I Am The Calm Center of the Storm

Tallulah doesn't know we're in another state. But she does know there is a lot more sunshine than there was a week ago. The blue sky is a patient reminder of why we're here. To slow down, to look, and to expand. Which we are doing in more ways than one.

Felicity loves her new cottage. As does Lu. I, on the other hand, am looking for stability in the form of honest work and a place where I can settle down to exorcise these ghosts haunting me. I have never been here before, but I grew up here. Each road I travel has new meanings added to the old memories. Here is where I kissed Sasha behind the fence, opposite where we shop for groceries. Here is where my best friend and I used our wits to escape from the mean punks, that is now a containment area for relocated Yankees. Here is where I played soccer in a neighborhood which has changed it's demographic from upwardly mobile to downwardly retracted.

North Carolina has the nation's fourth highest unemployment rate: 10.7%. So, I've decided to go back to school. New skills for a new environment. If they'll have me I will study Industrial Design at NCSU in Raleigh. They have a two year masters in design program that seems perfect. By the time I graduate, my daughter will be four. She will begin to write, to read, and to craft intelligent seating solutions for my ergonomics class. This prompts me to pontificate at length about her future interests, hopes, and dreams. But I won't write any of those down here...she will.

And to my dear dear friends keeping in touch personally: thank you for your support. We are making the best of the worst, and turning the lemons into meringue. I hate meringue. But others seem to really enjoy it.

To Begin Anew

Writing about our life is not easy. It is like looking up from your dinner to find your hot date has spinach on her teeth. You tell her, because you want to be honest, but you do it in a classy, clever way that won't make her hate you for seeing her with spinach on her teeth.

Our life is not easy, nor always happy. We are Five Happiness because we always try to remember who we want to be, though it's not always who we are. We get caught in the trap of wanting, and forget that we set the trap in the first place. We forget about the needs we have. We gloss over the simple and the necessary and jump to the complicated desires which require we step in the mud.

One of the intentions we hold foremost in our minds preparing for our jump into hyperspace (read: East coast) is paring down our lives to remember who we want to be and what we hold around ourselves and in our environment. For instance; I, who have been performing theater for most of my life, realized as a product of our discussions, I don't really enjoy it anymore. What a revelation. Trying so hard to make something the focus of your life when it is a falsehood is like running a car with the idea of gas. Getting out and walking feels like the best thing in the world. Like the diver taking off the lead vest, without the bends.

That's not to say I won't act again. But it opens up a huge space in my life. Now, I plan to get my master's degree, to be the creative designer geek I have always played at in my head, but never pulled into a form or shape I could set in my sight. Excitement where there was dread! Form from the void! That is creativity: Living purposefully. I have my wife to thank for these revelations. She who daily looks into the face of the future and wipes it clean of spit and goo. She sees things much clearer than I, especially after quitting her job of 16 years. That takes guts. Being an adult takes guts. This adulthood thing may actually be worth something. (Though Felicity and I agree, we're still 26 on the inside.)

I leave you, mon lectur, with this image. Destroy your ambition. As Anne Sexton wrote, "...ambition is the death of the poem." I believe it can also be the death of the life well lived. She was a student of Rilke in this sentiment. Strive to be a beginner. That way, everything is new.

A triptych

The Movable Feast

[Note to Readers: Originally published January of this year, it was removed for personal reasons. We now offer this to you in full disclosure, and as part of our parole.]


We have resisted this declaration for months now. Mostly due to our aching fear of leaving the known, comfortable grooves established by routine, friends, and searches for meaningful shared experiences. Besides moving into a custom renovated home on five acres, ten minutes from Lu's grandparents' farm, the dream of building our own house on rural acreage brings this inevitable conclusion to fruition.

Five Happiness is moving. Potentially for a long time.

We search for a place to let Flicker be a mother instead of nurse; a parcel of land to put down roots; a ground that perks, (good luck in the red clay of the Piedmont); a sloping hill overlooking water: Simple pleasures.

In our world, distance is relative. We could choose to skyrocket supersonic to our destinations and reunite with old friends in moments. It takes less than a day to travel around the world. I think there is something precious about the antiquity of older vehicles of romance, like the post, or travel by steamer that befits delayed gratification in ways a cross country flight cannot. Though I am sure we will employ these to get back to our second families as soon as we can, I can't help but feeling a anticipatory nostalgia at the notion of crafting a nook in the woods with my new family crafting contact with compatriots via handwritten letters.

We decided earlier this year to move to North Carolina for two reasons: My parents live there and have a keen interest in being an integral part of Tallulah's life. We're also able to take advantage of inexpensive properties that match our mutual desires. It is also an experiment on a grand scale. A testament to a parents' keen skills at bribery by babysitting, or maybe just their talent as educators can be seen when children stay in proximity, abstract or distant. But secretly, I am fed by deep creative currents in that place, eddies I cannot quite fathom. If the plan works as we hope, I'll be making bricolage for bank by the end of the decade.

I was raised in Durham. I went to a small school I reached by foot, walking two miles through the woods from my house,playing out my afternoons amid trees and deer and slow creeks. There is a history in that place I want to share with my girls, but also with my muse. She lives there too, I think. I dunno. I have this matchbook from the Cat's Cradle with a smeared eyeliner pencil number...I might have been playing that night, I think.

All jokes to the side, we are eager to begin to set roots in a land seeped with the lineage of Lu's ancestry, as well as the nation's leader in arts in education funding. America: Weird. Beautiful. Stupid awesome. [Does proper punctuation of the prefix "stupid" require a hyphen? Please advise.]

One of my theatrical mentors once told me that instead of living where you think you should make theater, make it in a place where you want to live. That is the plan.

I Love My Gay Daughter

Last night, Felicity and I took Tallulah to a small party. An informal evening, there was a photo contest between friends in Seattle and San Francisco. The party was an opportunity to judge the entries. But Lu was the big star. Except for that two year old who can talk and stuff. Whatever.

To hear so many people tell us that Tallulah is beautiful, that she is an amazing baby makes me nervous for her impending adolescence. I mean, if she's stopping them in their tracks now, what are we to expect? In this small, selfish way, I hope my child is gay. Is it so wrong to want to spare her the taunts of young adolescent male cruelty? I'm already practicing yelling to the world, "I love my gay daughter!" It confuses the conservatives, and I like that.

I was a sensitive boy. I never forced my opinions on girls I liked. But I watched other boys shove their desires and project their dreams on these intelligent, beautiful girls as though they were play toys. I can only craft my daughter's intelligence into such a power for good that she will be able to ward these inevitable suits with taunts and stratagems of her own. That'll show 'em. "Go on, Lu. Challenge them to a game of Boggle."

Felicity and I like to joke that until now, no baby has ever been born. There has never been a baby like this baby! (Said behind mock tears and sobs.) "Don't look at this baby! You don't know about our baby....aaaahhhhhhh!"

No one can possibly know about our baby, because she's the first. As I write this, it doesn't sound nearly as humorous as when we say it. So, I'll have to film this and post it so y'all can watch just how silly we can get with this li'l lump o' sugar. God, I love the apostrophe. It is just SO expressive!

Are we good parents, or simply having a blast at our daughter's expense? She's bound to grow up Republican if we continue like this.