On black screen the sound of hospital machinery, beeps and whooshes and splunks. As if from a deep murky well, a face appears. An old man staring down, noise of a buzzer, then immediately a female voice, “Yes, Sam?” “Get in here quick; he’s stopped breathing.” Then, a young woman in nurse cap replaces old man’s face, she too staring down, noisily fiddles with something and then as loud as anything yet we hear the sound of a heartbeat, then the gasp of a single breath. Then another.
Fade. Slowly developing image of young man in ill-fitting hospital gown. Scraggly beard. He is at the window and places hand on glass, makes for a palm print on the icy pane. Nurse comes in and calls his name. “Larry, over here, time to take your pills.” L looks up and into the glass, starts a bit, as if for the first time he sees himself as he is, wasting away, as if he has been a POW in the South Pacific, hint of being hardened to his fate but then something sad comes to mind, and he bows his head, body shuddering, weeping.
Running for Your Life: Balance Beam
I’d like to think that I’m keeping this blog in balance: reading, writing, running and yeah, riding (subway). Because five days a week I ride to work; that is when I write, often about running, but equally about my other practices. Because my message is embedded there, in these ways of being.
Recently, I received the official publication of the Boston Marathon 2011: Racer’s Record Book. The race that I’d trained for but didn’t run. I was a little surprised to see that of the 26,907 runners who entered, only 1,719 were men in my age group, 55-59. That’s 6.4 percent. And of those men who but did not race I was joined by 156 others, or 9.1 percent, of the group members who made it there for the 115th running of the world’s most famous race. Certainly it is a young person’s game. It’s not as though a 56-year-old man is going to win. As if winning counted.
Recently, I received the official publication of the Boston Marathon 2011: Racer’s Record Book. The race that I’d trained for but didn’t run. I was a little surprised to see that of the 26,907 runners who entered, only 1,719 were men in my age group, 55-59. That’s 6.4 percent. And of those men who but did not race I was joined by 156 others, or 9.1 percent, of the group members who made it there for the 115th running of the world’s most famous race. Certainly it is a young person’s game. It’s not as though a 56-year-old man is going to win. As if winning counted.
Running for Your Life: The Play’s The Thing
Four shorts, loosely classified one acts, heavy and dark and deep and funny, hilarious, East Side but the bearable type with an after-theater bar where the cast will stop by for a drink, well at least some did on Friday night (Aug. 5), except for the underage girl actors (Avid Theatergoer and Family Friend: “Has anyone told you, well, I’m sure they do, but has anyone told you that you look just like Faye Dunaway? UGA: “Who’s Faye Dunaway?”) in “Carrie and Francine” http://bit.ly/p4LWwv, the winning playwright of this summer production, 17-year-old Ruby Rae Spiegel, chosen from an open competition against young and experienced alike, trenchant and wise beyond her years, and introducing Lydia Weintraub (she of the Faye Dunaway line and the delightful, talented daughter of good friends of ours) and equally gifted pal Louise Sullivan to audiences everywhere, see it if you can, it rhymes: Series A through Labor Day, you won’t be sorry, and you may even be inspired to write, because these plays are being staged as part of a one-act competition: an East Side Manhattan Fringe, Check out “Summer Shorts 5” at 59E59 Theaters http://bit.ly/dblPp5.
Running for Your Life: Summer Reading, Part II
So You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.
Today (Aug. 3) I am interrupted on my final kick of a 7-miler, forced to stop at an intersection in Central Slope. In 85-degree heat a man in a heavy orange vest (sensible shoes, shorts and sandals) is walking ahead of a young woman pushing a cart full of food from the Park Slope Food Co-op http://bit.ly/rfTUOX, both of them blocking a turning Crate & Barrel delivery truck, the target of disapproving glares from some patrons at the outdoor seating area of Connecticut Muffin.
Today (Aug. 3) I am interrupted on my final kick of a 7-miler, forced to stop at an intersection in Central Slope. In 85-degree heat a man in a heavy orange vest (sensible shoes, shorts and sandals) is walking ahead of a young woman pushing a cart full of food from the Park Slope Food Co-op http://bit.ly/rfTUOX, both of them blocking a turning Crate & Barrel delivery truck, the target of disapproving glares from some patrons at the outdoor seating area of Connecticut Muffin.
Running for Your Life: Dog Day Delights
“When did it turn?” I’m talking to my friend D at the annual memorial barbecue for the great and underappreciated cartoonist/filmmaker and my very great friend, Mickey Siporin http://bit.ly/qG4Fp4, now in his early 70s, he knew Mick when they were art student freshman college roommates in Carbondale, Ill. D grew up in The Village, in the heyday of The Cedar Tavern, Frank O’Hara’s “Second Avenue,” Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg. If aspiring novelist Gil Pender (Midnight in Paris) saw Paris in the Twenties as his ideal place and time for artistic imagination, then The Village in the Fifties and early Sixties works for me. D was in his twenties then.
So I ask him, “When did it turn?”
“When I saw my first bottle of economy-size Coke,” D says.
“Wow!” I say, ‘that’s –”
“You’re a writer. Feel free to use that.”
So I ask him, “When did it turn?”
“When I saw my first bottle of economy-size Coke,” D says.
“Wow!” I say, ‘that’s –”
“You’re a writer. Feel free to use that.”
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