My biography is mostly about feelings now. I feel frightened like a little boy who is trying to figure out how to live with his mother. I feel angry and sad like an adolescent who is trying to figure out why his stepfather is so mean. I feel excited, thoughtful, and grateful, a college student who can’t decide between Theatre and English. I remember inwardly flying, ecstatic and honored—a college professor who just got his PhD in English. I feel like an adventurer who has just quit teaching and is going off to pursue a career in theatre (weirdly energized). I feel like Claudius in Hamlet at the Berkeley Rep (challenged). I feel like an actual freakish angry imp playing Thersites in Troilus and Cressida at the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival (free within madness, on the edge).
I feel like a carpenter who has failed to become exhausted despite honestly trying. I feel in touch with an unfriendly real dilemma, like a newly-married man with two stepchildren and very little income. I feel like a semi-adult who just got a job as a technical writer with good money, enough to raise a family. I feel like a new father, twice over (feeling high and deep at the same time). I feel like a grandfather now thrice over.
I feel like a man who helped his wife (the beautiful Rona) launch and sustain a radio show for parents. I feel like a teacher of technical writing, a writer of user guides and reference guides for equipment that delivers doses of radiation for cancer patients. I feel retired, but not aimless.
I feel like a cutting-edge actor in an avant-garde play, A New Death of Buster Quinine, which takes place in an abandoned rock quarry in Southern California. I feel like a hardened angel playing the doctor in Chekov’s Three Sisters. I feel brave performing Velma, the story of my growing-up. I feel on the cliff-edge again preparing ADAPT—a solo performance set in the future—science fiction, not autobiography.
I feel energetic and nostalgic like Nikos, the “veytik in der tuchis” in Ever Hear of Mario Savio?, a short, deeply kind play by Daniel Rudman.
Sheesh! It’s been a short, short, short journey. I want it never to end. Never. More life! More Being!