First of all, the guy bugged me. You know the type, big, big white teeth, receding hairline, wardrobed like the affluent midle class about to go slumming in the inner city, smiles too much, refers to his wife as the “light of his life” (wonder if she’s energy efficient), says “here’s what you should do to be a complete person” a lot, too. I’m getting to the point, don’t rush me. Is a hip hop CD that powerful? Can it intercede between a young man and his potential? I was intrigued and somehow horrified. A few singed pages of Fahrenheit 451 fluttered through my memory. Will there be a CD Squahing Event where all the power of all the young men is then bonded back to their future plans. I think that’s just spooky. I’m not giving up my Tom Waits “Alice” CD. Don’t even ask me. I’ll take the cut in power. I wasn’t going to raise my arm anyway.

I have been through all of the emotions one could feel about holidays: feared them, loved them, hated them, anticipated them, dreaded them and finally accepted them. It’s amazing how calm that can make you feel when you finally strip away the emotions and enjoy them for what they are – - – a relief. Winter is half over, you usually have enough nuts stored to live until Spring when you can gather more. You can stop fearing the weather and it’s ability to kill you with a single drought, artic blast, heat wave, tsunami, or Homeland Security threat, or whatever can bring the little lump of watery protoplasm you call yourself, down to base level. You give away some things to make people smile. It’s important to be able to make someone smile even for a moment. These are dark wintery days full of fear and a smile is a huge payoff for a lump of peat or a beeswax candle – - – lovely gifts in one era or another. Even if your dear ones smile at your stupidity in selecting the chia scarf or the candy bonsai – - – it is a smile nonetheless. You can’t make a mistake unless you give matches to Joan of Arc or something like that. A calendar to a death row inmate seems a little callous. So, here it is Smilemas, Halfway Holiday, Gigglemas, Smilegift or Giftgiggle. I just sit back with my eggnog and enjoy.

Of course, naturally, without a doubt, never any question, sure thing, right away, no problem. Reassurances that all will go well. I am only certain that nothing is certain. Is Sadie gone? I feel her behind her door watching her soap operas, waiting to go bowling, sitting on her kitchen chair reading her newspapers. I wonder what it is like to be dead and secretly think that to fade away, as she did, is desirable and maybe even certain. People care about you less and less. You feel more and more invisible and more and more like you have nothing to contribute. Certainly useless. Better off wandering away mentally and physically, seated on your tiny ice floe, waving to your loved ones and urging them to go on contributing to their certain world. Sadie, if you’re out there, and I’m not certain that you are, but perhaps the electrical impulses that you were can relate to the electrical impulses that are the internet, I just want to say that I am certain that I did not care for you enough and if my mother is out there with you, tell her the same.

We closed “Portia Coughlan” yesterday at the Irish American Heritage Center. To be a part of this production was so comforting and warm in a way that only a cold dark play can be. The people I worked with for the first time and the ones I knew but now know better will forever be combined with ethereal music, rain, wet yellow leaves, the light streaming from the big old Mayfair building, and the smell of old elementary school books. This was a play in which everyone hates everyone else, everyone lies, everyone cheats, everyone procrastinates and the only love comes from a sinister ghostly twin or in a form of too little much too late. It was in this month of rehearsal and renewal that Sadie slipped away. I loved her much too little and certainly too late. Her ghost will travel with me, her smile in my heart.

The faces of Hurricane Katrina haunt me. I spend altogether too much time thinking about how the things we supposedly own and the place we live define who we are. Some have forgotten how to exist and love without things. Some have been shockingly reminded that who we love and how we are loved is truly the only link we have to this life. Perspective, when forced upon us, is devastating. Sometimes I think I can see the light in their eyes and our eyes as we realize what is truly important. My neighbor across the hall is dying. I think I can hear her last breaths and I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know that I could say that it is okay to let go because she is good and kind and that is the epitome of greatness. She must understand by now that life is simple and pointless and full of false points and not very complex. At its base it is a struggle to understand what we already know. Goodbye Sadie, I love you.

Zooey is feeling much better. Of course, she is dealing with the humiliation of having half of her fur shaved off. She’s eating, whisking her tail angrily at me and taking her antibiotic like a trooper – storm trooper, that is. Tomorrow we start her on the thyroid medicine so she will be taking two meds a day and has to have a blood test every two weeks. Anything to make her better so she can continue to harass Laverne and Shirley. Such is the cat portion of my life.
The understudy-acting portion is going well at Steppenwolf. There is controversy brewing about The Pain and the Itch and the child actresses. Some columnists are saying that performing the role is child abuse. It’s kinda crazy but I’m thinking that all controversy is in some way constructive. It is intriguing that these critics see the world of the theatre as real. I’m thinking it may be a spin off of the reality show mentality. We’ll see.