At the STRAND bookstore in Union Square I bought “Wake Up” by Catholic/Buddhist Jack Kerouac and a book on writing by Joyce Carol Oates, also raised Catholic.

Because it might be the last Wednesday I don’t have to pick up My Kid until 5:30, I felt inclined to see a Broadway matinee because I could and maybe next week I cannot.

I saw Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Langsbury.  I saw a summer stock production of the musical when I was in high school.  Apparently I missed a lot when I saw it before.

A relative e-mailed me a St. Patrick’s Day prayer that mentioned God 8 times and Christ 15 times.

I was raised Catholic.

When will I learn that the less I do the funnier I am?

…the less I TRY…

So many people, that I know, came up to me afterwards and told me they didn’t recognize me until at least halfway through the show.

Strangers complimented me on staying in that particular character through out the whole show.

I had such a clear idea of what I wanted to do right down to the acrylic glue-on nails and I stuck to my vision until I got all the pieces together.

I nailed it.

6:00 am the alarm went off.  It felt like 5:00 am because it would have been 5:00 am if this were not the designated “spring forward” Daylight Savings Time.

Shower.  Dress.  Consume instant coffee.  Make banana smoothie for breakfast and sack lunch for My Kid.

7:00 am (which really feels like because yesterday it would have been 6:00 am) our family of 3 leaves the apartment and walks to nearest subway station.

No one riding the train at this hour is wearing high heels or fashionable clothing.

One woman in a uniform of manual labor rants at the stop and starting of the train accusing the driver of “smoking crack”.

It’s really early in the morning.

Pennsylvania Station.

Jacob Javits Convention Center.

First Lego League.

City wide robotics tournament.

8:00 am teams go to their assigned “pit” location.

8:30 am my kid is ready to got with the others to give their presentation on subway track fire prevention to the judges.

Sitting,

Walking,

Talking to other parents,

Attempting to read the Sunday Times,

Gathering to watch the two and a half minute robot competitions,

Five times.

The cavernous grey concrete convention center has terrible acoustics and fewer food choices than a 7-11 convenience store.

At the end of the day, due to snafu, My Kid’s team leaves the convention center without participation medals

The low point of the day.

On the way to dinner, two fruitless quick searches through stores looking for a particular item for a clown character.

Korean dumplings on 32nd Street, Mandoo Bar.

The world is looking up.

Home for homework.

Hannah Montana

Please can we please go to bed?

What’s up with that?

Well… there was this article that looked interesting; about mindful housework…  ”Karen Maezen Miler on how the domestic practice of ancient Zen masters can lead us to intimate encounters with our own lives.”

Well here’s hoping.

I read the program: “a visitor is no longer only a passive spectator, but one who bears a responsibility in shaping and even contributing to the actual realization of the piece”.  Yeah, and that can be also true of riding the subway or going to the park, basically of living in the city.

Off-hand I can think of half a dozen writers and directors I know from the under-publicized theater scene of the Seattle in the 1990’s who could have put together a far more powerful encounter between visitors and the space.  I hesitate to sound like the old “my kid could paint that” dismissal.

As I spoke one by one with with representatives of the artist’s concept as we walked together up the spiral rotunda;  first a child, then a teen, then a  20-something and finally an older adult of retirement age I thought about some of the work I have done interacting with audience members as part of site specific theatrical productions.   Annex Theatre’s The Yellow Kid by Brian Faker and Bliss Kolb which began with audience members walking through a back alley and up dark stairs unable to avoid interacting with the kids who were there and Nikki Appino’s ambitious Djinn in an abandoned naval base warehouse come to mind.  I wish I could see what they would have made if they had been given permission to play with their ideas and a bunch of performers the Guggenheim rotunda space.

I suppose everybody can say something like that.