Limited Perspective

On the bus, I always like to sit in the back. That’s where everything happens. If I’m in the furthest seat, all the way back in the corner, it’s also warm, a good place to keep an eye on the action, or to sleep to the vibrations of the engine. I was in the back of the 358 one day, or maybe the 194, one of those old Metro routes that you might find anyone and everyone riding. Somewhere though Pioneer Square or downtown, there were a couple of just about to fall down on their luck, or maybe just bouncing back up guys talking religion. They were discussing miracles, out loud for all to hear. I had studied religion all twelve years of Catholic school. In college, I studied philosophy. My ears are always ready for a metaphysical debate. The first guy insisted the miracles as described in the bible had absolutely happened. The second guy wasn’t buying it. Suppose there had been all of that water into wine, summoning of plagues, curing of illness, and raising of the dead back in those days, h...

Thirty-some years ago I added up my college credits and found I was three short of graduation. I looked through the catalog of summer courses and found Introduction to Theater Arts. I took it.   The final project was a monologue. Somehow I selected one from La Turista by Sam Shepard. It starts with a character bounding from a hotel bathroom saying, “Well, I feel like a new man after all that. I think I finally flushed that old amoeba right down the old drain.” I was nervous as hell. I hid behind a pretense of smoking a cigarette.  It was a bust.   Flash forward to Saturday, Saint Patrick’s Day, 2018  I was doing the final project of my acting class at Freehold: a scene from Sam Shepard’s True West, which I did with a partner.  It was meant to be a real performance and students invited friends to come be our audience. The instructor called “lights up” and my partner and I flowed across the stage.  It was effortless and wonderful.   It didn’t n...

I bought this cookie sheet twenty years ago. It was non-stick. The water used to fly right off it. To dry it, all I had to do was turn and gently wave it.  Boom. Done. I remember making cookies on it. They never stuck. The thing was true to its name.  Not anymore. Stuff sticks to it and I scrub it off. It didn’t look like this either. It was shiny metal, the color of a fancy laptop. It did not transform in a day. It became what it is now slowly over the decades.  Having had it all this time though, I can still see what it was at the beginning.  It still serves its function perfectly. It requires extra clean-up and it looks its age but other than that it’s no different. It’s still really the same.  People are like this now to me. I can look at a middle-aged person, like me, and project backwards to when they were younger. I can look at a young person and have a good idea of how they will look when they get to be my age. I’ve observed myself and people in my life ...