Goodbye, Funny-Dumpy-Lumpy

Of course, of COURSE, getting rid of the car would turn out to take the shape of an elaborate clown gag.

Of COURSE after the last buyer flaked--three times--the wrecker who was supposed to show up at 1:00 didn't arrive.

Of COURSE I couldn't find his number, even though I had made a point of writing it down.

Of COURSE I had to call five other wreckers before I could even talk to someone who could take the car today.

Of COURSE he would only pay half the price of the other guy.

Of COURSE when he did show up, it took 20 minutes of wrestling and prying and pulling to get the plates off the car. ("It's almost like it don't want to leave you," he said, which would have been funny if it didn't feel so spookily accurate.)

Of COURSE I still got a little emotional about saying goodbye to the car: the first car I ever bought; the car that seemed too nice for me when I first drove it home; the car that has seen me through a whole lot of tough times; the car that has caused its fair share of tough times too; the car I have written songs about.

Of COURSE as soon as I sat down at the computer I found the first wrecker's phone number.

Oh. Ohhh, clown. What a life I have chosen for myself.

In bocca al lupo

My going-away present from Joe:


I don't know if the inscription is legible at this resolution, but it's a traditional backstage pre-show salute that translates to "Into the mouth of the wolf!" The proper response is "May he choke!" or "May he die!" (Or, depending on who you ask, "Cut out his throat.")

I've heard it comes from Italian opera, though I don't know this for sure. Hasty online fact-checking: The Boston Globe, though its Italian spelling is a bit dubious, says the expression is from opera; other sites say it's from Italian theater; one site says it's just what you used to say when you were leaving the tavern late at night. In any case, it's the Italian equivalent of "Break a leg." Probably the best explanation I've seen of the expression--and of why it's suited to performance--is here, on the site of a summer commedia program.

And yes, it's perfect and lovely. I'm lucky.

The very, very, very long farewell

It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my clown work that at 10:00, the hour when the man was supposed to come and buy my car, I was frantically ransacking the apartment, looking for the key.

Half an hour later I had the key. But still no buyer.

Finally called him. This guy is really fantastic at not letting you know when his plans have changed, even if your plans depend on his. We have rescheduled. Again. If he flakes again...oy, I don't want to think about it.

I can't shake the feeling that the car is going to find some way of clinging to me, like one of those exceptionally persistent cats that manages to follow its former owner across the continent even though it has one eye, a bum leg, no spleen, a colony of fleas that has evolved its own sophisticated metropolis, and a case of distemper strong enough to kill a tiger. I'll be in class in Tuscany, rehearsing some intricate and dangerous bit of slapstick, and suddenly, from outside: Honk.

And I'll look up, and my scene partner will clobber me.

Words to travel by

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold the restless day,
And count it fair.

--Amelia Earhart

Friday night on the steps of St. Alphonsus

Here's the story of the best thing I've done in a while.

Full moon. Cool Chicago summer night. Corner of Wellington and Lincoln. St. Alphonsus, a large church with an improbably ornate gothic doorway, where the entire cast of The Mysterious Elephant was hiding out in the shadows, musical instruments in hand--two guitars, a banjo, a violin, a French horn, a children's xylophone, some hand percussion.

A guy named Micah had asked us to help us surprise the woman he described as the love of his life. A few weeks ago, he told us, they had a magical moment when they watched Mysterious Elephant and drove home singing "Oh, elephant, elephant." He wanted to give her another magical moment because, he said, she deserved to have a lot of them.

So we watched them come across Lincoln, out of what looked like a garden party. He led her up the steps. Scott (in semi-costume as Cristoff: fake dead arm paired with a red T-shirt and shorts) wobbled up to them. I think maybe she thought he was drunk at first. But then she recognized him. We heard a peal of delighted laughter, and we came out of the shadows onto the landing. (Is it a landing when it's outside? Especially when it's outside a church? Porch seems too modest a word. But anyway.)

We sang the Elephant song, with the last lyrics changed:

We surprised you
Micah has asked us to
He'd like to ask you...

And that was when he showed her the ring. I think by then most of us were already crying. She was. She kissed him like she meant it. Everyone applauded. There was a cheer from the garden party. The cast turned around and walked back to the recording studio.

My god, I love being an artist. It's hard, it's impossibly frustrating and contrary, there's no money to speak of, but I wouldn't trade a moment like that for the world.

This is really happening, isn't it?

My student visa arrived in the mail today, and I've sent the last tuition check, and yeah, I'm really going to Italy. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time believing it. It's just been such a distant dream for so long that, even though I've spent a long time working to make it happen, the idea that it actually would happen seemed less fact than faith.

The first time I even thought of doing something like this was when I first studied with 500 Clown--so, fall 2003? I remember Paul talking about the year he spent at Dell'Arte as a gift to himself. And I understood it logically then, but now--I'm as surprised and delighted as if I'd just opened a fantastic present.

Can't really linger over this post because there's so much to do: the car to clean out and sell, the Italian to study. I think I have a pretty solid hold on the past tenses now. I love that Italian has a sort of plupluperfect, the trapassato remoto, for events occurring before the events in the pluperfect, the trapassato prossimo. It does make you understand the poetic appeal of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, however wobbly the science: in Italy you're not just a woman with a past; you can be a woman with a remote past, an immediate past, an imperfect past, an absolute past.

I should go work on the future tenses, and that's not just metaphor.