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Cordelia will take Manhattan
May. 15th, 2005 09:29 pmCordelia was exceedingly well-behaved on our trip. She only barked in the play during curtain call, for example. Otherwise, there wasn't as much to bark at (strangely): now that we're home there are other dogs, both in this house and next door, who bark (and demand a response), plus flocks of warbling children outside during the day. None of these in a New York apartment. She asked to go out promptly at 7 am; so I took her, following which she did what all responsible dogs do. (And again an hour later.) We (my friend, Matt, and I) hung out in the park and subjected Cordy to the "Small Dog Run," a raised fenced area all covered in green tile and--at least at 10 am--full of small dogs. She sat in our laps and shivered for the first half hour; then she got up the courage to walk around and sniff the others--always looking nervously back at me. Cordelia remembered Matt after 2 years, and clung to him fiercely. Moral: I need to live in a place with wood floors, and preferably one small enough so that Cordelia knows she can't escape detection. (The moral is not, however: I need to live in New York.)
The play was largely about the life of its author--; who just happens to be a unique enough person to warrant that. I'm still trying to pin down the specific type of awkwardness the play was about. The lines "passively active" and "actively passive," or whatever they were, are insightful here, as the main thing seems to be that the character was completely vulnerable at all times when taking on the world. (I don't do this. I hide vulnerability (naturally, not effortfully), even when not taking on the world. And while what I would most like is the safety to be vulnerable, I have this inexplicable conviction that looking for it directly only undermines the possibility of finding it. People don't always like it when others are vulnerable--at least not quietly. Vulnerability makes demands on others; it unsettles them.) But loud vulnerability can make others comfortable by expressing all the anxieties that others don't express. The other thesis the play seemed to state was that, whatever this sort of loud vulnerability is, it garners love and not sex. I don't know about this (or why it would be so); but it does garner hugs.
I didn't hate New York. I didn't feel unfashionable (I used to), or just didn't care. I like venues for seeing-and-being-seen, and it was just a larger one of those. I don't think I could ever live there, though. I don't like feeling trapped, and its impossible not to feel trapped when you realize there are no expansive window views (or very few) in the entire city. And it's difficult not to feel insiginificant. And insignificance plus exhaustion (which is inevitable if you're in public all the time) are a bad combination.
The play was largely about the life of its author--; who just happens to be a unique enough person to warrant that. I'm still trying to pin down the specific type of awkwardness the play was about. The lines "passively active" and "actively passive," or whatever they were, are insightful here, as the main thing seems to be that the character was completely vulnerable at all times when taking on the world. (I don't do this. I hide vulnerability (naturally, not effortfully), even when not taking on the world. And while what I would most like is the safety to be vulnerable, I have this inexplicable conviction that looking for it directly only undermines the possibility of finding it. People don't always like it when others are vulnerable--at least not quietly. Vulnerability makes demands on others; it unsettles them.) But loud vulnerability can make others comfortable by expressing all the anxieties that others don't express. The other thesis the play seemed to state was that, whatever this sort of loud vulnerability is, it garners love and not sex. I don't know about this (or why it would be so); but it does garner hugs.
I didn't hate New York. I didn't feel unfashionable (I used to), or just didn't care. I like venues for seeing-and-being-seen, and it was just a larger one of those. I don't think I could ever live there, though. I don't like feeling trapped, and its impossible not to feel trapped when you realize there are no expansive window views (or very few) in the entire city. And it's difficult not to feel insiginificant. And insignificance plus exhaustion (which is inevitable if you're in public all the time) are a bad combination.
