"If I Were Attracted To Girls, I'd Be Attracted To You"

Next up in my line of obsessive motifs is My So-Called Life, an amazing show from the 90's that's famous for being a clear, honest, raw lens into the lives if American teenagers as they really were then (and now): sex, drugs, drinking, pain, laughter, anger, friendships, love...it was all there. It had it. One of the best shows ever made.

And it was canceled due to low ratings.

Part of me hates so so so much the fact that there are only nineteen episodes. I love these characters now. I want to know more, more, more. I want them to grow and change over time. I want plot. I want movement. I want a future.

But another part of me is sort of glad that it ended so early in its life on screen. The world of Rayanne and Angela, Sharon and Rickie, Brian and Delia, Graham and Patty, Jordan and Danielle...it'll always be there somewhere, in the murkiness of unwritten stories. I can think and hope and wonder about how things worked out for them. I can discard things I don't like--in my mind, Graham and Patty drove each other crazy and went in circles for decades but never split, never let their love crumble at the core--and make sure what I want happens--Rickie finds a boy to love, Angela is forced to grow up and choose between Jordan Catalano and the ever-suffering Brian, Rayanne and Sharon ride closer and closer together until maybe they bump and hit and collide. My version of their future is probably farther than anything from where they would have gone. And that's a comforting thought. There are multiple futures, and there always will be. It never twisted itself into knots like Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty, and there's no longing for past days of splendor, because all we have are the days of splendor.

I'm sad the show died. But in a weird way, it feels right. It doesn't actually feel like it died; it feels like it wandered off to do its own thing, like every teenager does at some point.

There are some beautiful moments that I'm so hung up on, and most of them have to do with Rickie. As always, I gravitate towards the gay men in the story, and Rickie got my attention from the beginning. Always lonely, always awkward, always trying to fit in a badly-cut niche. Rickie is the character I love to love. He has two people in the world who love him; that must make everyone else pretty terrifiying. I want him to have his happiness. And of all the growth I missed, I think Rickie's is the one I most regret missing out on.

There's a wonderful, wonderful moment at the very end of the series when Rickie, in an attempt to, as he says, take advanatge of his "one chance...to be straight," asks out Delia, a cute girl with a crush on him. Looking confused, she says, "But...you're gay, right?" Rickie hems and hawes, all the while looking completely blind-sided; then, throwing down his pencil, he says with a weary sort of peace, "Yeah. I'm gay." The honesty and total lack of pretension in that moment is incredible. There's no swell of music or melodramatic exposition. There's only a scared, hiding teenage boy coming out for the first time to an understanding prescence, who's not even a main character. It was beautifully written and beauitfully acted, and the entire scene has a aura of gentle sweetness to it: Delia goes on to explain why she has a crush on Rickie, who admits he's never said out loud that he's gay before. They close with Rickie turning to Delia and saying, "Delia, if I were attracted to girls, I'd be attracted to you." Then they hold hands.

Yeah, I loved it. What can I say?

Probably more on this later, if I don't self-destruct first.

Welcome To The Family, Walker Nathaniel Diggs

Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs had a baby. His name is Walker Nathaniel Diggs, he was born on September 2, 2009, and the odds are he'll grow up to be absurdly good looking and talented.

The RENT OBC used to feel like family to me. They still do now, but in a different way. Looking at pictures of Idina and aye with their son, I felt a sudden, familiar and yet strange sense of intimacy. Idina and Taye used to be constantly in my life. Pictures of them, interviews, their voices, their presence. Now they feel like my cousins in England. I love them and have small reminders of them every so often--but no real connection at the present. Nothing concrete from recent times. And I miss them.

It must be weird for the OBC. Go on to do other work, live their lives, have a million diferent experiences, and yet people keep pestering them and connecting with them about something they did almost fourteen years ago. Some have children now (Adam, Idina and Taye, Daphne, and Gilles, to name a few) and are married; some, like Jesse and Idina, have had careers that separate in some ways from RENT. But most of them--Adam, Anthony, Wilson--are superglued to it. Their entire image is about something they did in their twenties. They're almost forty, most of them; a few are past that. When they're sixty, people will still be asking them about it.

In some ways, it's a sweet deal. Imagine your whole life being about the worst thing you ever did--if it's about one of the best things, you lucked out. But still, twenty years past the date and people are still scrounging for details--it must not always be fun. It must be so tiring sometimes. I don't know. I love them, because I feel like I know them and because they saved me when I was drifting, time and again. I love them, because their family expanded to include me. I love them, because their story and their words, along with RENT and all of its magic, make me who I am today. And I miss them. And I would feel ridiculous if I were them, if a play I did when I was twenty-six has a sixteen year old who I have never met loving me and "knowing" me. I would feel like a fool.

And at the same time, I have to believe that they understand what they did for us. For me. How RENT is a story that endures, and they were such a part of it that they endure along with it. If I can ever affect anyone the way Gwen Stewart or Fredi Walker or Aiko Nakasone or Byron Utley or Wilson Jermaine Heredia have affected me, I'll be satisfied in life. They mean something to me. I want to mean something to someone.

I love them. I thank them. And no matter how far away they are from me, or I from them, they will always be my family.

Inertia

When people ask the "if you could only have/do/watch _____ for the rest of your life, what would it be?" I can't give them an answer. It's illogical to answer something like that. No one can conceive a lifetime of something. One image, one taste, one possession, one action...everything is temporary. The rest of my life is hopefully a long time. Sometimes, I feel awed by how little I have planned for it.

If I could be one place for as long as I wanted--without interruption, without major change, completely stable and constant--it would be in a cabin on a mountain in Maine or New Hampshire. I would have pets with me: a cat, a dog, maybe a bird or a snake if I really wanted one. But I would be alone. No other people. No one to talk to, no one within hearing range, no one for miles. How weird is that? Most people crave social interaction. I love to be with people, but at the end of the day, I need to be alone inside my head. And if my head was as beautiful as the White Mountains are--winter or summer--I'm not sure how long I would stay there before I missed people. Maybe days. Maybe weeks. Maybe as long as it took me to get bored. Because no matter how beautiful o wonderful or special something is, it can't be stunning forever. Familiarity doesn't always breed contempt; if you're not careful, it will breed apathy.

School starts the day after tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing teachers, trying out new classes, mentoring the freshies. But past that...god, I don't know. The same little aches and pains every day, from people and work and those moments where I think about everything that I hate thinking about. School forces me to do things. It's a fact of life. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

God, I could probably enjoy the whole fucking thing if I put my mind to it. Let the snubs and the dislike roll off my back. Fill my head with the things that make me happy, to hell with the rest of it. But I can't. I can work my ass off and only talk to the people I want to and just cruise along, but it'll all come back to what happens in my head. And I can't cruise through any of that.

I hope. I hope I hope I hope. I hope that I won't spend the rest of my life doing things I hate because they'll put me on par with all the overachievers around me. Please, God or whoever's up there, I don't want to spend my life in a cubicle or behind a register, becoming bitter and angry because I couldn't succeed at what I loved. Please please please. I'll do anything and everything to not let that happen. I want to go to college and find out what I want to do with my life. I want to have some fucking direction, and I don't want it to come from trying to do everything everyone else is doing. I'm not my friends. I'm me. And if I waste my life, I'll never forgive myself.

And now for an 360 in subject change:

Unlike most people, I do not have shoulder-angels and shoulder-devils. I have a shoulder-Harpo Marx, a shoulder-Tom Collins, and a shoulder-Hamlet. The Harpo is the childish, comic, carefree, sneaky part of me. The Collins is the laid-back, chill, deep-thinking, philosophical, living-my-friends part of me. The Hamlet is the angsty, whiny, aggressive, sensitive, lamenting part of me. I also have Douglas Adams and Edna St. Vincent Millay, but they're not on my shoulder. They hide in my hair and never bother anyone, except when I want them to.

Shimmering Trees

Just as my family goes to Martha's Vineyard every year, so do we go to Newry, Maine, every year. This year, some things are different. But most things are wonderfully, beautifully, soothingly the same.

Our house is right on the side of the road, but it's flanked by an old barn that's usually filled with gigantic rolls of hay. Hale, Tomek and I clambered all over them one day, and then they left and I was all alone. The hay smelled musty and dry, and it was raining lightly outside, so I just lay back and stared up at the ceiling in the barn. Because the sky outside was that bright, blinding kind of overcast-grey, it shone through the tiny holes in the roof like stars in a metal sky. The points of light overhead, combined with the fog on the ground and the hushing of the rain outside, made me feel a bit like I was dreaming. I half-expected a spirit or a ghost or a runaway slave to rise up out of the hay and start talking to me. It was beautiful and peaceful and cozy. I watched the stars get dimmer and dimmer as the invisible sun went down, and the next night there were no clouds and I could see real stars, half-blacked out by the outrageously bright moon.

We're surrounded by open space. The second I got out of the car when we first got here, I ran off and just ran over the fields and hills around the house. There's this big sloping plane of grass behind the barn, and it's separated from the river by a line of trees. Past the end of that first field, there was another hilly area that used to empty, as I recall, but now has a house and a vegetable garden gracing it. There's a tall wooden pole with a tattered American flag at the end, and two more poles branching out over the garden that have sparkly owl cutouts hanging from them to scare away pesky birds. And from that second field, you can work your way down to the Bear River.

That river is such a a good friend of mine. I've been playing with it for years, and my family has its share of anecdotes that took place in or around its banks. The water is always absolutely freezing, because it's melted snow and ice that runs down from the White Mountains (they surround our cabin). But once you get used to it (read: numb), it's so much fun to be in. For one thing, the water is so clear that if you hold your breath and bring your face close to the surface, you can see perfectly down to the bottom, which may be five or more feet beneath you. Mica is scattered all across the sand in the riverbed, and when the sun hits just the right spot the entire river glitters like it's got Christmas light strung through it. The clear water, cold as it is, is fascinating for a child of seven or eight, and even more so for a teenager of sixteen. I swear, I spent about fifteen minutes today looking at my foot underwater. Craziness, yo.

I haven't even gotten to the best part about the river: the current. It's got a lively, mischievous current that doesn't just flow; it pushes you back and forth and bangs you against rocks and sweeps your legs out from under you and tumbles you backwards until finally something painfully stops you. The entire riverbed is set with rocks in varying degrees of size, slipperiness, and ability to cause pain. Some rocks are big and flat and covered in soft black moss. Some rocks are dull and ridged in such a way that when you step on one, it hurts so much you're forced to stumble backwards and step on another rock which, needless to say, causes even more pain than the first. And some rocks are like chunky sand piled on top of flat bedrock, so that stepping on them hurts like hell as well, because it's like rubbing the bottom of your feet with a dull cheese grater.

Anyway, the current. The current will be merciless when it comes to the rocks, but it's slightly more affable if you know it well. There's a special place that's been our homebase on the river since I was a baby: two giant boulders, embedded in the earth, sit on either side of the ride. Actually, they're not boulders, they're parts of the bedrock the riverbed lies in that have been carved into two little islands of dry safety. However, you can totally tell that the river wasn't always so forgiving of them: they're worn almost completely smooth, with graceful paths and ridges winding through across them from millenia of water-wear. Beneath the lichen and dead leaves, the rock is as ancient as the concept of sunning yourself on a pleasant patch of moss, and that's saying something.

Between the two rocks, there's a lumpy place where the current flows fast and furious. It's also been worn down to a smooth, curving surface with little splotches of black moss dotting it. Here, the water makes the best shapes, including the Horn: a small, glassy-smooth mound of water that rises out of the river like it's got a mind of its own. Some of my earliest memories are over rafting over this little bit of rapids and coasting through the current to my father, who played catcher so none of the kids would be swept off downriver. It's wonderful to get over that Horn, but it's a bitch to climb back up towards it. Like the rest of the bedrock, the water has made the rock smooth as an ice rink, and trying to struggle against a strong-minded current with nothing to hold onto but a slick patch of rock is something I like to call "futile." Fun and tiring as hell, but you don't have much of a chance. Sure, you could walk--but where's the fun in that?

There's a lot more about the Bear River I could talk about: the rock that looks like a pile of candle wax, where I love to sun myself and read, and where it's so smooth I always lose my footing and fall into the water; the stillwater, where you can float and soak until you're so numb the rocks don't bother you anymore; the island of beach where my dad and stepmom like to hang. I could even pass on the story about my little sister losing her swimsuit in that river, but I won't. Time is short and Hale probably wouldn't appreciate it anyway.

Going over the river is a bridge, made of wood and usually the place where farmers and such drive their ATVs. I walk over it, though--and never fail to spit into the river on either the going or coming trip--and get to a wonderful field on the other side. This field is shaped like the number 8 and it completely surrounded by trees. The mountains poke over the edge in a couple places, and sometimes you can hear and see some traffic from the road in the distance; but overall, that place is one of the most peaceful spots I've ever been in. I'm pretty sure animals go through it sometimes, and it's definitely used for farming. But this late in the summer, it's just a carpet of dead grass and green gras twisted together, with weeds and bugs peeking through. The sun casts longer and longer shadows as it sinks behind the trees, but before it disappear forever I get as much sunshine as I can. It's so warm and quiet out there: just me, the bugs, and the plants. Lovely.

Today, I listened to music, read my Harpo Marx book, listened to the cicadas, and dozed for a bit on the grass. As the sun started to go down and the light got yellower and deeper, I woke up and watched the trees. When the wind blew, the leaves would twist and flutter wildly; in the light from the setting sun, they switched from bright to shadowed faster than the eye could follow. It was like watching the air turn green and start to dance. The trees were shimmering, there was no other word for it, and I watched them until the light went away and I had to go home.

I hope that my children will have the chance to see the trees shimmer.

Not much else about nature. The house is wonderful, same as always. God, I have so many memories about this house: playing "Lion, Lion, Run De Hills" with my sister and cousins, cuddling up with my mom and dad in their squeaky-framed bed, catching grasshoppers in the grass out front. My sister and I have always slept in the exact same place: two twin beds, her near the sloped ceiling and me next to the window, with the same bedside table and the same lamp and the same dresser in the corner. If I close my eyes, I can summon it--the feel of it, the view from the bed, the sense of comfort and safety, everything. In fact, there are two rooms I can do this with: the room in Martha's Vineyard and the room in Maine.

This week, I slept in a different room.

It's been very hard. I hate change, everyone knows that, and yet I chose to change here. Why? Well, the downstairs room is separate, I can stay up as late as I want without pissing people off, and it's very cozy. On the other hand, I still feel a strong urge to go upstairs and curl up in the same bed I've been sleeping in since I was two. I don't know. We all have to grow up, but do we have to do it so painfully?

Apprehensive about upcoming school year, but, case in point, must work on bio summer work. Will post later. Au revoir, amigos.

(Yes, that was on purpose.)