I'm on the phone to my director friend right now, talking after last night's reading, and he's reporting to me feedback he got on the script afterwards. The upshot of things is that he thinks it's not ready to shoot and anyway he wouldn't be able to finish it by the festival deadline he was shooting for, so he's going to put it off a month. I had actually called him to say I couldn't do the thing. I came to that decision (yes, I made a decision after the other day saying I usually just let things lie) just now. I'm just too busy. I'm really stressed out, not sleeping or eating and finding myself unable to wrap my mind around everything I'm working on and everything that's happening to me. So now with the moved shoot date, I have to make this decision all over again. I'll be a bit less busy come September, but not much. Not completely. Not ever.

He asked me how much of a factor M. being in the cast was. I told him not much, and I'm pretty sure that's accurate. The reason he asked: I was visibly miserable last night. Basically we'd not seen each other in six weeks. She came in and said hi all around and then went elsewhere in the house. We eventually talked and naturally she's doing wonderfully and looks great. All sorts of exciting things are happening in her life and career and I listened and encouraged and congratulated. I think I look fine too and also really good really exciting stuff is happening that I've sort of been dying to tell her (as for the last five years she's been the most supportive and encouraging force in my life), but when I told her she seemed less than thrilled. Just sorta, "Good. That's good."

The reading went fine. We sat next to each other and laughed and shared silent jokes about a few things, but basically I couldn't breathe most of the reading and just felt bad. And afterward also, as I stood talking to her. It was all just sad. And everyone knew. Everyone kept watching the two of us, everyone reading the sadness on my face and the I don't know what on hers. Sadness. I'm sure she is too. The sex part of the reading was honestly the least difficult part of the evening. It was being around someone you still love, knowing that everything has changed so quickly and so totally and so permanently. And in my life, things have changed just as they have in hers. My life has changed. I have changed. My heart has changed and shifted and emptied out and filled somewhat back up, and still this hurts.

Yes, I wish I could just be one of those people who march straight ahead, having no regrets and feeling no real need to reflect, but I am not. And so it does hurt. It hurts even still.

It would be wonderful to just be happy for a person you have lost - a person who has slipped from your life like warm air out of a cold apartment. But it is difficult. Why, even when we do not really want to see this person in pain, do we want to see this person in pain? Even just a little bit. Why do things like that not line up with who we are and what is in our hearts and even what the circumstances were/are? Why do we feel hollow and nauseous at the prospect, the very idea of this person doing things that we have ourselves already perhaps done? Have feelings that we ourselves might have already felt or maybe even right now feel? Why when we love someone, can it be nearly impossible to just be happy that they are happy? Is it about possession? Is it about rejection? Is it about not having measured up? Not having been able to make a thing so right you sometimes wanted to cry, work? Why do things like this still hurt, when other failures are forgotten almost instantly?

I imagine this is what it is to be a feeling, caring, alive person. Maybe there is something in that - something in being able to feel the full complexity of love that should be reassuring. Maybe this is what allows us to love again. Maybe.

...Anyway, luckily I was able to take out my pain and hostility in my latest Road Rules recap. Go read and sign up for the mailing list. Make me popular.

The Larry King Happy Song Corner

 
 
Hey girls, gather round. Listen to what I'm putting down. Hey babe, I'm your handy man. I'm not the kind to use a pencil or rule. I'm handy with love and I'm no fool. I fix broken hearts, I know that I truly can. If your broken heart should need repair, then I'm the man to see. I whisper sweet things, you tell all your friends. They'll come runnin' to me. Here is the main thing I want to say: I'm busy 24 hours a day. I fix broken hearts, I know that I truly can. Come, come, come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come, come, come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll come runnin' to me. That's me, I'm your handy man... speaking of which. I'm busy 24 hours a day, people. I get up at eight and do a good five minutes on the treadmill. Bathroom for an hour and a half, and then I write my newspaper column. Usually that takes me about ten minutes, after which I nap, eat a healthy lunch prepared my the day maid, and then another nap until two. The car picks me up at three and I take a nap in the dressing room during the hour they put my face on. I eat dinner while the staff writes my questions, and then I go on. Then it's out drinking with Waterston or Orbach or Charlie Rose until they dump me in the car and I end up in front of the TV watching the late Baseball Tonight. To this day I don't know how I get to bed, but I always somehow end up there. (Thanks honey!) And then it's salve time, lotion time, ointment time, and then sleep time! And then I do it all over again. If that isn't a full life, I don't what is, brother.
 
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