Heidi Jon Schmidt's Blog: ....and take Skillings with you!

I tried to list my 'Influences' on Goodreads this morning... the software limited me to about 30 characters. Writers are influenced about once a minute! I don't think I've ever read a book or seen a painting...or for that matter had a random conversation at the hardware store...that didn't influence me. The story of any writer's --any person's-- influences, is the story of their life, a double-helix that spirals out of the earliest beginnings and touches on every experience and relationship that person has.

I thought I'd talk about some of my influences here, week by week-- thinking that this might inspire others to consider their own.

First: The natural world. I grew up at the end of long, dusty road, in a valley between two forested hills. A brook ran down through a series of waterfalls on one side; on the other there was a marsh ringed with cattails and a long series of overgrown fields. There was not another house in sight. Our car was old and cranky, and we used it once a week to get groceries; I met the schoolbus a half mile away on the paved road.

I loved that land without knowing it, out of a deep familiarity. I knew every angle of light, every smell, the twist of an opened milkweed pod, the spectral sound of an evening thrush calling in the woods. I read The Yearling The Yearling in one long day, on a little island in the middle of the brook, feeling as if I could understand life in the backwoods of Florida because I knew the backwoods of Connecticut. The first record I ever bought was Elton John's first album. "A cluster of night jars sang some songs out of tune; a mantle of bright light shone down from the moon." The song fit me exactly....my sense of the mystery of life, of all that I dreamed as a young girl who knew very little of the outside world but everything about the few acres around her.

A few years later that house was repossessed by the bank; I went to college and then grad school and landed on Cape Cod, where there's another ornate and fascinating wilderness to take part in. And I discovered that a sense of place is one of the most important parts of writing for me. The books I love almost always lead the reader into a new world, a very particular world that shapes the lives of the characters. Fiction brings different places, times, and societies more alive to me than travel ever can. And fiction saves them, saves the time and the feeling as nothing else can.

It has been a wildly good year for beach plums. I made a batch of beach plum cordial yesterday for the first time. I won't be able to try it for two months, but when the sun came through the bottle this morning, illuminating all the plums suspended in the liquor, I was moved as I am when I read something wonderful: there they were, whole, beautiful from every side, nearly weightless. It feels good, in the midst of all that is lost in a life, to know that something has been preserved.

The Yearling Elton John

The thing we found washed up on the beach was the size of a small sofa, and made of flesh-- but it didn't look like a whole creature. There were some holes in it--one swollen and bloody, another smooth and round--maybe a blowhole? Then an indentation covered with skin, and something that was likely a gill beneath a small, useless-looking fin. From a distance I had thought it might be a couple of dolphins--I'd seen dolphins stranded here before. But no. I wondered if it was part of a whale, hit by a boat maybe.

A policeman was coming toward it from the other side, having been called by another passerby.

"What is it?"

"I don't know." He'd picked up a garbage can lid when he parked his car and stooped at the water's edge to fill it. "Maybe a sunfish?"

I'd heard of sunfish but never seen one. This creature had two big fins, at top and bottom, no tail: the back end was scalloped as neatly as if it had been done with a cookie cutter. The cop poured seawater over it and went back for more. The tide was low and it was hard to scoop more than a few inches of water at a time.

My husband and I ran home and got pails. Others had gathered by the time we returned. A couple of men-- my neighbors, it turned out, though I'd never met them, were asking whether we'd called animal rescue. One of them had a picture up on his smartphone: apparently the creature was a sunfish. Then my next door neighbor came along with his dog. Animal rescue was on the way, from Brewster, an hour's drive away. We took turns pouring pails full of water over the creature--that's what you do with dolphins and whales.

"A lot of unusual creatures around, after Hurricane Sandy," someone said. "They get caught up in the current. Did you hear about the pelican at Herring Cove?" The man with the smartphone read to us about sunfish: They are the largest bony fish alive, often weighing over a ton.

"A fish," someone repeated. Of course. Whales and dolphins are mammals-- when they're stranded they breathe the air. "It's suffocating."

I poured water into the gill.

"Wrong way," the cop said. "In the mouth, out the gill." I imagined myself washed up somewhere, surrounded by strange creatures helpfully pouring water into my nose.

My neighbors turned out to be named Hans and Weber. They're Dutch and usually only visit in the summer. Weber got down on his knees and dug into the sand, finding the creature's mouth. He poured out his coffee, filled the cup with water and tossed some in. A large tongue moved in there, and the more water we poured in, the more the tongue moved.

A woman ran toward us, upset. Had we called Animal Rescue? Did we know what to do? "It's female," she said, pointing to swelling I had mistaken for a wound. Of course. Now we had a mouth and genitals we had a better sense of the fish. She had a wide scar on her belly-- hit by a boat, bitten by a shark? Exasperated with our ignorance, the woman rolled up her pants and barefoot into the water to get a fuller pail.

"Look," Weber said. What I had seen as a fleshy dent in the head was in fact an eye-- the lid had opened and the fish looked anxiously up at us. The next time we poured water into her mouth, she seemed to swallow. And a face came into focus-- the big round eye, the gulping mouth, and a bulbous, cartoony nose. She wasn't strange anymore, not a fish but our fish, not an it but a she, scarred by some trouble in the past, looking up at us with what seemed like trust.

"Maybe we should cover her with eelgrass, to keep her wet?" I suggested. Everyone, even the exasperated woman, agreed. I felt the deepest satisfaction as we gathered the seaweed and spread it over the fish.
There was a burst of static on the cop's radio-- a message from the dispatcher. Animal rescue was at a different stranding and wouldn't be able to come. If we could get the creature back to water, that would be best. Otherwise we'd have to give up.

More neighbors arrived-- Ilidio and Fernanda, whose daughter is in my daughter's class at school. Ilidio is a fisherman guessed the creature's weight at 400 pounds. "Just comparing to a tuna," he said.

We had six men now and three women-- maybe enough to lift four hundred pounds? No. "She's like cement!" Yes. Her skin felt like sandpaper, and it was heavy for me to try to lift one fin.

"Maybe we can just slide her?"

We took our places. "If people can push a Volkswagen we can push her into the water," I said.

"Volkswagens have wheels," Weber pointed out. On the count of three, we pushed. We got her about ten feet. Blood trickled out behind her; her skin was tearing. Her eye looked up helplessly.

"We're hurting more than we can help," the cop said, his hands out in front of him as if he couldn't bear it. There he was in his uniform, with his radio and his taser, and still there was nothing he could do.

And the tide was ebbing. It was twenty feet to the water's edge but a quarter mile to water deep enough for the sunfish. The police radio crackled again. The cop was needed on another call.

"The reality is..." he said, but his voice flickered. Her body was collapsing under its own weight. It was eight hours until the tide would be back to float her. She was on the edge of suffocation even with all our efforts.

The exasperated woman's feet were turning blue from the cold. She looked away so we wouldn't see her tears.

We stood in a circle around the sunfish. I doubt I was the only one who wanted us to join hands and say some kind of blessing, or to lie down beside her and keep her company as she died. Or something. But one by one, we went on our way.

All day the image of that face was with me-- the way it only became a face bit by bit, as we learned how to care for it.

By the next day, her suffering was over and the tide had moved her body up the beach. Animal rescue arrived to autopsy her, and to carry her dissected body away. Sunfish become disoriented in cold water-- this one probably got pushed north by the hurricane and was unable to get her bearings again.

So we met, and through small attempts, failures and successes, came to know a creature much different than ourselves. It took an effort of patience and kindness to overcome our own ignorance. And it ended with grief. But the grief, as it often is, was the measure of our connection.

Good morning friends. It's blowy and raw out, good hibernating weather. I've been writing more about politics lately, and I have a Holiday/Solstice blog brimming, but today I thought you should hear from my sister in Florida, whose resignation letter from her job as a small town bank teller I am copying here, in case you are in need of a template. She runs a bait shop now.

"Attn: Personnel Department, **** Community Bank, *** Key, Florida"

Dear ****,
I write to inform you of my resignation from my position as teller/guidance counselor/AA coordinator/chef du jour/rodent retriever/flag-raiser/gossip advisor at the ***Key branch of the **** Community Bank. I have enjoyed my time spent working with you and the numerous tellers who have been hired and fired under my nose. *** Bank has given my the opportunity to expand my expertise in the field of interpersonal skills and mathematical calculations.

There is never a dull day at the *** Bank. For there is always the customer looking for his Milano cookies, the customer who threatens to burn your house down and "beat your ass", the customer who needs to borrow a couple of dollars to pay his light bill, the customer who doesn't bank with *** but does come in to have her daily cookies and drop off a few rotten bananas. I'll certainly miss choosing my attire based on the high standards of the *** Community Bank dress code. But most of all I'll miss the long hours and the overwhelmingly generous pay.

Best Regards
Laura Adams, xoxo"

Some years ago Bruce Springsteen was interviewed on 60 Minutes and his final words have been ringing in my ears every since. He asked why we should judge a country on its military might, or its Gross National Product. "Why shouldn't a country be judged by its compassion?"

This struck me as a brilliant question, one I've heard asked in many different ways, beginning with my mother, who, when told a child "was just looking for attention," said, "Well, then give him some attention!"

In grad school I stumbled over the book "Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanize It" by Robert Sommer. He talked about the way midcentury architects had worked to designe buildings in such a way that they couldn't be vandalized-- but vandals always found a way. Then they began to design building that gave a sense of security and beauty, and voila, vandalism dropped significantly. The conventional wisdom was wrong-- flowers were a more powerful tool against vandalism than reinforced concrete. Tight Spaces; Hard Architecture and How to Humanize It

Later a friend suggested I read The Drama of the Gifted Child, by psychologist Alice Miller; not about child prodigies as I had guessed, but about the way we casually (and often cruelly) bully children by telling them that if only they were a little more grown up they'd behave as we want them to. (The book goes way beyond this and is brilliantly eye-opening.) I am SO glad I read this before I had a child. It helped me follow my own instincts as a mother and as a writer-- it made me feel that empathy is by far the most fertile soil for every kind of growth.The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

We're a terribly punitive country-- we have more than six million people in prison right now and states are spending more on prison than on higher education. We sentence children as adults for crimes they would never have committed if they had had better access to nurturance and less access to weapons. (A very good piece about the prison system--http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics...) We count 'justice' for victims in terms of punishment to criminals. Our understandable fear of the threat of addictive drugs is answered by mandatory sentencing for minor drug violations. The prison population grows (no other country has so many prisoners), but the drug problem doesn't seem to be shrinking.

And that's just the most egregious example. Republicans offered a mishmash of ideas centered around the notion that some bad lazy people were sitting around sucking up our hard-earned tax dollars. All we had to do is get rid of them (Mitt didn't say what he'd do with the bodies) and everything would be fine. Looking closer, we could see that most of these people, 'the 47%' were in fact working full time and still unable to earn enough to raise them above the poverty line. Technology and outsourcing have drained the economy of stable jobs, but rather than look that problem in the eye we blame those who suffer because of it.

We made a huge step with this election, joining the rest of the developed world in providing low cost health care for all citizens, electing a man who believes that by working toward the common good we strengthen ourselves as a nation. But he-- and I mean we-- have a huge job ahead. I don't know where we begin but I do believe the answers will be counter-intuitive, like those in the books I've mentioned. And I know that I'd love to live in a nation that's more proud of its ethical and moral center than its military might.

Scott Brown's a handsome man. And he drives a really nice truck. There's something infinitely reassuring about a strong, smiling man driving a truck-- it speaks of the kind of love and security that arises from a thriving economy. Where jobs are plentiful, families are strong. Seeing a Scott Brown ad I always feel nostalgic--when I was little there was nothing that made me happier than the chance to ride shotgun with my dad on a trip to the dump and the hardware store.

It's because I want my grandchildren to have that same security that I'll be voting for Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday. We don't live in the world suggested by Scott Brown's truck anymore, and nostalgia won't get us back there. Families are managing by cobbling part-time jobs together, with little hope of saving for the future, of lifting their children into better lives. We need a real leader to help us find the way to achieve that stability again.

Elizabeth Warren is an expert on bankruptcy law, a professor at Harvard. and the author of (among others) "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke". Her Senate candidacy is based in a nuts and bolts understanding of how our economy works. Her experience on the National Bankruptcy Commission and as an adviser to the FDIC inform her, as does her experience as a mother, and a teacher of children with disabilities.

She is extraordinarily articulate, able to say things outright that others only half-understand, and so, able to deflate popular misunderstandings and move the general discourse to a deeper level. The best example of this is her insistent reminder that no man or woman is "self-made"; that we need good government. She is the deserving heir to Senator Edward Kennedy's senate seat. There she will carry on his decades of thoughtful effort on behalf of this state-- studying the issues, finding ways to go forward socially and economically.

We need her heart and her mind to address the issues in front of us--as it is we seem to be at the mercy of a kind of corporate greed that is hard even to fathom. She is fighting that now, as money from out of state pours into Scott Brown's campaign. Who can blame businesses for wanting to deep-six the candidacy of the woman Time Magazine has called one of "the new sheriffs of Wall Street."? Brown is using that money to take cheap shots at Warren, not to reveal a vision for the Commonwealth or the nation. It's Warren who has reckoned with fiscal reality and found ways to move the country, and the many different families the country is made up of, forward. If you want a really powerful truck, and your kids piling confidently in, looking to the future with hope and excitement, you'd be wise to vote for Elizabeth Warren.

The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke

I'm the guest blogger on Barnes and Noble.com today--- waving the flag for nosiness, one of my favorite human qualities.


Diary of a Nosy Neighbor

We had a wave of arsons in our little town a few years ago. The first fires were small, one in a dumpster and one in the dry grass beside the highway. Then someone's shed burned down, then a garage and then, on Halloween night, one of the oldest houses in town. My daughter was 10--she went as a flower fairy that year, in a costume I'd put together out of some green tulle over a thrift shop dress, with a cap that looked like a stem growing out of her head. The excitement of Halloween is so much about being out after dark, knocking on stranger's doors, Jack-o-lanterns flickering ghoulishly....and all while you're holding your mom's hand. When the sirens sounded that cozy scariness was interrupted by cold fear. Mothers picked up little dancers and goblins while the men in the neighborhood jumped into their trucks to head for the fire station. This town was built in the eighteenth century: wood frame houses crowded along streets just wide enough for horse carriages. Strike a match and you can wipe out a block before the fire trucks are out of the garage.

That night the arsonist didn't have to use a match: the house he targeted was under renovation, and he climbed in a first floor window, found a blowtorch, lit it and walked away, probably along the beach, where, in the dark of an October evening he was unlikely to be seen. The fire was knocked down before it could spread. Ten days later, another house went up in flames--while the firemen worked to squelch it a grand piano fell through the weakened ceiling and very nearly killed a man.

Who was doing this? Why? We speculated endlessly, on the steps of the Post Office, in line at the coffee shop. Suspicion fell on a former firefighter, a troubled teenager, then on a homeless man who'd been found sleeping in the firehouse. But they all seemed to have alibis (Never mind the police, four women at the grocery checkout could figure this out based on where they bumped into who the day before.)

The State Fire Marshall, called in to help with the investigation, held a meeting for townspeople, partly to reassure us, partly to ask for our help. Arson is the most difficult crime to solve, and in a tourist town like ours, where half the houses are unoccupied in the off season, it's all too easy for a criminal to make his way from yard to yard without being noticed.

"What we need," the Marshall told us, "is a nosy neighbor." Representatives from his office, in plain clothes, had gone through one neighborhood after another without so much as a single woman sticking her head out an upper window to interrogate them. What was wrong with us, he wanted to know, minding our own business this way? We needed to become a lot nosier, as fast as we possibly could.

This was it. Clearly my moment in the sun had arrived. I am one of the nosiest people I know. There is no little crevice of human existence that I don't want to peer into, preferably with a flashlight, a magnifying glass, and a notebook. And a small town, blessed with one main street (the better to see everyone you know as you head out to return a library book), and a stiff breeze (the better for your neighbor's divorce decree to blow out of his garbage and into your tomato bushes).

I went forth from that meeting charged with a mission. While I usually prefer the dignified term "curiosity," 'nosiness' does spell it out. If your Cyrano-like proboscis has ever been caught in a slamming door, it may be that you share this calling. We're needed, we snoops! And I was glad to have someone beside me recognize this. I've always thought nosiness got a bad rap, mostly because it has become associated with scornfulness and sanctimony over the years. But the fact that I'm dying to see in your windows does not mean I want to denigrate you. It means I want to learn from you, to understand how it is that different people, all of them wishing for more or less the same things (health, love, safety, recognition for the good we do, forgiveness...the list goes on and on), take such disparate paths to their goals.

How is it that we are all as different and as alike as snowflakes? I can read Freud and Tolstoy and Austen and Wilde for some answers to this question, but nothing will ever compare to that original text, the contents of my neighbor's trash. This has gotten me into trouble at times. I once complimented a painting newly hung over an acquaintance's couch; it was absolutely beautiful, but I'd only seen it because he forgot to close his curtains one night. In fact I wouldn't have known where he lived if he'd remembered to close his blinds, and now, when I walk past his house (as I do every time I head to the library) I add another little piece to the puzzle that this very nice man represents to me. He keeps his garden tidy, and grows an impressive variety of peppers-- is this because he grew up in a spicy culture, Mexican maybe? Or is he, like my husband, of such absolutely British descent that he never saw a garlic until he had come of age and has therefore a deep desire to Know the Peppers, in all their spectacular variety?

He would probably tell me it's because he likes peppers. Fair enough. 'Knock on any door,' a brilliant novelist, also a friend of mine, used to say-- meaning that behind every door there is plenty of beauty and of affliction, that we aren't alone in our peculiarities. Fiction does that for us--knocks on a random door and reveals that we're in good company, whether we're exulting or grieving or just snooping through other people's lives. My last two books--The House on Oyster Creek and The Harbormaster's Daughter , have been set in a fishing, touristing town not unlike the one I live in, and I know they are better for the kaleidoscope of thoughts and images and understandings I've gained from thirty years of the ordinary daily world here. The Harbormaster's Daughter imagines the growth of a girl whose mother was murdered much as a local woman was ten years ago. The book is full of my sense of this place and its people, and though many, many others know the outline of the story, no one else would imagine or write it the same way. My nosiness-- my fascination, which originates in my own peculiarities-- makes it what it is.

That arsonist was never arrested. One week there were no sirens, then the next, and the next, and after a while we forgot to be afraid. People theorized that he had been a summer visitor, renting an unheated cottage. When the air got cold enough he had to move and we got to breathe easy again. I wonder where he is now--does he still set fires or was that part of some madness that took hold of him that year and has let go now? Maybe he just came to some understanding and stopped--I wonder what that understanding might be. Maybe he has a little family and feels terribly guilty, is making up for the arsons by joining his local volunteer fire department.

Or maybe there's a much darker answer. How I wish I knew. And how I wish my nosiness had been vindicated and I had spied the firebug out my window. I'd have run out to ask him what he was doing. I mean--I assume it was a him, but I'm not going to know. I do believe that whether you call it curiosity or nosiness, our persistent interest in each other is ultimately a great thing-- that the first step to closing the gap between disparate people, and groups of people, is seeing, questioning, and thinking about those variations. Beneath the differences are much deeper layers of similarity. I'm never sure whether 'minding one's own business' isn't really a way of making sure one's assumptions go unchallenged, of failing to appreciate other lives and ways of life.

In my capacities as a nosy neighbor, and as a novelist, I will continue my investigations into this and many other questions, and keep you updated on my progress.

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t...

My book, my fifth book, was published this week. It's called The Harbormaster's Daughter And if you'd welcome it, the way you'd welcome a performer to the stage, with a brief round of applause, I'd appreciate it! It's always anti-climactic when a book comes out--you've put years of work into this thing, suffered bitter shame when it didn't seem good enough, felt godlike when you had some new insight into it, and now...nothing. Or maybe you have a root canal scheduled that day. My second book was published on September 11, 2001-- I went to the New York Times website to read the review and...you know the rest.

This time, though, I went to be interviewed on a local cable tv show, and was ambushed there by a wave of the true excitement of publishing a book: a reader who has been moved by the story, whose sense of the characters is as complex and mysterious as if they were living people in his or her mind. That is the best feeling in the world and it always comes by surprise.

I wished I had a split of champagne in my pocket to share with this woman, who had thought so deeply about characters I'd imagined. She reminded me of my earliest impulse as a writer, which was to save all the things I loved in a form that wouldn't fade. A good book is like a jar of fireflies--it keeps a mysterious moment alive. It's like finding another room in your house, where people talk and think and fall in love and embarrass themselves and manage to triumph in some small way despite the embarrassment…a bit of extra life.

That is what I have aimed to do, what all artists, and all people aim at in one way or another, I think. It's Carnival Week in Provincetown, thousands upon thousands of revelers are arriving, everyone who lives here is working ceaselessly to keep the great tourist machine running smoothly....and my moment of satisfaction is of very little note. But on Thursday as the summer's fever spikes, I'll be grateful for having added another drop to the town's life...(unless I'm having a root canal.)

I have seen Provincetown this crowded, but never in July, in fact maybe never outside of Carnival week. It is madness out there, cars from Missouri and Maryland queued up to get into the Monument Museum, lines snaking up and down the streets as people wait to buy lunch, or buy tickets, or buy....well, practically anything. Some shops report over $1000 an hour in sales these past few days, everyone is working extra shifts, exhausted, overwhelmed, and still, making hay while the sun shines. There's a long winter ahead.

My daughter called up, in the break between her jobs. She was lying in the alley behind the theater where she works--the best place she could find to grab some peace and quiet. Faith Prince, who was performing that night, just stepped around as she walked from her dressing room to the stage door. It made me think of Colette's music hall stories -- the bustle and excitement behind the scenes of a typical Provincetown night.

Tawdry, that is, cheap, gaudy and gloriously romantic. The performers work like footsoldiers day after day after day. Any glance takes in a hundred quick stories: a man in a luxuriant blond wig and heels that give him a height advantage over Kobe Bryant confers worriedly with his barker, then returns to his cocky pose; a young woman from Bulgaria has a tense word with her boyfriend as she heads to her third job...a burst of laughter erupts as a couple of waiters exchange stories.

So much life is packed into this street! At then end of an alley a building tilts precariously, most of its windows boarded. The last bits of an old wharf jut out there, on pilings that still look solid-- I think this was The Old Reliable Fish House when I came to town. It felt like the forties back there: picnic tables, windowboxes full of geraniums, the bay full of sails and the kitchen full of rodents, or that was the word on the street. Now, I suppose it's waiting for some developer to raze it and put up condominiums. In the meantime, I noticed that one window was dimly lit, and a shadow moved across the opposite wall. Who lives here and how do they manage? A hundred years ago, between fishing and odd jobs, plenty of people could do just fine in a simple way. Now...not so much.

Down another alley, the Julie Heller Gallery, in another building that has seen centuries of Provincetown history, shows paintings from the whole life of the town as an art colony. So much has changed, but standing here looking out to Long Point light in the evening, all of history is right there in the feeling.The Collected Stories

My daughter pointed out to me this morning that she and I seem to live in different towns sometimes. I see the other artists and writers in town, and my fellow parents-- carpenters, shop owners, health care workers, sometimes even that near-extinct species the commercial fisherman. She works at The Art House a cabaret theatre that shows everyone from string quartets to broadway singers like Patti LuPone to the venerable drag queen Varla Jean Merman.

Long after I'm asleep she's mopping the stage, setting the ghost light, and heading home among the phantasmagoria of the late summer night in a gay resort. Last night as she passed the men lined up outside the Governor Bradford, where Ryan Landry's Showgirls was playing, an older man turned out in a classic floor-length silk gown and a pert black wig wafted out onto his porch and called across the street to a friend, to say he'd be over as soon as he had finished putting on his face. If only Tennessee Williams had been here!

Meanwhile I'm always imagining back to one historical moment or another-- whaling, or the days when the railroad ran right to the end of MacMillan Wharf, and legions of women in white disembarked with their parasols and their paintbrushes. Seeing the cottage pictured here, I could so clearly imagine the time when the town was a clean-scrubbed vacation resort and fishing village, men in belted khakis and slicked hair, wives in cotton dresses, laundry hanging in the sea air to dry.

So, while Marisa's imaginary Provincetown and mine overlap, they are very different worlds. But they are both imaginary, set along a street that seems to have been conceived as a stage set, inhabited by men and women who know that they are acting their parts in a drama both great and mundane.

Everyone has his or her own private P-town, and you can feel all those worlds overlapping. It's a wonderful cozy feeling (if insular and claustrophobic at times). And every glimpse leads into another life-- yes, a fictionalized life, realized when one imagination is focussed on a moment in someone else's real life. I think that part of the greatness of A Streetcar Named Desire is that feeling of lives layered together on a hot, crowded street. It's also part of the pleasure of life in Ptown.A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays

o, I'd assumed you would all be writing in about your stalking experiences, perhaps humming "What am I Doing?", the great stalkers' anthem from the musical "Closer than Ever". I mean, don't be shy! There's an auto repair shop in Harwich called "O'Brien and Stalker", and I was hoping those guys would write in. It's one thing to take your son into the business, but your stalker? That is almost certainly a fascinating partnership.

Where does a crush come from? The people I've had crushes on in my life--a young woman who dressed like an amish boy down to the lace-up boots and black hat; a mathematician who had discovered amazing things but talked like a robot and didn't know how to make a sandwich... Neither of them had one cell of conventional attractiveness, but somehow they were broadcasting on some perverse unconscious frequency of mine. I had to see more of them, (in the case of the math teacher I invited myself over to make him dinner. At this he began to walk in circles on his heels, repeating some secret phrase over and over.)

This makes me want to write "Stalkers: the Musical". It would take place in Provincetown, on Commercial Street, which is really just a three-mile long conga line of stalkers, drawn through their lives by longing for ... well, you'd be surprised, and surprised, and surprised again.

I was reminded recently that Provincetown's glimpses are not just of landscape and architecture, but most strikingly of people. A man came toward me down an alleyway, his face perfectly made up, with long beaded lashes, high cheekbones, a warm lipsticked smile. Jeans and a t-shirt too-- he was only beginning his evening's transformation. Later there would be sequins I'm sure but this intermediate stage drove a hatpin into my heart, who knows why? I was glad to feel it though, to be reminded of the mysteries that give life so much of its glamor and glory. The most wonderful art has been inspired by crushes-- Henry James and his beautiful young sculptor, Yeats tormented by his longing for Maud Gonne. Our lunatic yearnings move us to great achievements.

'Everything's sparkle dust, bugle beads, ostritch plumes....'* around here in preparation for July 4th. Happy Birthday USA! What better gift than Obamacare? Next, Stalkers the Musical. Love to all eleven of my readers, you strangely alluring creatures you!

(*from the song 'Put a Little More Mascara On', La Cage aux Folles, Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman)