Stay

I'm feeling nervous and anxious about leaving town for a job next week, little sweetheart. It's only a couple hours away but they want me to live down there during rehearsals for the next few weeks. In the old days, I would've been excited to travel and have an adventure but now I've become such a homebody, little sweetheart. I just like to stay in here with your pictures all around me and do my work and think of you and say quiet prayers and sleep in our bed and hope you'll visit me in dreams, maybe finally taking me with you. So looking forward to that day! I don't wanna go anywhere, really, my love. Not without you. So, please be with me, won't you? Keep me focused and in the knowledge that whatever happens you and I will be together soon in the beautiful new place. And that I just need to be quiet and mindful and good.

You. Incomparable You.

I think sometimes as I tell people about you constantly- your beautiful spirit, your breathtaking talent, your enormous heart, your courageousness, your fierce intelligence, your deep and truthful soulfulness- I neglect to add, maybe for modesty's sake - your scorching incomparable hotness. However knockdown gorgeous you appear in photos or even video, it still can't fully convey how you could stop a man's heart at thirty paces walking into a room. Oh, dear god, sweetheart you remain the hottest little thing ever. And I do mean remain. My dear friend Isabel (who now that I think of it, reminds me in some ways of you - in her zest for life) has an abiding belief that we don't leave that sensual side of ourselves once we vacate our bodies. But that that energy, that sexual soulmate connection that we find with our True Love that shocks and shakes our very being with its intensity is still out there big time. And that when we find each other again in the Beautiful New Place it's gonna be there, only about a million times more intense. No one had ever articulated that to me before but I adore the idea. And I believe. I get it. Without getting too explicit, I have had, even in the depths of my grief, that kind of experience- sudden and shocking and could only be you flipping the switch- so I know it's out there. I know it's you. And I know we're not anywhere near done with this. Knock me down again, baby. Knock me down, again. Forever...

A Prayer on Labor Day

My little sweetheart, I feel as if I've been faltering and I just want to stop and be quiet and listen for you and feel your presence in my heart and all around me, as I know you'll come to my side if only I will just quiet myself. So, my darling, as I lay me down to sleep tonight with your things here, as ever, on your pillow beside me, I say a quiet prayer and vow to do better, to heed your ethereal whispered counsel as you speak to me in dreams and in language I can only now feel, not yet know, until that day you may take me where you are. I vow to do better, my little sweetheart. To be worthy of the great gifts of light and love you have unselfishly given me. I am so blessed. I cherish you, Summer. And love you with all my heart and soul. Forever, my love. Forever.

The Bikepath Mishap

So, little sweetheart, I've been recuperating after this breathtaking and inexplicable wipeout on the bike path along the Hudson several days ago and haven't yet told you the story. Your parents have been helping me from afar - I've been sending your dad pictures of my banged up mug and he's been advising me with his medical expertise. Your mom told me a great story about how you nursed her back to health once by bringing her pineapple slices which you somehow knew was just the thing. "Those enzymes" you told her "are great for stimulating circulation and healing bruises". 

You're amazing, little sweetheart! You know so much about so many things. And here you are again helping me by having helped your mom with this news once before! So, naturally, I've been having pineapple slices every day just like you would tell me to.

So... I don't know exactly how this fall came to be so bad. I was on my morning run along the Hudson. Almost done, actually, I guess I really went flying. Tripping or turning an ankle over uneven pavement or (as in this case) some knotty tree root, usually sends one stumbling for a few paces, trying to right ship and regain balance or at the worst, fall with hands splayed in front. But somehow this sent me flying and right onto my face. My sunglasses broke, shattering upon impact  (I think that had something to do with the cuts) and I hit my head. 

It was all very dramatic. I was veering off the paved path onto a patch of grass but it's uneven and around some trees. There was a lot of blood and dirt. I got up and saw the blood, so I checked to make sure my nose wasn't broken. And it felt okay. But there wasn't any water around. 

I went looking for a drinking fountain and this nice, horrified tourist couple - he (Michael) from London and she (Sabina) from Denmark walked back to the little riverside cafe at the pedestrian pier and got their first aid kit (which had nothing terribly useful) and entry to the restroom and I got cleaned up. They were so very kind, sweetheart, you would like them. I suspect you probably sent them, didn't you, my little angel?

I still had to get home so I finished my run. My neighbor had some alcohol (I thought I did - I remember the last time I had it out - you used a bottle to stretch out some new boots you had here, my love - more Summer know-how!) but I couldn't find it. 

I called my doctor but he couldn't see me until the next morning. I didn't feature going to the ER and I remembered there are these little walk in places here now called City MD. Jason went to one a few weeks ago when he banged his head at work and cut himself. It's BPX injury season, apparently. 

Anyway, they irrigated everything and I didn't need stitches. One place on my forehead needed "glue". The rest, however ugly, are "superficial", they said. They put sterile strips over all that and band aids over the sterile strips. They said it was okay to change the band aids but to leave the sterile strips - they'll come off on their own when it's time, reportedly. They also gave me a prescription for antibiotic to take for 7 days, so I began looking to that - one week - as my healing target. But it's taken a while longer. I'm 12 days out now and it's finally starting to look like my face again. Gah... 

Anyway, the thing about all this that I wanted to tell you was that I managed to keep very calm and have a good attitude about it all - at least that day when it all happened, since then I've been in hiding mostly. Ha! But that day, I remained in good spirits- friendly, optimistic - and very diligently went about seeking treatment. 

I can only attribute that to your perennial presence, my darling. Both the example you gave me in everything we ever encountered together and in the way I know you continue to watch over and guide me, if I only listen closely and heed your heavenly counsel. Thank you, my love. Thank you, my angel. Thank you, my little sweetheart. 

Noted

Little sweetheart, when I was looking for that St. Barbara medal the other day I found a little something else. Tucked into an old address book (remember address books?), was a note I'd made, shortly after we met and you told me, of your birthday. I have so many things to say about our birthdays together - yours and mine. So much. An entire lengthy chapter. Count on it. But meantime, as I sign off for the night - this. Remember November. November 13th. Love you forever, my little sweetheart.

"Of Love" project...

I've been meaning to tell you about this for a while, little sweetheart. How to begin? Well, over the last year or so, independent of each other, several people - my lit agent, my filmmaker friend (Heather Winters), a few other colleagues- have encouraged me to conceive a "theatrical" (for lack of a much much better word) adaptation of Of Love and Loss, that would somehow bring the very intimate kind of experience it is hearing us play the song cycle to a slightly larger audience, with some added component, possibly, of theatre arts. I wasn't completely adverse to the idea but I didn't want it to be stupid. Elaine (my lit agent) had a program in mind that required no script, only a proposal and although we didn't ultimately get selected, it made me articulate something initially.

A few months later, little sweetheart, I met up with this woman, Nina Keneally, a theatre producer, who I've been in touch with sporadically over several years. She once wrote a really beautiful letter (back in the days when people did such things) to my previous agent about my play District of Columbia and we finally met up a few months ago so I could give her "Collected Plays". She was very moved by our story, my love, and interested to hear the music, so I gave her Of Love and Loss and happened to mention the adaptation idea. She went home and listened to the album and got very interested in the idea.

She immediately started thinking of venues and possible opportunities to work on it. She asked if I could just for a start write out all the lyrics and maybe some very simple line or two linking the songs.

I had a different idea - it's kind of hard to describe- but I wrote something. It's not really a play. It's certainly not a musical.

Some of the things I describe happening - with the band at its center and the audience close - are essentially realistic, a man and woman sitting in the space with us looking at the night sky together, her watching over him as he sleeps or he sensing her invisible (to him) presence talking to her looking in entirely the wrong direction but with utter conviction. Other descriptions are more illusory - an enormous reproduction of "Mediterraneo" (the Of Love and Loss cover) appearing brushstroke by brushstroke and at its completion, the woman emerging from the painting and the man going to her under the waves.

I don't know how we do this exactly and my thought is that it shouldn't even be in a theatre but in some found space or art gallery or a church. But Nina - whose producing credits include both the world of Broadway ("Good Vibrations", "Driving Miss Daisy", "Last Night at Ballyhoo") and the experimental music lab at American Rep Theatre, is committed to the idea. Things go wrong and people forget but at the moment this nice.

Our first foray into this is a kind of "concert performance" in Brooklyn on Oct 29. A woman in Bushwick runs this salon series of new works - art exhibits, concerts, film screenings - in an artists loft once a month. Nina knows her. We won't try to stage it at all. Jason and I will play and a friend of ours, Kim Donovan (your dad met her once, little sweetheart - she's from here but she's been working for Pixar out in NorCal since about the time you and I met) will read all we would see. Like a radio play version. Like a female narrator.

We hope it begins to give people an idea of what this might become - an evocation and testament of love and faith - in a way, while not yet staged, more powerful and intimate than listening to the album and reading the "script" at home. We hope.

Anyway, like everything, it's for you, my love. So I'm glad we're talking about it. Stay close to me, now, won't you? Don't go too far away. We're in this together, right? For now, between invisible worlds. And soon, forever, inseparable. With all my love...

Searching while shut-in...

So, little sweetheart, I have to tell you about something that happened on Monday. I had an accident. A kind of breathtaking and inexplicable wipeout while on my morning run along the Hudson, tripping and flying and landing hard on my head. It was very dramatic and bloody and nothing was broken or required stitches but I got pretty badly banged up and I'm all bandaged about my face. Gah! So, quite a story there and I'll get to telling you about it soon.

But just now, as I'm housebound, I set out to find something. I'd had a cursory look for it when Kris was here but I decided as I'm staying inside hiding my banged up face from the wider world, I'd have a proper rummage. 

Did I ever tell you this? 

My mom's best friend bought a pendant at the mission in Santa Barbara for me on the day I was born and gave it to her. When I was spending extended time living in NorCal after you and I met, my mom, who had been keeping it safely stowed somewhere and never even told me about it, sent it out there to me. I packed it away somewhere safely myself. But I was thinking that it's about time I wore it around my neck now along with my emergency dog tag (that has your mom and dad as contact), the key to Miller Drive your mom put on a piece of yarn for me, and the little silver pendent that my London friend made for me that says "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased". 

I just found it. The pretty little pendent is of St Barbara herself. I wonder if you've met her yet on your travels, my little sprite...