brooke's blog

"Buy yourself a few things,"

2011-11-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

I'm my mother's daughter. So in the quest to grow up, I thought I'd start by shopping.

So yesterday, I bought myself a cashmere sweater. 1) I feel like I need a few pieces of clothing that aren't from the Goodwill. And I thought cashmere, expensive, in a rich color and classic cut, might be the way to go. Thus, Barney's. But 2) I may not be an expensive sweater kind of girl (I mean, woman). I don't feel right about spending the money if it's not amazing. And 3) when I put the sweater on and asked Gordon, he said, "You have big boobs and a beautiful little waist - why do you persist in buying clothes that make you look like my bubby?"

Today, I am taking the sweater back.

"In Hollywood, 40 is the new 80" -- Jeanne Tripplehorn

2011-11-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

It started when I was buying a moisturizer a few years ago. I said, “I need something with anti-aging properties.”

“Oh Sweetie, you don’t have to worry about that yet.” Said the (definitely younger than me) lady behind the counter.

I said, “I’m turning 40 this year, so in fact, I do have to worry about it.”

“WHAT? You? Forty? Do you mind -- can I tell, do you mind if I tell my friend?” And as quickly as I could nod, she was yelling towards the opposite counter, “DENISE. GET OVER HERE” and when Denise arrived, “You are not going to believe how old this girl says she is.”

And so it went from there. A twenty-minute “What do you do to look so good?” routine. I cited both my Grandma Ida, who has flawless skin and has never had a facial or a Botox treatment (She credits Oil of Olay and good genes) and clean living, or at least partial vegetarianism and yoga.

And when I turned 40, a few months later, I thought, What a crazy, cosmic joke, this turning-40. I’m still the same, still wearing clogs and pigtails, writing in my journal, thift-shopping and so on

So the fact that I am the age I am is rarely a concern. At cosmetics counters and doctors’ offices, not to mention the Mommy and Me group, I am often mistaken for someone much younger – 30’s, sometimes even 20’s (if they’re not looking too closely, I think.)

But this week, a few things have happened to give me pause. For one, I need reading glasses. Another, I have a miserable cold and can’t breathe. And I’ve been watching television, realizing, slowly but surely: I am no longer the “girl” of either Gossip Girl or New Girl. I am now the “wife” (both “Desperate” and also “Good”). And the mama. (And yes, I am up all night.)

I called a good friend of mine and suggested, “We need to reinvent ourselves.” “YES” she echoed.

But how? How do we become the next version of ourselves? Strong, graceful, real?

Settled

2011-05-19T13:47:00.001-07:00

SETTLED

Just after the events described in the last chapter of my memoir, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I came into a discrete sum of money. This money -- I won’t talk about how much -- enabled me to get health insurance through The Freelancers Union. I had been uninsured for ten years, since the day my grad school policy ran out. The health insurance, while nice in of itself, gave me the courage to get pregnant. (Little did I know that even with the insurance, I would spend roughly 10,000 out of pocket on this birth – and that’s for a straightforward vaginal delivery – but that’s another article altogether.) The point is, just after the release of NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I found myself married and pregnant – or rather, pregnant and then married – and moving into a new apartment with my newly forming family. I also adopted a cat.

A year earlier, my ex-roommate Rick, a fancy celebrity hairdresser was doing hair and makeup for a fancy reality TV starlet and as they were discussing the movie 2012, she exclaimed, “What is this life?” These are the words that pass through my head now, on a regular basis, as I sit feeding my baby – baby on one knee, cat perched on the other. What is this life? The one in which I have little creatures – one human, one feline – depending on me for their very survival? What is this life? Because I like it.

When I did press on NO PLACE LIKE HOME, journalist types would ask something to the effect of, “Would you say you’re settled now?” When they asked, they’d get this look on their faces – something like, “Come on, Brooke. What’s the deal?” They would ask, “This new apartment…. do you think you’ll stay?” And I had no idea how to answer. The point of my book is, despite the best laid plans, who knows? Shit happens. The Universe has curve balls up its proverbial sleeves. What does it mean “to stay”?

My husband and I are renting our apartment, a small two bedroom in a city that we have chosen in order to be close to the action of the Hollywood thing – playwrights need to earn money. Our baby is small. So a small 2BR suits us. But I don’t imagine we’ll rent “forever.” And we’re still working out our relationship to Los Angeles. Daily I worry about where to raise our son – here or back in New York, near his grandparents, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and my own home-base, the theater.

So when answering “The Question”, I’d stumble through some version of, “Wow, I don’t know. Eventually I think we’ll wind up back in New York. But for now, sure, we’re here.” And of course that doesn’t give anyone any closure – one journalist even called me “a flake”. I think he was looking for something definitive, something like, “Yes, after the journey of NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I have learned my lesson, and I now know how to create stability.” Had I said that, maybe I’d also have sold the movie rights because there would be a discreet transformation. Girl goes from unstable to stable, from transient art “flake” to settled wife and mother. But that’s just not the point.

What does “stability” look like to you?

...

2011-04-30T11:35:00.001-07:00

i want my grandma to think i'm a good mom.

"Mommy and Me" ... and I

2011-03-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

I recently joined a “Mommy and Me” class in Hollywood.

At first, I was afraid of it, the class, afraid it would be like an episode of “Desperate Housewives” set on repeat, and I’d run screaming. But also, secretly, I craved a little maternal guidance, and never having held a baby – when I babysat, the kids were always old enough to tell me just what they wanted and needed, whether that be dinner, a story, a made-up game where everyone is a kittycat , or some new toy) – I needed some information.

As a new parent, it seems like the learning curve is monumental – how do people ever learn to put their babies to bed? To create structure, but not too much structure? To attend to Baby’s cries and offer Baby the specific help s/he needs at each juncture? How do you navigate the new world of parenthood? I wanted to learn about child development – age appropriate play, how the brain develops, what my baby was seeing and hearing and feeling and mostly how to attend to each and every one of his needs so that he grows up safe and secure, believing that the Infinite Universe will take care of him.

The first group meeting, two weeks ago, was Heaven. I cried when they welcomed each baby with a song. I cried when I realized how much I missed my own mother. I cried, comforted by the solidarity of a circle of women all going through the same thing. Here was a sacred sisterhood! Each woman told her birth story, and I thought, “We have so much in common.” And then I thought, I always was a sucker for 1970’s Second Wave feminism. I love circles.

But in the ten days since that first meeting, since our second class and the addition of an email chain, I have learned that every mom except for me (and maybe a few ladies in Compton) own a 400 dollar “jogger stroller” in addition their carseat/Snap N Go set-up and their “umbrella” city stroller, and that they seem to have inexhaustible (okay, maybe that’s an unfortunate word) energy and time for emails, lunch and hiking dates, and the ongoing purchase of “gear.” I feel like I’m back in high school taking note of who just got cute new shoes. Maybe these are not my mommy peers after all? Where are the artists? Where are the working moms? Where are the moms who, like us, are trying to make do with less?

And now I’m debating whether to stay in the group or else, surrender to my growing workload and use the hours to take Baby on a walk (in lone stroller device, a totally viable Snap and Go hand-me-down) and then, write! After all, aren’t I supposed to be writing?

Mostly what I am realizing is, my son needs me to listen to him -- and trust myself.

PS: Gordon says, technically, if one were minding one's grammar, it should be called "Mommy and I." Just saying.

Making Cookies and Waiting

2010-12-12T15:07:00.000-08:00

A labor activity is something you pick out beforehand that you can do whilst the early contractions of labor begin. These early contractions are, from everything I hear, far apart and not entirely horrible, and one needs something to do to take one's mind off the fact that one is starting the long journey of labor. Three weeks ago I decided my labor activity would be to bake cookies. I have probably not baked cookies in 20 years. But I have been seduced into cookie-making lately by my friend Yvonne, who makes them pretty regularly, and her house always smells good, and each time I go over there and she's baking the aforementioned cookies, I feel a sense of calm. Besides, how better to start life as a mom? Right? Won't my kid want me to bake him cookies?

But here's the thing. The baby has not yet come. So every day for the last 2 or 3 weeks, since buying the ingredients, I stare at the package of Toll House chips and the Neiman Marcus recipe downloaded from the Internet, and I wonder, "Will it be today?"

Finally, this morning at 6AM I could wait no more. I woke up and never got back to sleep. I wept. "When is this baby coming? Why is he taking so long?" And I vowed, "Today I'm making those fucking cookies. At least THAT is within my control."

So I'm not in labor.
But I am baking nonetheless.
And the house smells good.
And we're still waiting....

Wendy Is Turning In Her Grave

2010-11-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

This year's Wasserstein Award committee has decided *not* to give an award because they feel that not one of the 19 submissions is worthy of the prize.

My colleague Kirsten Grenidge has written eloquently about the matter on her blog:

http://onmywaytotherevolution.blogspot.com/2010/11/to-those-19-playwrights.html?spref=fb

As has the ever-articulate Michael Lew (in addition to writing a fantastic letter to TCG)which got excerpted on Jezebel:

http://jezebel.com/5688991/no-wasserstein-prizes-for-you-this-year-lady-playwrights

Read about it.

And there's a petition:

http://apps.facebook.com/petitions/1/tdf-please-reconsider-2010-wasserstein-prize/?ref=mf

Which you can sign!

I won 2 emerging playwright awards, in 1998 and 2000, respectively, which changed my life. We need these awards! And unfortunately we're still in the dark ages where we need awards specifically targed to women's voices, otherwise, we fall into the larger canonical trap of "I don't know what the event is, I can't follow this play because there's no male protagonist" or what have you (see Julia Jordan's Female Playwrights campaign circa 2008, 2009, 2010). Sad, I know. But necessary.

I was also lucky enough to meet Ms. Wasserstein a few times, and I can say wholeheartedly that she would be pissed right now. Wendy was a tireless advocate for the voices of young women. She helped many of us "emerge." She was one of those rare and beautiful souls who makes room at the grown-ups table when the kids arrive.

From the Pregnancy Void

2010-11-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

I am getting really, really spaced out. I sit on the big green plastic “birth ball” eating noodles and watching weird movies on my laptop. I think about writing. I take notes. I answer email. I nap. I have never been a “nap person” but right now, I like to nap. I fall asleep an hour earlier each night and wake up (well, I wake up every two hours but also….) slightly later than usual, each day. This baby is coming any time now, any time….. I can’t believe it.

But I've also been thinking, apropos of the recent midterm elections, about the right to choose.

Because I have been pregnant before. And chosen to terminate. It was 1998, and my then-boyfriend, who I adored, smoked an inordinate amount of marijuana – or at least, enough to make me uncomfortable – and said he didn’t believe in making a commitment to a relationship, but if there were a child, he’d stick around. I told him I couldn’t do it that way, that I needed the base before bringing a child in. He’d recently moved out of his dad’s place and into a house in Brooklyn where he grew pot in the closet that also acted as shelter to a family of very small mice. His hipster roommate Mary said the mice were “cute.” Neither of them owned a bed. Both slept (separately, I think) in sleeping bags, on their respective floors. A part of wanted very much to have this man’s baby. But the smarter part of me knew it was a set-up.

After I had the procedure, which is no easy thing to go through, I called him, long distance, in tears. And he said, “You sound needy.” And I said, “I feel needy” And he said, “Don’t look at me. I would have had it.” And I understood that I was alone. The mourning process was unbelievable. I cried a lot and looked for answers. But I never doubted the termination itself. I believed, I still believe, I did the right thing.

It’s so important that women have the power to choose. Abortion isn’t easy – it’s no picnic, as they say. And we do kill something, maybe not a “baby” – but certainly the beginnings of life, a potential. And yet, I think that owning that choice, making it consciously and responsibly, helps us grow up, helps us make different choices down the road. I promised myself that I would be a mother someday. And I’m delighted (and scared) to become one now.

Mostly, I’m grateful to see it unfold this way. And to have a child with this wonderful man, Gordon. At just the right time in both of our lives….

News and Musings

2010-10-19T00:49:00.000-07:00

So first, some lovely news, via old friend Danielle: SMASHING is play of the month @ Drama Books in NYC:

http://www.dramabookshop.com/october-14-2010-smashing-brooke-berman-0

it's recently been published in book edition by Broadway Play Publishing (with a rad cover, a graphic from the show, sketched by Erik Flatmo). Check it out!

And a few thoughts while wandering San Francisco. In my book, I talk about a particular week in August, 2002, when I went to Chicago to rehearse a play. During my free time, I would find myself wandering around "looking for the past." I'd grown up in Chicago and had all sorts of nostalgia about both the city itself the friends I'd loved so dearly (and lost, eventually) in my 20's. But I discovered that something inside of me had shifted and thus, I "the past has no business with me." It was, I wrote, as if the receptors through which this nostalgia -- the past, the ghosts -- could reach me had closed themselves off. There were no receptors and thus, no sentimental experience. I was free.

Being in San Francisco this weekend has been like that. I've been wandering 16th Street looking for the ghost of the me who lived here the summer of 1996. She's not here. The one corner with any nostalgia is Valencia and 21st, where "Noah" and I got busted for eating out of the bulk food bins at Valencia Street Whole Foods (okay, once!). We were on that corner a lot.

But San Francisco isn't about the past for me. It's about a very rich present in which I am pregnant and expecting a child, workshopping a new play with wonderful collaborators and buying ABC books for the little boy who's coming to join mine and Gordon's life. In this present, I visit museums. I walk up Mission Street. I explore without any expectation of the past meeting me or informing me. It is unwritten. And unfolding....

San Francisco, here I come....

2010-10-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

My First Pregnancy Scare, SF, 1996

2010-10-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

So here I am, in LA, 31 weeks pregnant and about to workshop a new play and promote my book in San Fran.

And so, here is a little piece of prose/journal writing (we didn't have blogs in 1996) from the summer I lived there, in San Francisco. It was the very first time I thought I might be pregnant. (Turned out, despite my Kabbalah teacher's premonition, I was not.)
-------------------------------------

1997

It is the summer of 1996 and I am truly in love for the first time, living in San Fransisco after a cross country road trip which is the topic of another piece. I am working for a new media company during the day, spending my evenings wandering around the Mission District and trying to figure out why everyone except me seems to LOVE San Francisco. I just don't get it. I'm studying the Kabbalah on Wednesday nights in the San Geronimo Valley, taking the ferry up to Marin where I am met by a sister in white robes who takes me where I need to go - her name is Blessing, though I think it used to be something else when she was young and living in Queens -- and we drive through Marin County once a week to a room in the sunset in the mountains near Skywalker Ranch - and my sweet love honey boyfriend is living in his car and looking for God in the parking lot of a donut shop in Santa Cruz. Where he ends up living, high and on food stamps most of the time...

Pregnancy isn't expected.

I mean, okay, I do keep count of every time we have unprotected sex and I say "We really have to start using condoms," and it's becoming one of those really boring mantras -- and babies are not on my wish list at this time. I am thinking more about the possibility of scoring an agent in SF, a less saturated market than NY, than changing a diaper or watching my breasts swell. And our form of birth control has been mostly luck, fertility charts and prayer, and the idea that I might want a child blows my fucking mind apart. It totally cuts open the wounds of holding onto my past identity as a wounded child with dysfunction in her genetic makeup - Oh, you mean I have to stop being the daughter who wasn't mothered? Really?

And it's early July and I am in this phase where I cry at least three times a day and eating has become a nightmare. I am digestively challenged. I cannot seem to swallow and chew. The food doesn't go down, it stays somewhere rotting with the rest of my good intentions - and I'm nauseous all the time. And stop eating til he forces me to - and my nerves are shot until The Boyfriend holds me in his arms and promising me miso, takes me out to WeBe Sushi for lots of raw fish and seaweed. Which does stay down - and my psychic Kabbalah teacher turns to me one night after chanting in Hebrew and opening up the energy centers - three women seated around a yellow candle in the dark in the mountains - and Leslie, my beloved Kabbalah teacher says, "You might want to get a pregnancy test."

And I think, Oh Fuck.

But the next morning, alone on the Larkspur ferry, en route back to the City, I think, "there is life in my body" and it's like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and I'm fucking keeping it. I just am. It’s a girl, and I’m naming her Annika Joy and I’m going to wear her in a papoose around my body like all the other hippy moms in the Missiona, and this is all going to work out. It is all going to work out fine.

I call my mom and ask”What did it feel like when you were pregnant?” and she says, “I was married” and I say that’s not the point. And she asks if I was using birth control. And I say that is also not the point. And then she asks what I”ve been eating and I say semen and then I hang up on her and cry.

Our Stuff

2010-10-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

I love this article in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/garden/30domestic.html?ref=style

And also, I love the notion of returning home with new eyes. When Gordon and I sublet his place in Queens in order to be in our Brewery loft in LA for a few months, we experienced something similiar. I'd had terrible luck with my last subletter on Mott Street -- she was a nightmare who left stains on my sheets, cat fur all over my floors and the stench of the cigarettes that she supposedly didn't smoke, everywhere else. (I'm not even going to get into the mail, the unpaid phone bill or the cable TV which had yet to be taken out when I returned home.) So I was wary when we came home. But our Queens subletter was amazing. Responsible. Clean. Good-natured. And to my surprise and delight, she rearranged our furniture (ever so slightly), making the apartment look BETTER than it had when we left.

But also, I'd packed things away so that the space would be clear for her. And what a joy it was to unpack them! To see my candlesticks. Or books. Or favorite sweater.

While I don't advocate overidentifying with these objects, I do believe that the right ones help us create and feel grounded at "home."

Why do people keep giving me advice?

2010-09-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

Note: If i haven’t explicitly asked for your advice about my pregnancy or birth process, it is probably because I don’t want it.

Recently at a good friend’s birthday party, a well-meaning acquaintance started asking about my birth plans. I don’t know this woman very well, so I was vague. For one thing, I’m not going to go into detail in the middle of a friend’s 40th birthday party. For another, it was none of her business. But also, I was vague because the whole thing is still very much in process for me. Gordon and I are learning how we want to have this baby, but moreever, the baby is teaching us how s/he wants to come into the world. And there’s a lot we won’t know until it happens. And I’m okay with that. But I feel like other women want me to be afraid. One friend recently cautioned me about how my relationship and work were sure to suffer after giving birth. Was that meant to be helpful? Because it sounded like “The sky is falling.” At the party, the acquaintance, an actress, described HER birth experience. In depth. As if I’d asked. She asked if I were doing prenatal yoga. “In fact, I am,” I said. “Where?” she asked. So I told her. Not satisfied with my answer (I like my prenatal yoga teacher very much and have been enjoying her classes in addition to my usual Ashtanga practice, which I’m doing with modifications) she recommended the yoga studio she’d gone to, at which I’d find “the only class where you really connect with your unborn child.” In fact, she assured me, the guru at this yoga center was her child’s godmother. What exactly that has to do with me, I’m not sure. And she kept talking. I was amazed at the way she kept talking. At some point, I stopped listening and just watched her talk. One assumption after another, one projection after another, her face positively GLOWING with how much she loved to talk about her own experience. But where was I in that conversation? Because what so often happens during these pre-mommy talk fests is that the woman who’s already been initiated through the magic and power of childbirth or whatever feels entitled to talk – extemporaneously and without any self-censoring – until she’s done. Is it because no one at home is listening to these women? Is there some profound lack in their lives which prompts them to want to tell me every last secret and every last detail – and to give advice? Because I am often left on the other side of these one-sided conversations growing increasingly uncomfortable wondering when the speaker will JUST STOP?

There are plenty of women whose advice I have sought out. Many a good friend. Including one who actually delivers babies for a living. And I am grateful to them! I have learned a lot from my friends. I’ve borrowed books, asked about doctors and doulas, asked about how to balance childcare with writing and how to negotiate medical and holistic models. I’ve asked about pediatricians, and I’ve asked about breastfeeding. But too much information, too many opinions and points of view, especially when unsolicited, breeds anxiety. And what good is that?

So if I’ve already asked for your opinion/advice/inspirational birth story, THANK YOU. And if I haven’t, then … until further notice… hold off and let me figure things out with the help I have already sought. Maybe all of these vociferous and passionate advice-givers should just start blogs? And then they can give advice (and recommendations for connecting with unborn children) all they want?

Thank you! And Namaste.

Tonight! Borders Bookstore in Westwood.

2010-09-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hey, West Side LA: I'm taking part in this neat event at Borders:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66794213913#!/event.php?eid=147560611950362&ref=mf

7PM, Saturday 9/25
Hosted by Romie Angelich.

Come on by!

Easy Riders, or: this got rejected by Modern Love

2010-09-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

This got rejected by Modern Love . It's kind of a (newly discovered but definitely intense) dream to get published by them. See what you think.

(NOTE: I'm about to write a bunch of pregnancy-themed posts, so this will be (I think) the last one on love and marriage for awhile. I promise.)

On The Road Of Love
Or, easy riders, not so easy rides
By Brooke Berman

I have driven across the United States three times. First, when I was 23, with The Third Wave Foundation as part of Freedom Summer 92, a voter-registration drive helmed by Rebecca Walker . We travelled in a caravan of Greyhound buses, emblazoned with the words “VOTE EQUALS POWER”. I had never before seen the part of the US where the dirt turns crimson, nor had I canvassed for a cause. The trip itself was equal parts frustrating and revelatory as we visited underserved communities across the country, sleeping in YWCA’s and getting on each other’s nerves. Four years later, I drove across the country again, very differently, with my former boyfriend, a 22 year-old macrobiotic chef. He’d taken out the back seats of his red Chevy mini-van for the trip, and we stuffed my futon into the space where they used to be, along with the rest of our stuff. Although I’d sublet my Park Slope apartment to a friend of my roommate’s and left most of my things there, there was still this notion that maybe, just maybe, my new boyfriend with the van and I might find a new life together out West. I was 27 years old. I had never had a real boyfriend before. For whatever reason (Work-focused? Personal pathology?) Love had avoided me, or I had avoided it. And here it was, smack in the face. When I met my ex, The Macro Chef, he was itching to take that van for a drive, he wanted to travel and seek his fortune. The very first night we slept together, he pulled out The Atlas and showed me everywhere he wanted to go. “I’ve always wanted to drive across the country,” I said wistfully. ”I just never had anyone to do it with.”

A month later, we were on the road. I had never had the luxury of being irresponsible, that is, drifting. And so this was a great indulgence, this cross-country trip. We left Brooklyn on tax day. The sun was setting as we drove outside the city limits, into New Jersey. As with the beginning of any good love affair, we fancied ourselves on the verge of a new world. We were unplugged -- no cell phones, no Google maps, no Wi-Fi – this was 1996! -- And off the proverbial grid, sleeping in the parking lots of rest areas and churches and occasionally with friends whenever we made it to a major city (Chicago, Los Angeles, and so forth). Neither of us had a credit card or a savings account; we had my mother’s Saks Fifth Avenue card, which she’d given me ten years earlier “for emergencies” but it was hardly going to provide us with a hotel room. He drove -- I was “Map Girl” which later morphed into “Research Girl” -- as in, “Go ask that guy how to get on 80. Go, Research Girl, Go!” -- in whatever direction seemed the most appealing, for as long as he wanted, until he got tired; then we’d pull into a town, looking for sustenance. We were improvising. We didn’t even have a proper destination, except, vaguely, “California.” So we followed a haphazard route – New Jersey, to see his mom; Pittsburgh, where he had a job lined up; Chicago where I’d grown up; and then, all the points in between Chicago and Northern New Mexico – which included one very shell-shocked Oklahoma City. We spent a few days in New Mexico where my then-best-friend was graduating nursing school. She’d always been like family to me, and so this visit was my way of “bringing him home” I guess. And then, after the obligatory screaming match with aforementioned best friend, The Macro Chef and I headed north. First we stopped at 10,000 Waves, a Japanese health spa, to hot tub – because what else do you do when you’ve broken up with your best friend again? -- And then, we slept in the Redwoods. No idea where we’d go next. And this is where the real love story began. Somewhere between the redwood trees and the mountains in Southern Utah, it was as if an alchemical process had occurred. As we drove through Silverton, Colorado, I remember us saying that although we had no idea what would become of the form of our love – i.e., whether we’d stay together or not – we could both vow to love one another “forever.” No matter what form it takes, we said, “I promise to love you forever.” And then, we drove around in circles arguing over direction until, finally, a week later, we reached California (Or “Cali” as he liked to call it.)

We were together for three years, apart for a year, and then, back and forth for the next ten. A fourteen-year non-committal on again off again love affair. Now we no longer speak, and I’m engaged to marry someone else, someone who I adore -- but truth be told, that trip and the things we experienced together defined me for a great many years.

Just this past summer, I drove across the United States again, with the man who will be my husband, in his brother’s 1993 Lexus ES300, a car that even the family members who bequeathed it to us would refer to as a gamble. My future sister in law looked at the car the day they gave it to us sighing loudly, as if to say, good luck with that old thing.

But the car did make it and so did we, showing up in Southern California the week that fires ravaged the mountains to the North of us and the governor slashed the education budget prompting one of the administrators at one of the schools my future husband was applying to teach at to exclaim, “It’s the Education Apocalypse in Southern California.” And here I was again -- on the West Coast with another Scorpio male, looking to create a new life.

I’d met my fiancé, Gordon, at a writer’s colony in New Hampshire. We had the typical colony love affair, which turned serious the moment he said, “I am never breaking up with you. I want to be with you forever.” I moved in with him quickly. We talked about having kids. We were both 39, ready for something real.

And the cross-country trip we took was an entirely different endeavor. Whereas in 1996, The Macro Chef and I slept in his van, thirteen years later, Gordon and I put ourselves in a series of mid-to-upscale motels – Hampton Inn, Ramada Inn, Marriott, even one locally owned Bluebird Inn in North Platte, NE. Each night, as we planned our route for the following day, I ‘d write down a couple of potential destinations, so that we could call from the road. We even had Triple A. And the food! We stopped in grocery stores, buying picnic fodder to eat in parks along the way – romantic, very little junk. Even a romantic dinner out in St. George, UT, (where it is nearly impossible to have a glass of wine. But, yes, a romantic dinner nonetheless.)

In 1996, “route” was not part of the vocabulary. The Macro Chef and I valued spontaneity and impulse. But, I learned, you can’t marry a man who can’t agree on a route. Where my ex-boyfriend and I could drive in circles, following our instinct, our curiosity, our whims – once, we even followed “clues” from the songs on the radio – my current partner craves a kind of stability and commitment in decision-making that is quite frankly foreign to me. When we buy groceries, for example, I like to “feel” my way through the store – he needs a list. When we go to a movie, I like to show up and buy a ticket for whatever’s playing; he wants to decide ahead of time. We move in very different ways. And I adore him for that. He is teaching me something that I desperately need – how to stay on the grid! Whereas part of the adventure thirteen years earlier was to “drive into the unknown,” with Gordon, on Road Trip 2009, there were only two unknowns – whether the car would make it, and how far we could drive before fatigue set in. We had structure! A budget! A printout from Google Maps -- in addition to the Atlas and our phones. And a solid destination -- our loft, in the Brewery Arts Complex in Los Angeles, to start the next chapter of our life together. “You and me,” he said. “Forever.”

Because here’s the thing: While improvisation is valuable in many, many ways, I am finding that there are other skills needed when building a shared life with someone, other things I find myself needing now that I’m 40. While my 20’s and 30’s were primarily about letting go – learning the lessons of impermanence whether about boyfriends or apartments – I am currently learning about holding on. This new love, with this new man and his refurbished Lexus (Note to sister-in-law: The car is still running, nearly a year later!) offers a kind of stability that is really, really sexy. It’s not, as some writers insist, a “good enough” love – it’s better. It’s adult. And it’s rocking my world on a daily basis.

9-14-10

2010-09-15T05:12:00.000-07:00

I am seven months pregnant traipsing around my city, the one I used to live in, wearing the Isobel Toledo for Payless platform gillies that I saw in Vogue. It's Fashion Week, so occasionally I find myself bumping into (literally, my belly is big) pairs of fourteen year old Russian models with crazy cheekbones and smoking habits as they kill time in between shows. Yesterday, at about 6:45PM, faced with a subway ride to Bushwick, I bought 20 dollar flats on Fourteenth Street. This is one of the things I love about New York -- the availability of pretty much everything, in the exact moment you want or need it.

"This is my last taste of freedom," I said yesterday. "Never again will I wander around without the knowledge that, somewhere, I am a mother, and I have a child, and he's on my mind."

Of course I have no idea if this is true. But it feels like it will be true. I think of the way moms talk about their kids and safety and the psychic connection that holds the two together, keeping children forever in their mothers minds. I remember my own mother used to say this. About me. And I wonder what it will feel like to be bonded to someone, someone who is at first small and dependent and later able to fly on his own, this way.

But not until December. For now, a little more wondering. A little more wandering.

JUST KIDS redux

2010-08-26T10:37:00.001-07:00

The other day, on my honeymoon, I made a total fool of myself by interuppting Patti Smith over breakfast to tell her how amazing JUST KIDS was.

What I am most ashamed of: the incoherent way I gushed, the fact that I used the word "amazing" about a dozen times in three minutes, and then, the fact that I interuppted her a SECOND time, half an hour later, as she got up to leave, to let her know that "My book is here, in the hotel, in the display case next to yours."

Okay, so who sucks?

What I wish I'd done: leave her alone entirely as we both sat, alone, drinking our coffee(s) and tea(s), writing in our journals (oh yes. we were both writing in our journals...), reading our books (hers: James Joyce, mine: Colum McCann. At least both were Irish), enjoying our quiet mornings.

What I wish I'd have been able to do had I not been able to leave her alone: Just talk to her once.

Some lessons are hard to learn. Like the one about, "just be cool."

But I was really overcome by her presence after having been obsessed with her memoir all summer.

Here is a reprint of the post I did a few months ago about JUST KIDS:

Just Kids, and The Endless Becoming

I just finished reading Patti Smith’s gorgeous memoir, Just Kids. And I found it ridiculous inspirational. I’ve never been a huge Smith fan. I came late to the party re: Horses and Easter. I liked her voice all right, but I was too busy with Joni Mitchell in my teenage years and Madonna, DeeLite, and Nirvana in my twenties. But this book reminds me of what I found when I moved to New York in 1988 and what thrilled and excited me about the New York avant garde.

In 1988, it was still possible to live in lower Manhattan, keep a part-time or freelance job in any one of the arts or service related industries, and be a serious artist or actor or writer. I remember walking into friends’ apartments on Avenue A – before RENT would ruin the entire neighborhood and make it too expensive for any of us to stay – and noting, “It’s small. But magical. And they pay 600 dollars a month.” The bathtub might have been in the kitchen, and there might have been some stairs to climb as you made your way home each night, but artists were doing the work they loved and living a decent life in the process. I remember the names of the downtown theaters – La Mama, Downtown Art Company, Todo Con Nada, Cucaracha, Wow Café, En Garde Arts and the fledgling Elevator Repair Service (one of the few that still remains) as if they were the names of ice cream flavors, delicious and a little sinful. We went to lectures and panel discussions on movement and gender at Movement Research, “Open Movement” and Music-Dance improv at PS122, and then, for poppy seed cake and peppermint tea at the 24-hour Veselka’s, a staple of East Village culinary life.

Whereas Smith and Mapplethorpe moved into the Chelsea Hotel, I moved into any number of available sublets and housesitting gigs as I fashioned a life in the theater. I remember noting that all I really needed to feel at home was a scented candle, some fresh flowers, and a pretty picture to tack onto the wall – I started with posters from the Museum of Modern Art but later chose small postcards of everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Anais Nin to Modigliani’s last muse, Jeanne Hebuterne. (Spirited women, all!) I worked hard, wondered how my dreams would come true and also, what to do with myself in the meantime. I remember thinking that I could see the life I had, I could see the life I wanted, but I could not see how to fill what felt like an enormous gap between the two. I was nineteen in 1988, and impatient for the entire world, aka my life, to begin.

At first, my plan was, “say yes to everything.” Learn by doing. Expand your horizons. By saying yes, I told myself, I was noticing which “yes’s” were dead ends, and which were boomerangs, which would send more yes’s back in my direction. I danced, acted, performed my “solo theater” pieces in bars and clubs and cafes, wrote my first play, and even took my first cross-country train ride. I went to bars, dance clubs and festivals – my favorite was the annual drag celebration “Wigstock” which took place in Tompkins Square Park each August. I kissed boys and girls (I liked boys better). I danced. I drew. And eventually, I started growing up.

In my twenties, I had a friend, a choreographer named Kelly who was six or seven years older than me. One afternoon, at her loft on Tenth Avenue to look at a new dance piece she was working on and give her my “feedback”, she said, “I remember being your age. My head was so big, and my body was so small. So much of your twenties will be spent growing into yourself, letting your body catch up…. “ She meant, I needed to let my physical life catch up to my dreams.” And she was right. The more I let myself become physical – eating healthy foods, doing yoga, going running and dancing, finding a stable place to live and paying my bills on time – aka, living on this Earth and in my body -- the easier it was to close the distance between present and future. And in time, I became the artist I wanted to become. At 40, I can attest to living the life I always dreamed of. And that’s something else about Patti Smith’s book. She had no intention of becoming a rock star. She went to New York to be an artist and a poet. Music found her. Because she trusted herself – her curiosity, her hunger and her creative process. She pursued her path fearlessly, and over time, it was revealed to her, “This is who you are,” My own path was similar in that I moved to New York to act but very quickly realized I wanted to “create theater” that was personal and meaningful and original. I worked as a solo performance artist until playwriting found me. And stuck.

When I look back, I can see, we’re always living ourselves into the person we’ll be, we’re always in a state of becoming, of emerging, of catching up. This process isn’t unique to 19 years olds in the big city – it’s how we grow.

PS: I just downloaded every Patti Smith album I could find.

Eloped

2010-08-20T23:54:00.001-07:00

Saturday, Aug 21:

It is so easy to get married! We decided to do it - found a rabbi who could handle our requests (which were basically like, no frills, no big deal, no premartial counseling, nothing fancy, just like, um ... marry us? please?) -- got a license and rings, and we were on our way! In fact, we planned it in just about a week. I found a pretty white party dress. Gordon bought a new shirt. We ordered a cake from the gorgeous Sharlena Fong of LA's Semi Sweet Bakery (OMG if you haven't tried her artisanal poptarts, you do not know what you are missing! Shar used to be the pastry chef and the Nickel Diner and those bacon donuts are basically her creation. For the wedding, she's doing lemon and strawberry. I can't WAIT.)

Sunday, Aug 22:

So we did it. To our NYC friends and family, I can only say that we wish all of you had been there, and that we will throw a party (apres baby) for you to share in the joy. We grabbed a handful of local friends, went to the synagogue (under construction), were married by a rabbi with a beautiful soul and a grounded appreciation of partnership, and then, we came home and shared food with a few friends. In between the ceremony and the potluck, we spent a few moments alone in Elysian Park, taking each other in, discussing the day. Which was, basically perfect. Although a few people were missed.

And that's about that. On Honeymoon rest of week.

Love,
Brooke

LOS ANGELES PLAYWRITING WORKSHOP

2010-08-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

FALL PLAYWRITING WORKSHOP and CREATIVE PROCESS INTENSIVE

If you know anyone who's looking.... please pass it along!

----------------------------------------

Dear Friends,

I’m going to be teaching a Playwriting Workshop this Fall and a weekend Intensive on Creative Process -- including journaling, collage-books (see: http://www.etsy.com/storque/handmade-life/brooke-berman-a-collector-of-images-9572/), automatic writing, list-making and project-mapping. The Intensive is open to writers and artists in any discipline, and there is a fifty-dollar discount for Playwriting students who take both workshops. In both classes, we will rely heavily on in-class exercises designed to explore character, tone, voice, structure, memory, place and time. In both classes, there will be time made to share work and receive feedback.

The Playwriting Workshop will include in-class writing exercises, sharing of weekly pages, and feedback. Playwriting enrollment is limited to eight students. With small class-size, there should be ample time for each student to receive feedback and develop work.

WHEN:

The Playwriting Workshop will meet on Monday nights beginning Monday, September 20 and running through Monday, October 25, 2010, from 6:30pm to 9pm. Location TBD.

The Intensive dates are TBA -- a weekend in October, meeting in two afternoon sessions (1pm -4pm). There will be one overnight "homework"/composition assignment.

NOTE: I will have to be in San Francisco for a few days in October for both a new play workshop and book event; the dates of this are still undetermined. One of our October Monday nights will be affected, and once class begins, we'll find a make-up date that works for as many people as possible. It is my intention to keep class on track!

WHERE:

Both locations will be finalized in September.
Monday nights will be on the East Side.
The weekend intensive will be at a centrally based location.

COST:

The Playwriting Workshop: $400 for the six weeks with half due upfront and the remainder due at first class.

The Intensive: $150 for the weekend.

$500 for both workshops (a $50 discount).

FOR MORE INFORMATION, or to reserve a space:

Email or calll me at bberman226@gmail.com

Or, 917-586-6744

Informaton about me and my work as a playwright, screenwriter, memoirist and teacher -- including a bio -- is available on my website, www.brookeberman.net

(click on "About").

I'm very excited about seeing all of you and resuming this work. As some of you know, I took a break from teaching while writing my book (NO PLACE LIKE HOME), and am so excited to be back.

Hope to see you this Fall!

All best,

Brooke

PS: For those of you who have taken part in my writing workshops with Anne Garcia Romero, you should know that Anne has taken a remarkable fellowship position at Notre Dame in Indiana, where she will be writing and teaching for the next two years. It's a great opportunity, and they're lucky to have her. We'll miss her lots!

Thoughts On Marriage

2010-08-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

Taking This Man... or thoughts on Marriage, August 2010

I’m going to a dear, dear friend’s wedding today, on a beach in Malibu. I have also been planning an elopement. My own.

This morning, I remembered how, at 25, I whined to my chiropractor (the beautiful Heidi) “I want to get married!” She laughed at me – lovingly, but also at the absurdity of the statement. I had never had a serious boyfriend (or girlfriend). I was not dating. Nor was I particularly interested in dating. This whine, “I want to get married!” was so obviously about something else. And when she laughed, I knew she was right. What did I really yearn for? What was I trying to say with the "I want to get married" lament? Partnership? Intimacy? Commitment? A lover? Intimacy and commitment within the self? Maybe it was the literal convention of”marriage” – but I kind of doubt it. And today I started wondering if maybe this was the moment I realized that my mom’s bad marriages (two) did not have to be my own, that I was free to want ssomething without repeating her mistakes; I could create a different kind of life, and a different kind of marriage. (I also wanted a boyfriend - duh - but that is very different than wanting a "marriage.")

In the throes of her second bad marriage, my mom told me two things: “Always keep your money separate [from your husband’s” and “Make sure you have sex before you’re married so that you understand the difference between passion and real love.” (Good advice, actually. On both counts.) she couldn’t teach me anything about partnership – being a good partner, receiving a good partner, listening, trusting, sharing, compromising, communicating – because she didn’t know how to do any of those things and neither did the two men she married. I don’t know that anyone in that generation learned the componants of making a partnership work – my mom and her friends were taught to be pretty and to be “good” (meaning, submissive) wives and given the false expectation that their marriages and their husbands (and maybe children) would take of them, forever, in return. But this didn’t work out. Most of my mom's friends were divorced and remarried by their early 40's. Very few got what they'd been promised.

And I grew up thinking marriage was a bad deal for everyone.

Subsequently, I pursued other things -- a life in the arts, writing, working, becoming financially solvent and emotionally clear -- before I pursued relationships. To be fair, I’ve had some amazing love affairs. But they were love affairs. They were about being lovers. Not about being partners. And I had one very serious on-again/off-again relationship (described in my book)… which, after twelve or thirteen years, finally ended. Before I met my soon-to-be-husband.

By the time I met Gordon, something had changed. I was ready for love, ready for him, in some way that I’d really never been ready before. And Gordon was nice to me. Really kind and wonderful. When we first started each other, I said to my therapist, “I can’t believe this is love… it doesn’t hurt… it’s just... really, really good. And easy.” Her response? “This is what adult love is.” I had no idea.

When Gordon said, “I want to be with you forever” I was amused. And I said something like, we don't know what "forever" means -- let's just be together now -- but the truth is, I wanted that too. And I’d sort of always known, from the time we started fooling around in his car, that I’d be with him -- if not "forever" then in some really lasting, really powerful way that's sort of more important than the time-based "forever." I knew in this way that you both know and don’t know.... the same way you know someone is cheating or something is over, the same way you know you’re home. In your gut. But saying it out loud terrified me. I had never – not since leaving home at 18 --- had someone to be accountable to, someone who would rely on me and whose choices would be intricately bound up with my own – the “partnership” I’d theorized about for years was finally here. And I had to learn to swim. Fast.

We got engaged on my fortieth birthday, in Big Sur. When we told people, they were mostly thrilled. My grandma cried. Gordon’s sister-in-law gave us the dates for her kids summer camp adventures, so that we could be sure to plan around them. And my friend Penney, a psychic healer that I have been close to for many years (about whom I also write in the book, quite glowingly) gave the one disapproving vote. Penney said, “Marriage always makes the love go backwards. Always.” Which fucking scared me. And we did not pursue a wedding.

Until now…

There are so many things I want to say on the topic of contemporary love and marriage (and no, I haven’t read Liz Gilbert’s Committed…) It may take a few blog entries to do it. While I have been looking for ways to counter Penney’s warnings (not easy to ignore – she believes marriage is at the core of what’s wrong with everything in society.) I do share some of them. I do think many people marry for the wrong reasons (social status, to prove something about themselves, for the attention, for the party, or to “trap” boyfriends or girlfriends into “staying forever.”) But I also believe in making commitments. In my own experience, the commitments I’ve made have always engendered greater freedom, greater creativity. And just as I realized my mother’s choices were not my own, I have also realized Penney’s beliefs (and choices) are not my own. I am free to make up my own mind. I am free to commit to the here and now, to be a part of this world, and to be fully present for this partnership, this man, the baby we’re going to have…. (Did I mention I’m 6 months pregnant?)

I don’t believe marriage is the only way. I don’t believe people have to marry to validate their relationships. And I do believe marriage needs to be legal, for all people, regardless of sexual orientation – it’s not just “between a man and a woman.” But I’m making a choice for myself, a personal choice. And it's starting to feel really good.

More on that … After Yvonne's wedding, this afternoon, in Malibu...

Join me and Other Memoir Legends Monday Night

2010-07-31T15:36:00.000-07:00

Tickets are still available for 826 LA's Memoir Writing panel/event. On a personal note, I have been dying to meet writer Meghan Daum, who will be on said panel. We're both the authors of home-themed memoirs and, from what I can gather, we both live in Echo Park. This will be a great night.

For mnore info:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=141082332569814&ref=ts

A Collector of Images

2010-07-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote this piece for Etsy last month and am so impressed by the comments. I especially love the woman whose college professor was Nikki Giovanni (I read her poetry in high school, she was one of those who turned me on to being a writer, to the process of living through and by language.)

Lemme know what you think!

http://www.etsy.com/storque/handmade-life/brooke-berman-a-collector-of-images-9572/

My Favorite Blog

2010-07-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Um, do you know actress Mary Catherine Garrison not only has her own blog, but also, an Etsy shop for her handmade treasures?

I'm obsessed.

http://networkedblogs.com/p18635686

The IKEA Fourth of July Sale, the Modcloth review, and the dolls

2010-07-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog,

I spent a productive Fourth of July weekend unpacking in our new home. There were three layers to this process, and yes, it felt like an archeological dig. First, the superficial layer - our stuff from the Brewery, the loft in LA where we've been living the last year. These were easy: clothes, files and a few books. Then the fun stuff: our boxes from New York and our furniture. A delight to see my Waldorf-Hysteria armoire again! More delight at unpacking my green dishes and the little Moroccan glasses we used to drink wine out of. And our music collection, which had digitally disappeared when both our hard drives crashed last Fall. Then, after the New York boxes, I hit the really deep stuff as I unpacked the six or seven boxes of my mother's things (and mine, from childhood) that had travelled, after her death, from her storage space to Grandma Ida's storage space to a storage space in Queens, waiting for the moment in which I would have a home again.

In my book, I describe going through my mom's stuff after her death, throwing away countless pictures, letters, the divorce files, the buttons and fabric she'd saved (every time she had a pair of pants shortened, she saved the fabric! And extra buttons from every shirt or coat or suit. And this was a woman who did not sew.) But what I do not describe is how, six months after the initial purge, my grandmother asked me to remove the boxes from her storage space and take them to New York. Gordon and I flew to Detroit, rented an SUV (the U-Haul was too expensive) and packed it full. Whatever couldn't fit in the SUV had to be shed -- again. And we rented a space specifically to house these items. I have not seen them since I packed them up, after her death. There was joy (her blue glass plates and goblets that I loved as a little girl -- now they're mine); there were some tears (all the pictures we kept, the unrelenting way she documented my childhood and her own beauty) and there was dismay (what do I do with childhood dolls, too ratty to give to a friend's daughter but too dear to throw away or even leave at Goodwill...?)

And then, rest.

But rest is hard when your clothes are all over the floor and you have no silverware. So, after buying a bed (We started at Macy's but made our purchases at Sears, where they're just as good and two hundred bucks cheaper).... I hit the IKEA Fourth of July sale. And I gotta say, it was survival of the fittest. Those IKEA shoppers put the Barney's Warehouse sale veterans to shame. After days of sifting through the past, the sheer focus it took to make it through the ground floor of IKEA without getting trampled brought me back to my senses and grounded me. Who knew shopping could be so clarifying a process?

How was your Fourth of July?

Love,
Brooke

Moving Day. Again.

2010-07-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Today I am meeting with an LA Times reporter, who'll photograph the Brewery loft (documented here, earlier) and a couple other places I've lived in LA (there are roughly four other abodes, two of which were month-long housesitting gigs in Very Nice Places, and none of which were included in NO PLACE LIKE HOME) and then.... believe it or not.... I'm moving. Tonight. After publicizing the book all month, it feels ridiculous to stand in line at the PO to change my address (they won't take the application online as the PO computer tells me the Brewery, where I live, is "an industrial address" and thus, I can't actually live here. Note to computer: I do.) not to mention changing address with banks, insurance company, Netflix and anyone else I can think of. It feels like a publicity stunt. I assure you it is not.

Our downstairs "studio" space -- the joy of loft-living, a big open space for rehearsals/writing groups/parties etc. -- is literally stacked with boxes. And I've made daily trips to Goodwill http://www.goodwill.org/ and Out of the Closet http://www.outofthecloset.org/ giving up the things I no longer need or wear. One thing I love about moving -- it's the chance to really clean house, literally and figuratively, to lighten one's load!

In roughly two hours, G and I get the keys to our new place and then...
the next chapter begins.

I'll keep you posted.

bb

Map Your Move!

2010-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was on the Brian Lehrer Show! A total thrill. Although, since I'm back in LA, I had to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn in order to drive myself to a house with a landline (Thank you, Emerys!!!) so that I could be ready for Brian at 7:40 PST (10:40 to all you New Yorkers). But worth it.

The show is doing a project called "Map Your Moves" -- I'm about to go onto their site and map mine right now.

And here is the link to the show:

http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2010/jun/29/no-place-home/

Home Is Where The Art Is

2010-06-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

I first met the lovely and wickedly talented Jill Dearman because she was dating a friend. Or rather, a friend I'd fallen out of touch with. I think I ran into them once, and if memory serves me correctly, Jill said, "I like that girl. Let's invite her to your birthday party." And after that, no one was out of touch with anyone. And I've always credited Jill's big heart for bringing an old friend back and bringing a new one (her!) into my life.

This is her Barnes and Noble blog. In which (on which? upon which?) she was kind enough to feature my memoir, which came out this week. And which I still can't believe exists.

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unabashedly-Bookish-The-BN/Home-is-Where-the-Art-Is/ba-p/544076

Spirited Woman

2010-06-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

Hello! Today I guest blog on Spirited Woman:

http://www.thespiritedwoman.com/

The Idea Lab, JUNE 10

2010-06-05T07:43:00.001-07:00

If you are in NYC, please join me on Thursday night, June 10, as the Play Company founder and artistic director Kate Loewald and I talk about creative process, sourcebooks and the play-to-prose situation as part of their IDEA LAB series. Followed by the SEASON WRAP PARTY on

THURSDAY, JUNE 10 at 7PM
THE HURON CLUB
15 VANDAM STREET
B/W 6TH AVE & VARICK
(The Cabaret downstairs at The Soho Playhouse)

More info at: www.playco.org

Believe it or not....

2010-05-24T09:48:00.001-07:00

I'm moving again. July 1. Echo Park. We sign the lease tomorrow.

Enter the contest, Chicagoans, win a pair of Tix!

2010-05-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

http://searchchicago.suntimes.com/homes/2296442,apartmentquest20.article

Moving Pix

2010-05-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

I just sent a comment into this website -- because, yes dear reader, Gordon and I have been looking at apartments in Los Angeles. Although we love the Brewery, and we love our roommate Rick, it's time to be on our own.

Do you think they'll take me pictures/comment?

http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/05/19/photo-roundup-your-favorite-memory-at-your-apartment/

Just Kids

2010-05-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Patti Smith’s gorgeous memoir, Just Kids. And I found it ridiculous inspirational. I’ve never been a huge Smith fan. I came late to the party re: Horses and Easter. I liked her all right, but I was too busy with Joni Mitchell in my teenage years and Madonna, DeeLite, and Nirvana in my twenties. But this book reminds me of what I found when I moved to New York in 1988 and what thrilled and excited me about the New York avant garde.

In 1988, it was still possible to live in lower Manhattan, keep a part-time or freelance job in any one of the arts or service related industries, and be a serious artist or actor or writer. I remember walking into friends’ apartments on Avenue A – before RENT would ruin the entire neighborhood and make it too expensive for any of us to stay – and noting, “It’s small. But magical. And they pay 600 dollars a month.” The bathtub might have been in the kitchen, and there might have been some stairs to climb as you made your way home each night, but artists were doing the work they loved and living a decent life in the process. I remember the names of the downtown theaters – La Mama, Downtown Art Company, Todo Con Nada, Cucaracha, Wow Café, En Garde Arts and the fledgling Elevator Repair Service (one of the few that still remains) as if they were the names of ice cream flavors, delicious and a little sinful. We went to lectures and panel discussions on movement and gender at Movement Research, “Open Movement” and Music-Dance improv at PS122, and then, for poppy seed cake and peppermint tea at the 24-hour Veselka’s, a staple of East Village culinary life.

Whereas Smith and Mapplethorpe moved into the Chelsea Hotel, I moved into any number of available sublets and housesitting gigs as I fashioned a life in the theater. I remember noting that all I really needed to feel at home was a scented candle, some fresh flowers, and a pretty picture to tack onto the wall – I started with posters from the Museum of Modern Art but later chose small postcards of everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Anais Nin to Modigliani’s last muse, Jeanne Hebuterne. I worked hard, wondered how my dreams would come true and also, what to do with myself in the meantime. I remember thinking that I could see the life I had, I could see the life I wanted, but I could not see how to fill what felt like an enormous gap between the two. I was nineteen in 1988, and impatient for the entire world, aka my life, to begin.

At first, my plan was, “say yes to everything.” Learn by doing. Expand your horizons. By saying yes, I told myself, I was noticing which “yes’s” were dead ends, and which were boomerangs, which would send more yes’s back in my direction. I danced, acted, performed my “solo theater” pieces in bars and clubs and cafes, wrote my first play, and even took my first cross-country train ride. I went to bars, dance clubs and festivals – my favorite was the annual drag celebration “Wigstock” which took place in Tompkins Square Park each August. I kissed boys and girls (I liked boys better). I danced. I drew. And eventually, I started growing up.

In my twenties, I had a friend, a choreographer named Kelly who was six or seven years older than me. One afternoon, at her loft on Tenth Avenue to look at a new dance piece she was working on and give her my “feedback”, she said, “I remember being your age. My head was so big, and my body was so small. So much of your twenties will be spent growing into yourself, letting your body catch up…. “ She meant, I needed to let my physical life catch up to my dreams.” And she was right. The more I let myself become physical – eating healthy foods, doing yoga, going running and dancing, finding a stable place to live and paying my bills on time – aka, living on this Earth and in my body -- the easier it was to close the distance between present and future. And in time, I became the artist I wanted to become. At 40, I can attest to living the life I always dreamed of. And that’s something else about Patti Smith’s book. She had no intention of becoming a rock star. She went to New York to be an artist and a poet. Music found her. Because she trusted herself – her curiosity, her hunger and her creative process. She pursued her path fearlessly, and over time, it was revealed to her, “This is who you are,” My own path was similar in that I moved to New York to act but very quickly realized I wanted to “create theater” that was personal and meaningful and original. I worked as a solo performance artist until playwriting found me. And stuck.

When I look back, I can see, we’re always living ourselves into the person we’ll be, we’re always in a state of becoming, of emerging, of catching up. This process isn’t unique to 19 years olds in the big city – it’s how we grow.

PS: I just downloaded every Patti Smith album I could find. AND I LOVE HER.

A Prodigal Daughter of Detroit

2010-05-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

I left Detroit in 1979 when my mother married her second husband. He had a house in Libertyville, Illinois, an area that my mother and I would quickly come to despise (it is the only place in which I have encountered Anti-Semitism or was made to feel different because I was Jewish. Often, I should mention, this was from friends and relations of my stepfather and not the town at large, but they are, in my memories, merged.) After Libertyville, we moved to Northbrook, an area made famous by John Hughes, whose films were meant to take place (mostly) there and whose mother was still a math teacher at our high school, Glenbrook North. After I went to college, my mom moved back to Detroit. But it is only lately, a few years after her death, that I am feeling like a Detroiter. First, because I just read Patti Smith's memoir and was amazed to learn that she lived there in the 80's, during just the years we were in the Chicago suburbs. And now, because of this wonderful piece which contextualizes my book by providing a little history about my Detroit mom.

http://detnews.com/article/20100428/OPINION03/4280344/Playwright-s-journey--home-

Cup of Jo

2010-04-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

I discovered this blog today, and I'm obsessed. Does anyone know this girl?

http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/

Too Shy To Stop

2010-04-16T11:53:00.001-07:00

I did this interview so long ago that I'd completely forgotten about it until Laryssa reposted it today. I love that photograph on her blog -- do you think Gordon and I can find a little cottage with a sun room like that?

xo.

http://www.tooshytostop.com/2010/04/14/interview-with-playwright-brooke-berman/

ELLE.COM's Summer Reading Roundup!

2010-04-09T08:53:00.001-07:00

We made the Top Ten!

http://www.elle.com/Pop-Culture/Movies-TV-Music-Books/Top-10-Summer-Books-for-2010/Book-Reviews-See-ELLE-s-suggestions-for-summer-reading

Where You Can Hear This Book Aloud:

2010-02-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

I love readings. Love.

If you're in New York, LA, or Chicago, come hear excerpts from my book, No Place Like Home, and get the damn thing signed and stay for informal conversation and mingling.

New York City: Mc Nally Jackson books, June 16.
http://mcnallyjackson.com/

Chicago: Borders Bookstore, TBD.
http://www.borders.com/online/store/Home

Los Angeles: Book Soup, June 22.
http://www.booksoup.com/

A play about a bar being read in an actual bar!

2010-02-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

If you're in LA on Sunday February 21, come here my play OUT OF THE WATER at the Mandrake Bar! FREE. 6pm.

http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=c0f620a01acbabb52ac3c8586&id=0c867d4fd0

No Place Like Home

2010-02-06T11:23:00.000-08:00

I just saw my galley for the first time yesterday. I used to see galleys all the time when I worked at Paper and was allowed to rifle through discarded review copies. But this was different, this one had my name on it. And a book, I am learning, brings a whole series of thrills that are totally different than the thrill of writing a play. A play is ephemeral and communal. This book is an object, a thing. And it keeps existing, in its "thingness". Unlike a play which will close and become a memory and maybe, ideally, happen again with new people and new design concepts and new collective associations. The book is just always going to be what it is...

Visit me on Goodreads! And visit my new author's page on Amazon.

Love from rainy LA, which looks much more like London than it's supposed to,

b

Charming cottage for rent

2010-02-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

Found accidentally (I guess that's why they call it "viral") on Craigs List. This reminds me of a great many of the apartments I looked at in New York City over my 22 years of tenancy.

See book for more.
In the meantime, watch this crazy video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1JbW5dAg0E

Splitting the Bills

2010-01-27T08:59:00.001-08:00

Shit. This would have saved me so much agony all those roommate years:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/12670a432d243294

LearnVest is advocating some neato bill-splitting application to help roommates work out their monthly bill-paying. In the past, with roommates, I've done everything from split the bills inequally ("You pay more, and I'll clean." I was not one cleaning.) to scheduling bill-paying sessions at luxurious cafes so that we'd be soothed and fed while writing checks.

Any stories on the difficulties (or pleasures) of sharing?

Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project

2010-01-20T10:12:00.001-08:00

I’ve just started reading Gretchen Rubin’s THE HAPPINESS PROJECT – and you should too – and I’m struck by something in the first few pages. Gretchen describes the context for writing her book, the growing feeling of “Is this it?” that plagues so many people in their 40’s who seem to have “landed” – she references the Talking Heads song in which David Byrne exclaims “This is not my beautiful house!”

I don’t relate.

Because here’s the thing. Some of us, many of us, have not yet achieved the kind of material comfort that would enable us to ask the question, Is this it? My friends who, like me, live and work in the American theater ask other questions. How can I work harder? How can I get my work seen by a greater audience? How can I afford that down payment? We are always reaching for more.

Last summer I went to a friend’s dinner party. The other women, all my age, were courageously facing up to the facts that their lives had changed – their kids were now in school, their husbands businesses were threatened by the economic downturn, and they were firmly in their 40’s wondering, now what? And, will I have to go back to work? I, on the other hand, am childless and spent my 30’s working. At 40, I’m engaged to be married for the first time and finally, finally facing a life in which I can pay for some very basic things that have eluded me for years – health insurance, a decent and stable living situation, an occasional shopping trip, a vacation (Gordon and I took our first, last year, to Big Sur!) These women and I stared at one another like animals in a zoo; only it was hard to tell who were the exotic tigers and who were the patrons, watching.

I look forward to reading more of Rubin’s book. And to pursuing my own happiness project. But right now, I wonder about the relationship between someone’s unhappiness and the feeling of being “stuck” or of having “landed” somewhere with finality. For instance, I don’t feel grown-up yet. At 40! Do you?

And are you happy?
And if not, what is your life missing?

And how can you get it?

"Did you sublet an apartment in 2002?"

2010-01-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

Last week, I took a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah, to workshop my play Out of the Water. The play had been discovered by the resident literary manager/director of the New Play Initiative at The Pioneer Theater. She'd found the play, randomly, reading scripts at New Dramatists. And she called or emailed me last summer as Gordon and I were driving across the US.

"That's so funny," I remember saying, "Because we're driving through Utah right now!" (Of course we were in Southern Utah, St. George, and nowhere near Salt Lake, but that's a New Yorker's perspective on distance.)

Less than 6 months later, I get off a plane in Salt Lake and the aforementioned literary manager, the lovely and charming Elizabeth, meets me at the airport. She shows me the housing, takes me to dinner, we discuss the play over a relatively easy to obtain glass of Sauvignon Blanc (isn't that supposed to be really hard to get in UT?) and then it hits me, why she looks so damn familiar.

"Did you sublet an apartment in 2002?"

"Why yes," she says, explaining that she was going to Minneapolis (or Paris, France. I'm not entirely sure. I know French theater was involved.)

And I remember the evening I hauled ass to West 56th, around 9th or 10th Avenue, to look at her very tiny studio. And by very tiny, I mean VERY tiny. It was 900 dollars a month, which felt like a lot of money to me at the time. And I remember leaving in a hurry because my friend Jorge was taking me to see The Magnetic Fields and their 69 Love Songs at Lincoln Center. Later that night, I remember saying to Jorge, "I don't think I can live there, but I really wish I could be friends with that girl" and then, I didn't take the place. I wanted to. I tried to make the money work out. In the end, I think she sublet it to a friend. And here we were, seven years later, at a restaurant with a liquor license in Salt Lake City, working together.

Perfect.

brookeberman.net

2010-01-15T07:33:00.001-08:00

I have launched my first website! Designed by the very talented Ethan Crenson. Let me know what you think.

www.brookeberman.net

"Manhattan is the New Brooklyn"

2009-03-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/realestate/keymagazine/15keyHSbrooklyn-t.html

If Manhattan is the new Brooklyn, I say the East Side of LA is the new East Village. Or at least, West Chelsea.

The Brewery

2009-03-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

In LA, we live here:

http://www.thebrewery.net/

An artists colony off Main Street, on the Eastern edge of downtown. It's perfect for a transplanted New Yorker (and her Queens-loving fiancee); we can feel URBAN (which I'm told, in Industry-speak means "Black") while still enjoying the perks of Southern California, which means, we sit outside at night, in the makeshift backyard, listening to our neighbor's running water sculpture and watching the moon and stars (and the occassional feral cat).

Speaking of feral cats, we have a colony of THAT too. They roam the Brewery, day and night. We've recently befriended two. Gordon calls them "Meowstein and Boostein, Feral Feline Attorneys". Or LLC. They show up at night, when he's smoking his cheap cigars. During the day, they sleep on the picnic table in back -- or pick fights. As all good feral cats too. We conjecture about adoption. But we're heading back to LIC come May, so... why?

LACityMom

2008-12-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

check out my sweet friend lee rose emery and her mom-centric tips -

http://lacitymom.wordpress.com/

A Day At Home

2008-11-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

Lately, when people ask me, "Do you have a place to live?" ... it's like, what? I think they think they're being cute. I think they think they saw "Hunting and Gathering" and read the Times article, or maybe the Time Out piece, and maybe even they think that my list of apartments represents some kind of pathology. I don't know. But give it up, People. The joke is tired.

Today, I am taking a day off from the world, staying at home, in one of my homes, writing. And right now, as I type this, laptop on lap, back against pillows, in the bed with the striped bottom sheet I only half approve of and the nice pillowcases that I fully do, I think, How did I get here?

Here is Long Island City. Which you can read about in G's favorite blog: http://www.liqcity.com/

and "here" is the home I share with the man I have begun to share my life with. And it's really different than anything I've done before. Wow.

And soon we head West.

more election firsts

2008-11-04T01:30:00.000-08:00

"It's the first time my father and I will vote the same way...Obama."

"...time I've ever felt passionate enough about a candidate to actively campaign ... I went to PA a couple of weeks ago to [make calls as part of a] phone bank and canvas, and have been phone-banking from home ever since."

and i'll add, personally, it's the first time that i've been so aware of wanting to watch the election returns with other people -- in a room full of 'em.

it's the middle of the night, i'm jet-lagged, and can't wait to vote.

The first election in which ....

2008-10-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed?

Change has already taken hold. I don't know about you, but I see it everywhere. My friends and colleagues - from New York City to Ypsilanti, Michigan, to LA - are more engaged, activated. They're are hosting fundraising parties, volunteering at phone banks on the weekends, flying themselves to Florida (thank you, Sarah Silverman) to drive older voters to the early voting sites (SIDEBAR: Ida Lucas in Farmington Hills, MI, my stellar 89 year old oft-mentioned grandmother is adamantly driving herself. And offering rides to neighbors in her building). They're going to Ohio. They're volunteering in swing states, driving themselves to Pennsylvania, Nevada... In fact, we are doing just what a participatory democracy asks that we do - take ownership of the process.

I started collecting "election first" testimonials last week. Here are a few of the responses, anonymously posted, along with my intitial shout-out:

> Dear Friends,
>
> This is not be the first election for many of us. But I keep hearing
> about "firsts."
>
> This is the first election in which I donated money to a candidate.
> Friends of mine are, for the first time, helping out at phone banks.
> Others are, again for the first time, registering voters or canvassing
> or working for the local campaign office in states like Michigan and
> Ohio. There is more direct involvement in this election than I have
> seen, maybe ever. It's as if we feel that it's ours.
>
> So I'm curious: in a sentence or two, can you tell me if this election
> represents a first for you in any way?
>
> I'm going to compile, edit, and potentially publish peoples's responses.
>

First Election:

“This is the first election where I put my money where my mouth is and consistently contributed… contributing more than I ever had to any campaign.
Also… the first election where my wife and myself along with a small group of others threw a fundraiser for a candidate (Obama) raising over $75,000 nearly tripling our goal of $35,000. This was in the month of September when Obama raised approximately a record $75,000,000. We were very proud that 1% was raised by our small group (300) of extended friends and family…”

“… the first in which I will have canvassed. The first in which I've bought not one, but two t-shirts with the candidate's name and image. First in which I've bought a bumper sticker. First in which I've felt that the candidate has articulated not only my concerns, but something approximating my sense of history and my sense of why this country matters.”

“This is the first election in which I would be willing to kiss the candidate
I'm voting for.

This is the first election in which this son of an immigrant gets to vote
for the son of an immigrant.

This is the first election in which my candidate looks like he could be on
my speed dial and at my dinner parties. My candidate looks like he's read
some of the same books I've read. Listens to some of the same songs I listen
to. Knows how to spell the word poetry.

This is the first U.S. election that my friends in Mexico City, Havana and
Caracas are following this closely.

This is the first election in which the Democratic Nominee has been called a
socialist. He's not, but I still like hearing the word.

This is the first election in which I can feel my politics growing to
accommodate what is happening in the actual world, instead of trying to
force the real world to match my politics.

This is the first election in which the left has shown they're practical,
and the right has proven their delusional.”

“… this election represents the first time the Chicagoan and the American in me is conflicted.”

“This is the first election in which the thought of the candidate… makes me cry real tears… it's the first election (and this will be my 9th
presidential vote) that I have the deep belief that the results both
signal future change and bespeak deep societal past change. The image
of a black man speaking to thousands and moving me to tears of hope and
determination is seared into my earliest consciousness. That man has
been dead since I was 11, but he's still my personal vision of heroism
and righteousness. Obama is a different man altogether, but his talent
and vision as a candidate has proved profound. To elect him president
would be the first great thing the nation's electorate has done in all
the decades I've been paying attention.

Also, this is the first election in which my son (the 13-year-old one)
guided me to my choice. Guthrie picked Obama first, when I was still
deciding between him and Hilary in the primaries. That a kid who has
grown up cynical (and for good reason) about politics and politicians,
with his own disdain for the wretched Bush-ists, could immediately know
the way toward a more hopeful future is some kind of proof of the impact
of Obama's promise.

It's the second time I've raised money for a candidate, but the first
time I've helped raise thousands (four) and the first time I've done it
by grilling hamburgers and hotdogs from Costco….And… the first election that I vote for someone younger than I am.”

"I have never physically gone out there and knocked on doors before. For anything, really."

“"It means the validity of my marriage, which means this election holds more importance to me than any before this time…."

"I've never given money to a campaign before."

“This is the first time I've actually looked forward to and watched the presidential debates.”

“I'm sober I watched the debates intently I will be participating in the phone banks.”

“Its the first time I've had sex dreams about a presidential candidate.”

"First time I've volunteered for a campaign since I went with my mother to the local McGovern headquarters."

“I have donated and canvassed in previous campaigns, but this is the first time I will essentially be voting FOR someone, and not against someone in order to simply keep us from going in a direction I don't agree with…I am INSPIRED (for the first time!) by the direction [Obama’s] administration will take us… the Obama presidency will be such a tremendous breakthrough for the entire world.”

“It's the first time that I've had a kid (never mind 2!) during an election
-- and the kid that is able to speak is all about 'OBAMA'!

This election has brought along the following firsts for me:
1. I voted in a primary and learned that TX has a caucus, AND i stayed for the caucus although no one knew what was going on ...
2. i donated to a campaign
3. i put a bumper sticker on my car (dangerous to do in Dallas TX which is still staunch bush country)
4. i've talked politics at work”

“…I'd never even watched MSNBC before let alone been obsessed (NPR non-stop too, but that's not a first.) also I've never had the urge to scream from rooftops and graffiti my body FOR someone not just against Bush…”

"I ever really cared about any election- First time I believe change is possible: that the candidate will shake up the Whitehouse --I have total faith."

“The real first will be this election's psychic blow to the legacy of slavery”

"The first time I voted for a Democrat and it's not the lesser of two evils, but the better of two heroes."

“This is the first election in which I feel like the future of at least the country hangs in the balance… Conversely it's the first time I've felt hopeful that an election could symbolize the beginning of a shift in tone and direction for the country.”

“…looking at my candidate of choice has made me cry.”

"This is the most motivated I have felt about an election in my adult life -- I feel such hope! “

“[after researching Obama’s platform, watching the youTube clips]… the first time that I’ve felt directly communicated with by a politician who seemed to be of a different time, and yet the same time… I’ve felt very blessed … to be alive and have the opportunity to vote for a person like this one.”

“This is the first time I've been passionate about a presidential candidate since JFK -- and I was too young to vote then.”

“It is my first time voting ever!!!”

"It's the first time I've believed again."

The City of Angels

2008-08-18T18:11:00.001-07:00

I've been in LA for a month. And I fucking love it. I do. Unapologetically. I love the mountains, the big pink bouganvilla flowers, Pinkberry culture, the radio stations, the Hollywood farmers market, my morning ritual (jacket) of yoga and Cafe Tropicale; it's all good.

But I have some karma with this town. For one thing, my first full length play, before I even thought of myself as a real playwright, is about a performance artist (based on me in the 90's) and Jesus Christ meeting in LA (he wants to do The River Phoenix story). The play is based on my first trip here. Pre "Industry'. Visiting friends. I came 1992 with The Third Wave, where I registered voters in South Central, 1994 to visit Phil and take in Weho, 1996 on my cross-country road trip with my ex the vegan chef (we stayed in Brentwood at my mom's friends place, near the OJ drama); then not again until 2000 (a reading at ASK, a crush on an actor, a drive up the coast; 2004 to see if Aaron and I would get back together (we didn't), 2005 for work, and then, OFTEN. Regularly. 2005 was the trip where I first started thinking, OH. I could live there.

Four or five major works have come out of my LA/NY travels, most notably the screnplay MAJOR MINOR DETAILS, currently making its way through the world.

I should say here, I love New York. Differently. It is a different love. With history. And I don't see myself living La Vida Bicoastal indefinitely - (SEE: Trajal Harrell's "You live in LANY") - but here we are, and this is what is happening today. And attempts to plan beyond today keep falling apart.

LA August.
NYC September.
LA again October.
NYC again November. And so on.....

And the play, WONDERLAND, about me and JC gets done at Juilliard the first week in Sept. Fourth year acting students. New Play Festival. Directed by the stellar Evan Cabnet.

Here is an excerpt:

MIA, 20-something, addresses a camera. Or an audience. Or both. It is the taping of her show. A sitcom. Multi-camera. The year is 1995. Grunge is everywhere.

MIA
Thanks for joining me. I'm Mia of "My Synchronistic Life", and I'm so glad we'll have this time together. Just to have a laugh or sing a song. Actually, I don't sing. Lets talk instead. Sit-com life is proving challenging. I am starting to think in half-hour episodes and my dreams are taking commercial breaks. I feel trapped in the show. I sit in this loft all the time with my new haircut saying witty things that a group of people my age have written for me to say. Now, this part is pathological I know, but, I can't tell the difference between when we're on the show and when we're in my life. And, I think the Ramons are jumping ship. I think XL promised them a spin-off. He keeps talking about this idea he has called “Reality TV”. So I guess the real question is, now what? I mean, now what?

enter JESUS

JESUS
Why do I keep turning up in your fantasy life? Are you sure you're not calling me?

MIA
I don’t know. Who are you?

JESUS
I’m Jesus Christ.

MIA
Oh, yeah, right. And I’m Madonna.

JESUS
No, really. I am. I came to check out L.A. before the world falls apart. I think I'm going to be famous.

MIA
But you’re already famous.

JESUS
Fame in America in the 90’s is a really different thing.

MIA:
What do you mean"before the world falls apart"?

JESUS:
Well, you know that this much waste can't last, don't you? We're living through a crucial age – these are the days before the whole thing shifts again, before something new is born. Isn't that why you're here?

(She does not answer)

Hang in there.

(And He disappears...)

MIA
Hang in where!?

A PERFECT COUPLE

2008-05-31T12:22:00.000-07:00

starts previewing June 9 at the DR2 and opens June 19, running through July 19.

see wetweb.org for more info.

xo/bb

everyone is on a first name basis

2008-03-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

at the macdowell colony in new hampshire.

something i love: i don't know anyone's last name. it's like AA, but with wine at dinner. a kind of holy democracy to the place. no hierarchy. everyone's "good" enough to be here, so you just investigate each other, talk about work, assuming the best.

we live in LANY

2008-03-03T05:43:00.000-08:00

1. i've been reading other people's blogs on my play.

2. last night. super amazing catch up with T. i told him my plan for the rest of 08, including LA, and he said, "that sounds like a good plan, honey. i'm glad you're going to be with rick..." we talked about "the move" and he started laughing. he said, "what you don't get, brooke is that you don't live in New York or LA - you live in LANY. LA/NY. that's where you live. you'll go back and forth." t, who travels frequently to europe for his work, and georgia for his family, lives in NYEUGA.

Time for Tarot

2008-02-19T04:57:00.000-08:00

I just had a great Tarot and astrology reading from Brad Kronen, and I can't recommend him highly enough. Readers are tricky because they have to be able to SEE, psychically, and receive the insights but also, to communicate those insights in a way that empower you, the Read-ee, to make clear choices and to grow The cards tell a story about where things are going, but this story includes your creative power -- Brad, like most good readers, believes in human agency. He's really good at connecting the dots, seeing the story inside the story. I think he's great. Tell him I sent you!

Here's the info:

Brad Kronen
fingerofdestiny.com
www.myspace.com/bradkronen
213-248-5541

overheard at the Prince St. Post Office

2008-01-16T20:04:00.001-08:00

Postal Clerk: (requisite line about.. blah, blah, hazardous, perishible...)

Aging Tranny in Fur: Darling, the only thing perishible is me.

the jesus lady on the subway

2008-01-10T14:00:00.000-08:00

A cab ride to Inwood, which you call “North Manhattan” and your breath in my ear as I’m sitting on your lap and always, the question, are you the one? Are you?

And the light in the morning from someone else’s bed, the offer of grapefruit juice and the ritual of a coffee for the subway ride home. it’s my favorite part. The coffee in the morning, the combination of adventures and trashiness, the subway ride home, feeling satisfied, tired, and slightly excited, still, remembering the night before. And the A train is good, the ride just long enough to drink my extra large hazelnut from dunkin donuts and consider the day ahead.

The Jesus Lady wears electric blue tights. She says the messiah's coming. and i've been hearing that a lot. jodee said the very same thing in new jersey outside the raspberry cafe, which is in asbury park, and i'd make a movie there about an old lady who lives at the hotel chopin, a real building on a real seashore. jodee said the return of the messiah will be preceded by a period where we learn in reverse fashion, where children teach their parents what is good rather than vice versa. i think her rabbi told her that. the jesus lady on the subway says 'repent now. no one can do it for you.' she passes out her flyers to everyone except me.

"take anything else"

2007-12-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

the best story I heard yesterday:

from my childhood friend Decky Alexander:

Apparantly, when we were 13, my mom had an estate sale at my stepfather's house (we were moving out) and Decky and I were enlisted to work, and my mom said to her, "Take anything you want from the house" and Decky asked if she could have the bidet.
And my mom said, "I don't think you have the right kind of plumbing.
But take anything else."

Marilyn Lucas Berman Kovacs Habsburg Berman

2007-12-21T05:37:00.000-08:00

One day when I was 12, my mother and I were riding an escalator at Neiman Marcus, near the cookies, and she turned to me and said, “If I ever wrote a book about my life, I’d call it I Was Normal for a Year and Didn’t Like It. It would be a very good book.”

Now I don’t remember the year Marilyn tried to be normal – maybe that was before I was born – but one of the things I loved most about her was that she wasn't fooling anyone. She was never normal. She was her own kind of being – like no one else -- funny and warm and sexy and weird. And she LOVED to laugh.

My mother could throw the most amazing tantrums – up til the week she died.
If Marilyn didn’t want something to happen, it wouldn’t happen. When I was a little girl, she’d say things – to people in restaurants, in stores, hotels – like, “You have no idea who I am. I could be Cary Grant’s sister for all you know” and then she’d yell, and then, miraculously, they would do what she wanted. And rarely would anyone ever hold it against her – because once she got her way, Marilyn became soft and yummy and fabulous all over again. She had a way of making people feel special – so long as they did what she wanted them to.

I’ve written about my mom a lot. She shows up in all of my plays in some form or other, but there is one play in particular that is overtly about – and dedicated to – her. It’s called SAM AND LUCY. In the play, Lucy, a 28 year old girl, calls up her mother’s ex-lover, a married man she’s heard about for years – and asks him to lunch. Over a series of lunches they become friends and talk about her mother. Lucy’s mother has died, but no one, including the audience, knows this until very very late in the play. Her mother, MADALYN (good fake name, huh?) is a character who appears in the play and talks about romantic love in all of its forms. –

In this scene, over lunch, Lucy asks Sam, Was my mom good to love? And Sam says:

sam
Oh. Yes. Yes. Yes. Your mom was good to love… She was good. Disturbed. Moody. Needy. Real. Affectionate. Warm. Strange sometimes. Really very strange. But really really very good. Being in love with your mom, It was like that book, the little prince, that French book everyone loves, my wife, ex-wife -- she just loves that goddamn French book. And your mom was like that -- like the part where the prince talks about the rose he loves who has thorns. your mom had thorns. but she was very good to love….

Marilyn - like the fictional Madalyn - had thorns. But she was very good to love. Delicious and yummy. She was a late night phone-call early morning French toast afternoon at the movies giggling kind of love. She was loyal and honest and she’d stay in the room to have the fight instead of pretending it wasn’t happening. She was amazing.

She taught me about music and art and men. She told me to do whatever I wanted sexually so long as I separated my laundry and made sure to keep my money separate. She turned to me in the car one day and said, “Listen, I”ve been married to a Jew and a non-Jew, and I’m gonna tell you, the Jew made a better husband, I’m just saying.” But that wasn’t all she had to teach. She taught me about music - Bach and Mozart and Bobby Short. She took me to the theater and to movies and museums – we’d walk right up to a big Helen Frankenthaler abstract painting and Marilyn would say, “God I love that. That just FEELS good.” For Marilyn., the measure of good art was pleasure. It felt good.

My friends who met her still talk about their one day with Marilyn, they talk about her beautiful clothes or the way she cooked for them (saffron chicken) or took them out, the way she was always so interested in making friends with my friends. And she had flair. I wear her clothes sometimes and I think, Thanks, Mom. You had taste. My Mama had taste.

My cousin Nechama (who used to be Carol before she was religious) said, “it took me many many years – and living in other countries – before I realized your mother wasn’t a movie star. I just thought, objectively, Marilyn was a movie star. She looked like a movie star. People treated her like a movie star. I was shocked to find out she wasn’t.” When my mom saw the movie Postcards from the Edge – about the real life relationship between Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, Marilyn called me up at college and said, “Oh My God I am so sorry” - appareantly there were similiarities. But mostly what I remember when I think of her was what a cool woman she was - her beauty had to do with her spirit. It was bold. She liked red. She liked to call a spade a spade. She cracked inappropriate jokes and called people on their shit. And she always made sure everyone knew that they were loved.

Towards the end of the play, Lucy finally becomes strong enough to let her mother go. She says to Madalyn, who’s been hanging around as a ghost, talking about all of her love stories, “you’ll have to go soon.” It is at this moment that the audience realizes Maddy is dead too. Lucy says, “You’ll have to go soon,” and Madalyn says, “Really?”

And Lucy says, I think so.

The rest of the scene goes:

MADELYN
You're going to miss me.

LUCY
I know.

MADELYN
You don't know. Not really. But you will. But, also, you will enjoy missing me.

LUCY
You think?

MADELYN
I do. It will be delicious.

LUCY
I wanted to say goodbye in person.

MADDY
I know. Goodbye. In person.

LUCY
Goodbye. In person.

And Madalyn kisses her … and goes.

Marilyn isn’t going anywhere. But today, we say goodbye. In person.

The Jesus Year

2007-12-12T11:41:00.000-08:00

been spending the last 2 weeks in what Sheila Callaghan calls "the Playwrights Churh", aka New Dramatists, where I also happen to be staying, as in, a room in the tower, workshopping a new play.

THE JESUS YEAR will have a small, informal reading at ND on Friday the 14th at 3pm.

This is a new speech from the play:

Max on Reed’s couch, lit by the glow from a flat screen TV.

MAX
Reed.
Buddy.
Dude.
It’s me.
Max.
Live from your apartment.
Have you been getting my messages about the TV?

I don’t want to be a pain or anything but I have no idea how to work the damn thing. There are three remote controls and at 11 every night the whole thing gets taken over by TIVO Aliens.

It’s not a big deal. I mean, I don’t even like TV. (I know you’re not supposed to say that here – it’s like talking shit about beer in Milwaukee or cars in Detroit or whores in Amsterdam for that matter (remember those whores?) …but TV, it’s tricky because when my dad left my mom, there was this small color television set, which went straight into my room and was basically my only parent….

And it was a great parent, the TV. After school, I’d let myself in to our apartment. Lester the doorman was my friend. We’d play checkers and shit. But mostly, I’d come back to the apartment, turn on the TV and get a bag of cookies and pretend to do my homework (which I mostly didn’t do because smart kids can fake it until roughly the middle of high school. As soon as you start dissecting small animals – I mean, the fetal pig ….Up until that point, you can fake everything, then, once that fetal pig comes out, you gotta pony up with the homework.) But anyway,

There’s nothing to do here, alone at night. So I need you to talk me through how to use your TV set.

You have 800 stations and half of them are in Spanish? Do you even speak Spanish?

Help.

sunday in new york

2007-12-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

the past week has been a whirlawind. and that word sounds exactly like how it feels: whirl. wind. oh yeah, and it got fucking cold in new york. so wind, at least 2 days ago, was quite appropriate.

for once, i do not mind being itinerant. floating. drifting. whatever we want to call it. for the first time in my life, i don't miss anything or anyone, and i don't mind having my things in storage and moving around a little bit.... because i know i'm going to land somewhere good. my dreams have been amazing.

i'm staying at new dramatists until my back heals and i can move into caleb's and then, i'll be back at new dramatists til opening, then LA, then about ten days TBA in new york, then macdowell and then, who knows. but my goodness, it'll be may before i'm settled again. and in the meantime, there is HUNTING AND GATHERING to rehearse and put up -- and THE JESUS YEAR, the new play i'm workshopping this week and next with trip at ND ....

this makes me think of paola.

years ago, at earthdance, a dance/movement based intentional community and retreat center in the berkshires, i met her - a brazilian dancer. she came into my life at the same time as sean, a delicious buddhist from the bay area. (sean said , "but brooke, you're a mystic!" as we argued theology in the sauna). paola spoke very little english (portugese first, spanish second, rudimentary english third -- sean and i had the brilliant idea that she should learn english by buying a book of neruda poems which would have english on one side and spanish on the other. who better? it would be a juicy language for paola, who had just begun to fall in love with andy, and who was contemplating a longer stay in the northeastern united states... ) anyway. we were talking about her new love, and the fact that now, because of andy, she would not be going back to brazil so imediately. her initial plan was august. but paola said to sean and me, "who even KNOWS where we'll be in AUGUST?" and her pronounciaton was like "OW-goost" - and at the time, it was barely april - and this became a sort of refrain for us both. WHO EVEN KNOWS WHERE WE'LL BE IN OW-GOOST!? she said it with so much emotion. i mean, really. who even knows where we will be in ow-goost!?

i think that now, about myself, about may.
i leave macdowell april 22, and .... i mean...
who even knows what'll be going on or where i'll want to settle
who even knows where we'll headed be on april 22?

and speaking of paris...

2007-11-28T02:58:00.000-08:00

first trip, Fall, 2000. had some money. stayed where Victor told me to. went back on dairy and wandered the city, taking everything in, falling in love with all of it.

second trip, exactly four years later, after the stint at the National and before Jean Michel, a sadder and wiser Brooke, sitting in the Place de Vosges asking the Infinite, "Yes? What?" and then, meeting friends. Keity and Pippa.

and now, three years later... ?

paris is the measure of all growth. and loss. and renewal. and the use of the subjunctive.

"give paris one more try"

2007-11-28T02:41:00.000-08:00

.. so goes the jonathan richman song. he says, if you'v been to paris, and you didn't like paris, give paris one more try.

but we're not yet in paris - we'd planned to go on the train friday morning, give ourselves the weekend to eat pastry and shop and see keity anjourre and maybe visit the pompidou. and then.... everything changed. in a moment. the way all good plans should.

in the kitchen last nigh, dave turned to me and said, "Amsterdam." Okay, first he said "Berlin" (to which I said, "Yes! Trajal's favorite city" - but Berlin proved just a wee bit too expensive, and Dave just got done reading Red Light Winter, and so...

tonight, Paris and tomorrow, Amsterdam.

clearly, adventures are about to be had.

clearly.

is there a jonathan richman song about amsterdam? if there isn't, there should be.

ASTOR has all the best lines

2007-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

from an early draft of the play...

ASTOR
In times of economic uncertainty and fucked up politics, what are the survival strategies? Crushes help. One night stands. Make out sessions in bars with one word names like Push and Tilt and Spa. I believe I speak for many of my peers when I say, and this is a direct quote from Simon Le Bon, Duran Duran lyric circa 1983, “Some people call it a one night stand, but we could call it Paradise.”

HOME

2007-11-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

HUNTING AND GATHERING began as a ten minute play called "safety measures" which I wrote in the spring of 2001 on assignment from a playwrights collective. we were each asked to write about "home". i'd had so many of them... and i was feeling particularly playful, living comfortably on west broadway with linsay, this was 2001, did I mentiont hat? in 2001. so, i thought, what a great joke if, instead of writing a play, i just list all the damn apartments i've lived in since moving away from my family at 18. and also, i had a crush. and so, it became something else...

here is that original piece of writing:

safety measures. in pencil.
OR: bukowski is not a magical realist
2001

brooke berman

WOMAN

I want to kiss this guy at my job. He's writing a story about the closed circuit camera that records his front door. It's in Black and White, the footage, on a cable station, and apparantly, it's just on all the time in his apartment, like white noise while the rest of life happens in the foreground. It's a safety measure, the camera. It is supposed to keep people safe. I don't have have a TV, let alone any form of cable that would allow for numbers higher than 13. The doorway in question is on Channel 77.

This is very Warhol. I mean, I think nothing happens for long periods of time at this doorway on Avenue B. I think he just sits around, it's there, white noise-ish, while he thinks about things, his life, the way his girlfriend left for that yoga teacher, what he's going to do now. And he's writing about this while I'm writing about him. This must be called something, there must be a name. Like cross-transference but not that. Like cross-object-projection. I don't know. It's the kind of thing that happens here in New York I suppose. Cross writer transference.

Did I mention sex? I know I said I want to kiss him. I think I want to lay next to him as well. I want to hear what his voice sounds like in the dark. I have been working in the same place as him for a year. I've been thinking about kissing him for about a week. Maybe two. Did I mention he's Canadian?
I am not good at this part.

This is a list of all the places I have lived in the last ten years:

340 E. 9th St. A house-sit. Where you sit in the house while the person's out of town. Mike -- a Mormon I made out with the night before moving there -- said "You're a lucky girl,". And I was. But just for a few weeks.

117 East 7th St. Lived with an heiress who was also in assorted 12 step groups. I said, I think we're becoming friends. And she said, I don't think we're becoming friends. Later on, we became friends. Good ones. Family-like. I don't know where she is now. She was Canadian, too. And I lived there for three months, milk-crate furniture and all, I was twenty one. And then, the Gulf War broke out and the Heiress sublet our apartment to a Canadian rock band, and I moved to Brooklyn.

600 Bergen St. Near the police station. I sublet Joe's room while he was in Mississsippi. Later he died in this real mysterious way, like he just disappeared in a canyon or something. I was living with Ilya, who I was in love with when I was 19. She wore these great flannel nightgowns and made African food and she had a glue gun and did lots of arts and crafts. I adored her. I could barely speak to her because I adored her so much. And, I loved living there. Later, after I moved out, Ricardo who i was also in love with for a time, would move in. Ilya was gone by then, and the house was full of boys. Only boys. Ricardo loved it there too.

101 Thompson.
Two years. A real lease. Xavier called it the Catholic Schoolgirl building. Because of the lobby, I guess. No bathtub at this apartment -- stall shower. Sometimes, I'd take baths at my friend Sylvie's house in the East Village. I loved living here, too. Howard said, "You belong here," the week I moved in. I moved out for a lot of reasons I shouldn't talk about.

The Summer of 1994, in quick succession:
48 Pierepont, in the Heights - tried to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge at least once a day.
309 East 9th, for three weeks, housesitting again,
258 W. 72nd St - a month with that girl from acting class, lots of candles and floral apholstery.

then,
66 West 9th St
near Balducci's, lived with a Virgo for about eight months til he drove me crazy, and I left. He said that our conflicts were "energetic." He offered to leave, but he didn't leave, and it was his apartment anyway, so I did. But I was there a whole eight months and mostly liked it -- I was really poor during this time, had about eight part time jobs, none of which paid sufficiently, and I used to get hungry and wander around Balducci's trying to score samples. They used to have these sample trays sometimes. Anyway -

27 First Avenue. Top floor. I moved to Sylvie's. She was going to Canada to make a career in industrial films and I thought I was disappearing because of this New Age movement called "The Ascension" and anyway, she came back from Toronto, and I hadn't disappeared or ascended, and I wasn't exactly sure where to go. But I had made lots of friends while working in the cafe downstairs including Alex and Wren and Steve and that guy Angel I brought home once and Jeff, too. Outside the front door it said "The Ezra Pound" and then it said, on another sign, "Don't piss here." ... Oh, and there was this really interesting thing about santeria over there -- see, there was a transexual prostitute who lived downstairs -- Ramona -- who probably used to be Ramon -- and she did Santeria rituals on the roof. We found empty crack vials and decapitated pigeons.

A month at Trump Plaza, for free, living with this girl I met waitressing. Her parents owned the apartment -- they lived somewhere else. Once or twice I took the elevator to the roof to meditate. Totally high up. And, I loved the doormen -- they all seemed fascinated by my torn leather and randomness.

274 West 19th. 8 months til we got evicted. Loft bed. Green desk. Tiny but "angelic". Lived with 2 boys and 2 cats. Left with one of the boys. We fought like brother and sister. We loved one another. We moved together.

131 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. Across from the big Key Foods. Eric -- my roommate -- said the neighborhood was on the verge of gentrification. I didn't believe him. He was right. I lost my virginity. Then I lost my job, too. I loved the laundromat here. It was right underneath the apartment. Above us was an enormous Mexican family -- the Fernandez's -- they had, I don't know, a lot of people living in that apartment and what sounded like limbo parties every weekend. Anyway, then I left the City altogether, heading off into the unknown, like a dream I'd had once about driving into blue light with a stranger. Only we didn't go to any blue light, (we went to..)

Pittsburgh, PA. For two weeks. Madly in love and living off unemployment. I would think, this is what marriage was like a long time ago, when people would just get married without even really knowing each other first. I mean, we did not really know each other. And we'd wake up, go to the Food Coop, come home, cook meals and sit on the porch and love one another and explore. I thought, this is the kind of life other people have. An apartment with more than two rooms, a life experience, someone to wake up and go food shopping with, walks, and lots of time. People not in New York have this. I mean, Pittsburgh.... Who knew?

San Francisco, California: 22nd St. between Mission and South Van Ness. I forget the exact address. It was across from a church and near some good burrito places. One of the roommates had a pet rat. In a cage. Like the Smashing Pumpkins song. The other one hated me for almost burning the apartment down by ACCIDENT. Anyway, I got a job. I hated it. Moved again. Without the boyfriend. 2248 Union St. Stayed with this beautiful older woman, who sometimes said she could be my mother. Then Palo Alto for two weeks, squatting in graduate housing -- Escondido Village. Then a trip up the coast to Portland. I almost moved there. Someone I knew was subletting a room, and I deeply responded to the whole thing of Portland. People'd sit on their porches in the evening and cook and visit each another. Sometimes they got arrested for protecting trees. They'd chain themselves to trees. The trees out there were like nothing I'd ever seen out East. And, I slept on the porch on a mattress we'd drag outside. Like I said, I was gonna move there. I just couldn't figure out what I'd do -

(this section is fast)

So. Back in New York --

A month on Front Street, by the seaport, with two girls. A month in Sourthern Vermont. Maple sugar season. Watched some trees get tapped. Didn't want to leave. Didn't want to buy a car. Didn't want to work for less than fifteen dollars an hour. Went back to New York.

2 months at 636 Washington.

2 months at N. 11th St in Williamsburg. The Lesbian Loft. 5 dykes, 3 cats, and me. Open door bathroom policy. A straight guy's wet dream.

431 16th St. in Park Slope. Anti-social Austrian roommate who watched figure skating all day, didn't work, ate processed lunchmeats and tried to fuck my boyfriend. I was there a year.

680 Manhattan Avenue. "La Casa Tres Girlies", that's what my boyfriend called it. Top floor. Roof access, even though it was forbidden, we sunbathed up there. The light in my room was phenomenal. So was the sound of the drunk Polish guys - it was a Polish neighborhood - late at night on Manhattan Avenue. And I loved it there too -- until I stopped loving it. Fabulous Thai food. Sunsets. The way the light hit the walls of my room at exactly four o clock daily. All that good stuff til the fire, and the plumbing and the mice, kind of apocalyptic how it got all bad at once, and didn't get any better.

345 West Broadway
205 West 103rd
a week on Jan Leslie's sofa bed
two weeks at 203 Rivington while Susan was in between roommates
6 weeks in LIC Queens
2 weeks at that guys' place in Astoria (really good bathtub, walls the color of Morocco)
a month on 44th St.
6 weeks at 432 E. 9th Street --

And now this. Here.

I figure I have lived in over twenty-five places in eleven years. That's like a place every six months, although it didn't really work out that way. People love to make a point of writing my address in pencil in their little books. What business is it of theirs if I've moved a lot?

I don't pay attention anymore. The only thing I know is that the only things keep changing. This is all I know.

The guy at my job, the one I'm thinking about kissing, hates magical realism. He said maybe he's spent too much time reading Burroughs to appreciate anything else, but that he can't read Marquez and that it's more interesting to point to something rather than to have it all spelled out. I think he means that he'd rather have to find something in his imagination rather than have it described. -- but, I don't know, it seems to me that Burroughs might be a magical realist. I mean, isn't being a junkie something like being a mystic? I mean, and this is just my opinion, what the fuck is love of junk about if not the need or desire to bend and shift and liquify the state called reality? The Beats were magical realists. They were just really in the realism part. No one like turned green or floated or had the same name.

MAN
There is a woman at my job. She's a freelancer. She only works half the month. We had drinks last night. We talked about punk rock and magical realism. We talked about movies. We drank beer. We almost went to my roof. We did not go to my roof.

WOMAN
There is a place I lived once. For a few months. I had a whole routine. I knew this guy next door. He did acupupressure, that's without the needles. He used rice instead. Grains of rice. I hung out at the Ukranian diner. I sat in Tompkins Square a lot waiting, wondering.. Is this life? Is this life? Is this it? How does it happen? How do you get the life you see on the screen? the one where all the structures stay in place? In my own experience, the walls move, the floorboards are always shifting.

I have lived in over twenty apartments in ten years. Do you think I"m condemned to a life of tumbleweed?

New York is this place where everybody switches apartments every few years. Just to keep things interesting. Have you ever read Slaves of New York? Elements of that book are profound. The thing about keeping the lease.

MAN
I left and I kept the lease. Then I came back.

WOMAN
Do you want to ...? I mean, you said that thing about girls in Canada. It made me wonder. Do you want to ..? I'm going to be shooting pool in your neighborhood. Do you want to...? I can't complete the end of that sentence. I don't know what the end of that sentence would be.

MAN
You could come to my roof.

WOMAN
Yes. We could.. I think we're suppposed to get to know one another, only I'm not really sure that that ever happens. Do you know what I mean? I'm trying so hard to do things differently. But what differently is there and what things are there to do?

MAN
Come to my roof.

WOMAN
I want you to say that.

MAN
I'll call. I'll say, Hey, it's that guy from your freelance job.

WOMAN
I'll be friendly. I'll say, Yeah, I'd love to. I was, um, I liked that conversation we had -- I want to talk about Adam Ant some more.

MAN
I'll say, Channel 77. Like I was telling you about.

WOMAN
I'll say, Did I tell you I wrote a story about that? About you?

MAN
I'll say the most interesting things are the ones pointed to but never said.

wednesday night in the motor city

2007-11-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

...i'm sitting at my mother's table, in her apartment in detroit, alone. i do not come here very often, and rarely of my own accord.

she's been in the hospital again. the nurse i befriended last month said, "I only started working here in April but your mom's more here than not. we all know Marilyn."

This is the same hospital where my father died 29 years ago. i try not to think about that part. i'm too interested in symmetry (which edward albee does NOT mean as a particulary "gay" theme in peter and jerry) and symbolism and voodoo and signs. i try not to think of it at all. nor the date, 11/8, because harvey, my dad, died 11/11 and there was a moment, last week, when I was sure that my mom was rushing to meet him. she too loves symmetry and symbolism and voodoo and signs. plus it would make for a great story. and she always loved that.

tonight, she's having an up night. she's more cheerful than i've seen in over a year. as i was getting up to leave, she opened her arms and started to sing and crack jokes. earlier, when the (sweet, young, boy) nurse asked, "Do you want anything?", she said, "Chinese food."

In the morning, I'll get my shoes fixed and head home to New York.

Earlier, I had planned to write a long Day of the Dead post (belatedly, I know) about Josh Ashley, a former student, one of the first teenagers I taught for the MCC Youth Company. I started teaching playwriting to teenagers the same week that my roommate was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002. The two experiences are always strangely linked.

Josh wrote these gorgeous but hard-to-follow goth fantasy stories about "the lady of the lake" offering wisdom and potential mystic juju to wandering heroes. He bled in his journal -- literally. I remember the day he showed us the blood stains, with a kind of quiet pride. that same night, I emailed him and said, "... what we do as writers IS the blood-letting. You don't have to physically make yourself bleed because you're already doing it - figuratively - through the act of writing. expressing yourself." I think I cited Rilke. I think I emailed my (unavailable, practically married ex lover) aftewards, forwarding along the letter I'd written Josh. I think I thought it would do him good. Mainly though, I wanted to tell Josh, you HAVE TO let suffering take you down in order to fully purge it or prove your depth. He didn't write back.

His play was produced (my ex-roommate, now in remission, directed it!) And then, we didn't keep in touch.

Years later, I found out he'd killed himself after a particularly bad bout of depression. A bunch of us from the theater went to his funeral in east jesus, brooklyn. they passed out flyers saying that depression is one of the ways the devil gets inside you, that josh should have prayed more. i only wish he'd have trusted enough to keep writing, keep putting one foot in front of the other, show up for the miracle that 12 step programs say we shouldn't quit right before.

And... I see him periodically, a ghost face in the times square subway station or walking down flatbush avenue. I see his face and think of him and wonder how close his soul might be, especially at times like this.

and

"where are you living now?"

2007-11-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

so, Primary Stages and I are planning to shoot a little homespun, grassroots documentary of all of the apartments I have lived in over the last 20 years - they're listed in the opening monologue from my play, which Primary Stages is producing this winter at their lovely lovely theater.) Delightful, right? I've always wanted to lead a walking tour, like Speed Levitch does on the Lower East Side, of these abodes and the funny stories leading me IN and then OUT of each one. However, let us acknowledge: this is happening at a very strange moment.

Because, a week from tomorrow, my things are going to Chelsea Mini-Storage and I am going back into the (great unknown) (creative void) (staying a few weeks here, a few weeks there) until early 2008 when I will have both time and money to deal. If I thought my days of housing transience were over, I was dead wrong. When I was 17, and new to New York, my friend Peter called me "tumbleweed with a pen" - I had no idea.

Out with friends last weekend (at Jason Grote's beautiful play, 1001), I got asked, more than twice, "Where are you living now?" as if it were appropriate cocktail party conversation, charming anecdotal fodder for an evening with charming anecdotal me, and each time, I froze. "What do I say?" I asked. R. said, "Just say that you're waiting to see whether your work will carry you to LA or keep you in New York. It sounds romantic." (even more romantic, I'm going to France in 2 weeks! Dave's grandma Audrey's chateau.... more on that later.)

So the first day of shooting the documentary will occur on my first day of re-transience. And it's weird. In the past, the very thing would have freaked me out beyond words. But right now, I feel hopeful. Really authentically genuinely hopeful. As if the storage space, the floating, the choice to give up my home on Mott Street and re-enter the lottery of life are all part of a great opening, preparing me to find and create the space I need, both physical and spiritual, in a new and more substantial way. It's not that home doesn't matter to me - oh no, quite the reverse - it matters more than anything else. Except writing. Somehow, the act of writing always leads me home. Always leads me to where I need to be... (which right now is work! Have to get to an editing suite on 49th Street... more later.)

20 years in NYC

2007-10-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

This fall marks the twentieth anniversary of my longest relationship, which is, with New York City. I moved here as a teenager, arms wide open, no clue, not the very first one, how to take care of myself. When I left home ( to go to a fancy-ass East Coast college), my mother gave me two pieces of advice (and I am totally serious) - 1) to always separate my laundry and 2) to not swallow semen. ("There is an AIDS Crisis," she said. It was 1987.) Then, she handed me her Saks Fifth Avenue credit card ("for emergencies") and sent me on my way.

So I was shocked to discover, once I dropped out of my fancy-ass college, that I had no marketable skills and no idea how I'd support myself. Clearly, I've figured something out because I'm still here. People ask me where I'm from, and I have to pause a moment, because after 20 years, I'm so entirely from here, I grew myself up here, learned, though friends and love and hardship, how to build the tiniest little scrap of a life - as a person, as an artist. No small feat. Recently, someone in a job related context asked, "Are you Brookie from Huntington Woods?" and I thought, "Am I?" ... Because after Huntington Woods came Southfield and then Libertyville, IL, and then Northbrook and then, Lincoln Park (surreptiously, sneakily, sleeping on someone's floor or roof when their parents weren't paying attention so that I'd never have to go "home") and then, New York. New York City, specifically the East Village, welcomed me as it does all orphan-heroes on their mythic quests for reinvention, self-invention, transformation.... a very specific kind of love story.

And I'm still here. I've left - 18 years ago to find art in Providence, 11 years ago to find love in San Francisco, 8 years ago to find the divine in New Mexico, and then, just last year, for Los Angeles, for many many reasons. But did I mention, I'm back?

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