Ham-burger-maker

lived in Dallas almost four years before I heard about Roses.
Don't be silly, Roses Sandwich shop.
It's a secret hamburger place.
It's on Upper Greenville Avenue and when you drive by it all you see is a run-down little yellow house. On the porch, above the door of that little yellow house is a little red sign (maybe 12" by 6") that says "Roses."
To get there, you must drive around the back onto a dirt road and park in the yard or on the gravel.
If and only if the dog is outside the house, is Roses open for business.
You enter through the screen door in the back, and walk through a dimly lit hallway into a room where it seems as if someone else's family is eating hamburgers in their house. From there, you walk into the kitchen where Rose or her sister have neatly printed the menu and the prices using Sharpie marker on a slab of cardboard. Your choices are hamburger or cheeseburger.
After you tell Rose or her sister which you would like and how you would like it cooked, you move to the dining area.
The dining area is full of baskets of packaged chips and cookies and refrigerators full of sodas and sweet tea.
You are on the honor system about what you take, you pay as you leave.
The ambiance is homely and at the same time mystifying.
I felt as if I was eating in the Jolly Roger Women's auxiliary thrift store.
Rose and her sister have been at it since 1940!
The burgers taste magnificent and all the better to taste because they are secret hamburgers.

NYC has a secret hamburger place, too.
Boy, do I wish I could tell you where it is.
Unfortunately, the photograph that I took there was confiscated from my camera, so I have done my best rendering of't using my ol'reliable favorite medium, Paint.

tunnel

Cubs/Mets Game

I have been in New York almost five years and had never been to a baseball game until last weekend when I went to a Mets game with Cubs fans.

I learned:
Wrigley Field was built in 1914.
Mark Prior has colossal thighs.
During certain times, it costs the same amount of money to see a baseball game as it does to see an improv show.
Teams are cool.
Don't put cork in your bat.
There's some airline with really fancy green ribbon-like designs on their planes.
T-Shirt launching has come a long way since slingshots.
You can take a bus from NYC to a town called Pearl River and hang out at Dave & Buster's.
Any documentation of even the simplest everyday events will inevitably become a story.

LIRR Excursion: Babylon

For this adventure, my original intent was to find the beach. I bought a ticket to Bay Shore because on the map, it looks as if from there, you can catch a ferry to a beach that might be less crowded than one closer to the city.

On the train, I read the map and realized that in Bay Shore, the ferry was not in walking distance of the train and that I should have bought at ticket to Patchogue instead, but none of that mattered anyway because there wasn’t going to be a Montauk-bound train until much later in the afternoon.

I then noticed a tiny line on the map that indicated a seasonal beach-bound bus from Babylon to Fire Island.

I arrived in Babylon and had a conversation with the station attendant.

“Hello, is there a bus that will take me to a beach?”
“The BEACH?” His tone insinuated I was obviously on some kind of crazy adventure or something, and I clearly don’t know where I am or where I’m going.
“Yes.”
“No, no bus. You can take a cab.”
“When’s the next train toward Montauk?”
“Montauk!! Uh, let’s see. Not until 9:30 this evening.”
“Thanks!”

I was not disappointed by this piece of information. I took to the streets of Babylon!



It was then I saw a sign that read Babylon Harbor, Restaurants, Bathing Beach and underneath the words was a golden arrow.

The arrow led me on twisted tour of Babylon’s residential sidewalks. A young fellow in a truck pulled over and asked me if I knew what Lighthouse Road was. I did not. Was that a trick question? Babylon must be a portal to a dimension where we are all oscillating searchlights??

I found the Harbor. I walked past a few seafood restaurants that I would have enjoyed had I a pretty penny. As I walked towards the edge of the docks, a spindly figure sauntered towards me. Actually, he was walking directly towards me! It was a youth with oily brown hair that he flipped out of the way of his face so that he could see. This young devil was sporting an oversized black t-shirt and when he smiled, the sun reflected off of the reconstructive metal in his mouth!

“Hey!” His gaze was almost fetching.
“Hello.”
“How was school?”
“What.”
“School!” He pointed at my backpack.

If this had been an improv scene, I would have played along.

Why did I not play with this pubescent swinger? This kid’s dad probably has a fishing boat with a net full of innocent and unnasuming women.

So, all I said was, “I graduated.”

origins part II

Figure 1-B:

Figure 1-C:

Figure 1-D:

Figure 1-E:

sadie

Sadie, white coat,
carry me home.
Bury this bone,
take this pine-cone

Bury this bone to gnaw on it later,
gnaw on the telephone.
'Till then, we pray & suspend
the notion that these lives do never end.

And all day long we talk about mercy:
lead me to water lord, I sure am thirsty.
Down in the ditch where I nearly served you,
up in the clouds where he almost heard you.

And all that we built
and all that we breathed,
and all that we spilt,
or pulled up like weeds
is piled up in back;
it burns irrevocably.
(we spoke up in turns,
'till the silence crept over me)

Bless you and I deeply do
no longer resolute, and I call to you

But the water got so cold
and you do lose
what you don't hold.

This is an old song, these are old blues.
This is not my tune, but it's mine to use.
And the seabirds where the fear once grew
will flock with a fury,
and they will bury what'd come for you.

Down where I darn with the milk-eyed mender
you and I, and a love so tender,
is stretched-on a hoop where I stitch this adage:
"Bless our house and its heart so savage.”

And all that I want, and all that I need,
and all that I've got is scattered like seed.
And all that I knew is moving away from me.
(and all that I know is blowing
like tumbleweed)

And the mealy worms
in the brine will burn
in a salty pyre,
among the fauns and ferns.

And the love we hold,
and the love we spurn,
will never grow cold
only taciturn.

And I'll tell you tomorrow.
Sadie, go on home now.
Bless those who've sickened below;
bless us who've chosen so.
And all that I've got
and all that I need
I tie and I knot
that I lay at you feet.
I have not forgot,
but a silence crept over me.
(So dig up your bone,
exhume your pine-cone, my Sadie)

~Joanna Newsom(the world's second-most hardcore contemporary female harpist)

shoeshine

cavalier

Woodbridge Sir Percival

Some actors have an ethereal quality and thus the ability to affect change. I don’t need to tell you, readers and dreamers, that Percival is one of those actors. I must have been blessed by the divine grace of the Almighty to have the chance to work with Percival in Keeping Room, the intimate drawing-room comedy set in the American Nineteen Nineties. I revisit the set of Keeping Room about twice a year. He’s still there! He is THAT committed!!

Percival has the ability to command attention, to make you reach out to him and walk with him. As an actor and a fellow audience member who has worked with this genius, I assure you that while he leads you to believe you are in control of the reigns, that it is you who is touching him, Percival is leading you places you never intended to go, and he is brightening your spirit for the sake of your soul.

It’s the simple things with Percival. He is the definition of Organic. He uses his senses, the tools he was born with, to reach his Super-Objective.






So, that’s why I’m going to nominate Percival for Messiah King.

LIRR Railroad Excursion - Port Jefferson

I used to walk around and explore Manhattan endlessly. After Manhattan, Brooklyn, then Queens. Now, I’m all about Long Island and this is exciting because Long Island is huge.

I’m glad that I am a woman for every reason except that I often feel vulnerable when traveling alone. This doesn’t stop me from traveling alone – it is my favorite pastime. If only I could hitchhike . . .

There are uninteresting parts of Manhattan; the garment district, Port Authority Bus Terminal, tenth avenue in midtown. Rather than character, these places have characters. I could study these characters, but most of them depress and/or threaten me.

I felt the same way about Port Jefferson. There was a Club Ba-Da-Bing, a hospital with a nice sculpture garden, Tattoo shops, and Harleys. And, along with these interesting environments came the Creepies. There were three dour-faced men who stood at the bus stop and stared at people but forgot to board the bus. I don’t remember seeing a female in Port Jefferson.

Also, never again will I answer my cell phone on an adventure. I answered the phone in Port Jefferson, and I answered it hard. Two painful hours later, I hung up and went home.

Origin

Everyone in the big universe has his or her own little universe. I have several personal theories about how my universe came into being. Unless you have studied my universe at great lengths, please kindly refrain from dispute.

Figure 1-A:

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.”

As a freshman theatre major at Southern Methodist University, Dr. Dale Mofitt made my theatre class memorize this poem as assignment number one in our first acting class, Dramatic Arts Today. We all would have rather done monologue work, but Dr. Mofitt was a brilliant and enigmatic professor with whom we were all already obsessed, so we never asked why, we just did it. All he said was, “It’s a T.S. Eliot quote.”

He was right. It is a T.S. Eliot quote. What we memorized was the fifth and final stanza of Little Gidding, the fourth of the Four Quartets. Eliot’s finale was our overture.

I’m pretty sure that I have the Eliot piece more completely memorized than the American National Anthem.
There are certain things that one is presented with in one’s life that are so utterly befuddling that they can only be gifts from a higher power.
This poem is one of those gifts.

I believe I have hypnotized myself with it.