Crescendos

One of my defined characteristics, obvious to myself and to observers to my life, is a fierce need of the natural world. In my current daily routine, I spend most of the conscious time outdoors. If I could arrange a comfortable place to sleep outdoors, I would be satisfied. Even thunderstorms, lightening and spooky sounds would not deter me if I set up a backyard tent.

Actually the natural sounds of crickets, squirrels, and deer entertain me. As a young girl my favorite playing place was in the dirt surrounding our Halsey Road house. I liked to drive miniature cars and move plastic people (cowboys, Indians, soldiers, cowgirls) making pretend cities in the tree and shrub trunks. The fondness didn’t extend to the worms, small snakes and insects, but I did like to capture grasshoppers, lightening bugs and make nice homes for them in pickle jars. I adopted small animals at my home and at my grandparents’ in Toledo. For a few days until my mother called the APL, I kept a homing pigeon which couldn’t fly. My grandfather once came home at the end of the day, from his auto parts yard, carrying a turtle for me. It wasn’t the most exciting companion but I still was grumpy when the neighbor children stole it out of the hollow in our tree.

As I matured, I still found it unbearable to be cooped up in a school building all day. I’d sit in the row next to the window and fantasize that I was outside on the lawn. It wasn’t that my classes and studies were boring; it was the inability to sit indoors for so many hours. I recall springtime when teachers occasionally moved our classes out to the lawn, and we all relished the freedom, the smells of the mowed grass.
I don’t know why I was never guided to consider a career which would have allowed for outdoor work. Landscape design, surveying and house painting would have suited my disposition and restlessness inside. I’ve spent the past seven years working from virtual offices and when the weather is decent I take my computer outside on the deck and work there. I attempt to make a shade for the screen so that I can see the type clearly. The scenes in the documentary, PAGE ONE, of David Carr and his dog, writing stories from his front porch, bring to mind my preferable place to find creativity.

My criteria for an ideal habitat is one in which the windows can stay open every day and night of the year. Especially at night, while I sleep, I want to have the night sounds in the background and in my head. Today I went walking at the Canal Way visitors’ center, where the sewage water is processed before redirected back to the lake and river. If I’m fortunate while walking along the Ohio-Erie Canal towpath, I see blue herons playing statue and turtles stretched out on the tree limbs into the water.

Along the trail, I read about the migration of the birds, such as Yellow Warblers, who summer in NE Ohio. They feast on insects and then fly 2000 miles to spend the winters along the Panama Canal. I’d like to figure out how I could do something similar and avoid the severe cold and ice. Wintertime is pretty and so clean after new fallen snow, but I have always been better able to tolerate heat than cold.

In my car travels this month I’ve listened to two dissimilar audiobook programs. The stories, one fiction and the other autobiography, are told by female narrators. Caleb’s Crossing is Geraldine Brooks’ new novel narrated by Bethia Mayfield, a minister’s daughter growing up in 17th century Martha’s Vineyard. She forges a chaste lifelong friendship with a Wampanoag chieftain’s son, Caleb, who is the first Indian graduate of Harvard. The other audiobook, Just Kids, also involves an endearing love and fierce friendship between Robert Mapplethorpe and his muse and memoirist Patti Smith. Both books present complex,fulfilling and unusual relationships.

Reading the casting news from Broadway this week provided some irregular announcements. Kelli O’Hara, who has been thrice nominated for Tonys for her singing roles in South Pacific, Light in the Piazza and The Pajama Game, has been cast in a straight dramatic role as the daughter Regan of Shakespeare’s KING LEAR. And Lauren Ambrose, noted for her film and television roles (the young sister in SIX FEET UNDER), will star as Fanny Brice, the songstress/comedian, in the first revival of FUNNY GIRL. Apparently the director, Bartlett Sher, has worked with her previously, and is convinced of her ability of voice and potential unattractiveness. I love the unexpected myself.