I’ve not had time to write about Air Guitar or the 24-Hour Plays I saw this past weekend, but it’s almost because I can’t stop thinking about them. It was amazing to see Sean in the same role, in Ian’s play, that I saw six years ago, the night I decided to move to New York. Ian wrote about that night being the beginning of his now-future; it was much the same for me, because I finally figured out where I was supposed to be. I was still living in Los Angeles, in the hellfires of Hollywood, but not three weeks later I’d moved to New York. No job, no home, but I moved. Six years later, I was back, and boy howdy, have things changed.

I’ve been on stage with Sean; I’ve taken passages from Ian’s books and used them as monologues; and many a night at the farmhouse finds me singing with one or both of them. But I can’t tell you what it’s like to hear Sean say Ian’s words, for me, because that is the hard wiring in me, too, and it’s simply wonderful to behold. It was so amazing to be in that audience.

But I’m totally haunted by Air Guitar. I was trying to describe it to my boss, who upon hearing the title, laughed and rolled his eyes, and I didn’t do a very good job of explaining to him what it meant to leave one’s art behind, one piece at a time. If you never were an artist of any kind, you don’t really get the loss. And the seriousness of the play was lost on him. But the brilliance of Gideon is the coming together of Sean, Jordi, and Mac, who do such an amazing job of blending their strengths. I’m a carny, not a rocker, so the music of Fleet Week spoke to me more than the music of Air Guitar; but then, I’m humming “Make Me Proud” all day at work. And two lines won’t leave me alone, if you’ll pardon what I’m sure is a terrible paraphrase:

“You could say he proved his worth years ago by choosing me.”

“How many accomplishment-free days do I get?”

The first, well. I hardly know what to say. So I best not.

But the second… I feel as though so many men have said this to me, but in a hundred different ways: “I”m just not as driven as you”, “I’m not as focused on my career as you”, “I’ll take care of it later”, “Is this another one of your hare-brained schemes?”, or the much subtler, cruel undermining of who I am and what I do, by not showing up on opening night, by not commenting on what I’ve published, by remaining silent when I really need them to speak. Or by showing up, months and years later, full of regret and apology and wistfulness. I have no time for that.

Christ. I don’t want or need someone as driven as me. I want and need someone who finds my drive a source of pride and loving amusement, as opposed to more fodder for ridicule or cruelty.

So I can’t quite yet speak to Air Guitar. All I can do is think about it, and be so fucking proud of my family of artists.

I’ve never really known where I was going to be in six months, or what I would be doing. I don’t find it necessary to think about a five-year plan or anything like that. The whole tongue-in-cheek “What do you want to be when you grow up” question that adults ask each other just doesn’t apply, because there is a good chance that it will be something so wholly other than my current experience. But two days ago I sat across from a CEO of a major relief organization and he asked me what job I wanted in this sector. And I looked at him, looked around his office at the pictures of him all over the world; I thought about all of the truly extraordinary accomplishments of his organization; and I thought to myself: yours.

I mean, ye gods, how incredible would that be? To guide an organization like that, to have the resources needed to make a massive difference in the world, and to have the ability to experience that difference first-hand. For that, finally, to be my charge. The thing I need to figure out now is just what I’m willing to do to get there. I’d already be in the running for a job in development in that organization, but the director was keen enough to see that I want to do so much more than that- I want to be in the field, want to have my sleeves rolled up, to be in the thick of it.

The CEO asked a great question: “What is the hardest part of your job?” And I didn’t know how to answer. None of it is hard in a bad way, not really, other than problematic personalities, and even that just feels like part of the deal. I wasn’t able to answer him. When I was waiting tables, the hardest part was to walk in the front door of the restaurant. But it’s not that it was hard, it was awful, horrible, terrible. Which made it hard to do the physical act of walking in. But none of it was hard on its own. I mistook his question for what was “bad”, not “hard”, and I had nothing to say. The hardest part, though, I can say now, is that it is so close to what I want to be doing, but not there, and I am acutely aware of what I will give up when I move on. That feels hard… but again, not bad, and certainly not impossible.

But, oh, the thought of it- the thought of that being my life, of living back in New York, of getting to be there as little Lucy and Estaban go through their earliest years, of being in the city without feeling isolated, of working with people who work as hard as I do on the things I care most about… it is the stuff of dreams. I have no illusions about how hard it would be. But hard- hard I can do.

I’m writing from New York City, although the only pictures I have to prove it are in my mind. When I’m here, it is so easy to imagine a different life, a whole other life almost waiting for me to show up here and live it. I remember very well just how hard it is to live here, but if I were to come back, everything would be different. If I were to come back, it would mean that I was finally- FINALLY- following my calling of so many years ago. Tomorrow I have meetings that just might make that possible, or at least, are the beginning of making that possible. I’m very, very excited about that, even though I know I have so much to accomplish right where I am. Everything in its own sweet time.

Ian’s blogs often tempt me to write blogs of my own, but I rarely have the wherewithal or the time to actually make it happen. The last few days, his blog about missing alcohol has been buzzing around my brain, making me miss all kinds of unmentionables. Well. Who am I kidding- I mention everything. But then his blog today, with little Lucy quite literally buttering her own toes, made me laugh so hard at work that my colleagues came in to check on me. I think I like the sound of Ian and Tessa laughing really hard as much as I like the sight of La Luce methodically slathering her own toes with butter.

But I digress.

I used to actively misspend my youth; or, at least, I actively tried to misspend it, killing brain cells for want of a third tequila shot, leaving the house with plans of how, and with whom (vaguely) I would return, having yet another beer even though I had to work in less than six hours. I’ll be honest. I cherish those times. Say what you will, but I never laughed more freely, never felt the weight of the world that I do now. And it’s not about getting older- it’s about actually accepting responsibility. And the hangovers are much worse than they used to be, but they’ve always been bad for me and don’t actually act as a deterrent. (If anyone still believes that jail time or the death penalty is enough to keep would-be criminals off the street, think again. It just doesn’t work that way.) I’ve been missing some of the friendships I’ve had that were built on mutal wants and needs and a fair piece of booze. Those were good times. And now I live in a community so small that anonymity is impossible, and cutting loose – in even the smallest sense of the words – is fodder for gossip for the whole community.

But ah, do I long, for a week, or even just a weekend, without a care. Just a few days to do what I want, when I want, without the approval of a committee or the commentary of anyone. I often think I’ll drive to the coast for a day, but the world is so quiet there and often I just feel lonely when I attempt those kinds of trips. So instead, I immerse myself in work, and in the sweet circles I’ve created, and dream of a time when I could walk out my door in the East Village and go find whatever I happened to be looking for. I long for change, for adventure, for things to be hard in a way that makes sense. I also long for a life that is more physically challenging, not one that causes whispers of carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrists or tweaks in my lower back from sitting too long. This is not from whence I come, and there will be a point when I break and simply must do whatever it is I’m called to do. I do not know what it will be, but something tells me that one year from now, on August 3, 2007, I will not be sitting where I am now. I will be somewhere different, where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress.

Ah, me, looks like I have to quote the whole thing. Good Thoreau is always there when I need him:

I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in agolden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one’s head-useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see theroof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thin, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trapdoor, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home therein solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man’s premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men’s houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.