So the 16th, after a succesful stint as tape op for the Gold Channel at the PGA Tour in Kohler, I sent e-mails to all the appropriate people saying what a thrill it was to work with them and that I'd be available for the Ryder Cup in Michigan in September.

Connie'd already said I could stay in her guest room for the week, so lodging was taken care of, and I was just itching to take the ferry across the big pond. Today I got word from Ian that they already had a tape op, but if I wanted to stage manage, I could do that. Of course I will. Now I just need to brush up on my stage management--it's been since college.
  ¶ 13:59

 
A fitful night of sleep, and every time I was back to sleep, another episode of the same dream with the same characters played out.

J & I were at a party with G & J & H at their house. They live on a large plot of land in the middle of nowhere with a lot of trees. They had a pool, a fireplace, a large deck in the back, an open-air barn (think roof and no walls), a workshop with a ton of power tools, and a large cinder-block black box theater that G had built to teach his theater workshops.

From the high spot on the porch, you could see the tall, well-designed neon sign for the Grove that indicated a vacancy. They were neighbors, and J & G hadn't met them yet.

The first night we were there, I watched a J walked into the pool and never resurface. No one made a fuss, they just calmly removed her body from the water and placed it on a bed of leaves.

Later that evening, I told J first, and then H, that I wanted to abide by her wishes and have her body cremated the following day. I wanted to hold the ceremony at G & J & H's place, it was midway between where her Grove friends needed to travel from, and where her non-Grove friends needed to travel from.

I then carried her body to a spot closer to the house, and placed her in bed. Her body was starting to cool, and I knew that by the time it was cold, I wouldn't be able to communicate with her anymore. I started to tell her all the things I hadn't been able to when she was alive. How beautiful she was, how much I appreciated all she was and everything she did, how much I respected her. But she didn't respond.

I kept returning to her in the bed, she would roll over and look at me, I would share something I needed to say before she was gone forever, and she would smile in that way that melts my heart, words unnecessary, to let me know that she understood. As she slipped away, I became more and more peaceful that it was over, and more and more grateful for the time we had spent together.

The final time I returned, I wanted so badly to touch her one last time, but had my doubts about how appropriate it would be to touch a dead body.

She turned and asked, "If you could touch me one last time, where would you want to touch me?"

We both knew the answer to that, and I woke before I had the opportunity to do anything about it.

The dream did not return.
  ¶ 06:57

 
"Give it to me again master, please."


When the tech director hadn't heard the time that our broadcast was supposedto end from the master control room in Orlando.
  ¶ 19:15

 
With news that the Golf Channel is evacuating their Orlando studios to make way for hurricane Charley, and preparations for the three hours of programming for which we're going to be 100% responsible this evening, we finally have a clean feed from CBS for the PGA. What we're getting for audio is just a nat-sound mic. Between swings and cheers, there's the calming sound of birdsong, insects, and waves on Lake Michigan.
  ¶ 12:28

 
All my life, I've known that I'm different. I don't think like my peers, I don't act like my peers, I'm not interested in the same things as my peers. For that, I was ridiculed, laughed at, and excluded for a majority of my formative years.

Now that I'm older, I realize, in my head at least, that my thoughts, ideas and ways of thinking are just as valid as everyone else's, but every once in a while, I do find myself with faint twinges of "am I good enough?" or "will they like me?".

For the most part, I feel as though I can overcome those feelings, but I'm still aware that they're there. One of the things that's helped me immensely in having a safe space. Having an environment where I feel comfortable and safe enough to open myself up more and more, find out that's it's OK, and continue replacing the hurtful experiences of my youth with positive, new interactions.

Until this week, that place has always been home. J. is so supportive, so caring, and so empathetic, that I find it easier to open up to her and make myself vulnerable in ways that I can't with other people. And in most cases, it's been a positive experience. I've grown so much in my time with her, and for that I'm forever grateful. As Frank Orral says, "So tell me something someone and help me get it right,/or hit me over the head, box me up and say good night./I can't stand to see myself go through the motions/that bring me back into these same old sad emotions./"

But now, after Monday night, I had a realization. A few months ago, she said that she was sick of always tailoring her interactions with me to my needs, and that she was finished doing that. At the time, I was fine with that. I've learned enough basic tools with which to interact with people that I felt I could continue my growth on my own.

But what I didn't realize was that I would no longer had a safe haven where I could interact freely and authentically. I had nowhere to go to be comforted and reassured when an interaction didn't go quite as well as I'd planned. I found myself always being 'on' and always trying to be a certain way for my interactions, without a break, without a respite, and no one with whom I could process questionable or less-than-optimal encounters. I found myself doubting what I was saying and doing, not trusting myself to interact in the most appropriate manner, and choosing to err on the side of not interacting.

At one time, my greatest fear in our relationship as that we'd run out of things to say to each other. Right now, I've got a million things I want to say, but because I no longer perceive our realtionship as a safe space to say them, I can't get them out.

"Take the risk," J. would say.

It's not that easy for me. Sure, you can tell an alcoholic, "Don't drink," or someone with arthritis, "Just suck it up and swing your golf club anyway." But it just doesn't work like that. I've been too hurt and wounded in the past, and as much as I've grown in the past few years, I felt a huge steel gate come crashing down inside me as I endured Monday night's attacks.

I'm a lot more guarded and cautious now. I'm very reluctant to be open and vulnerable with people. No matter how much I open myself up to someone else, they still have their own filters and expectations through which I'm going to be viewed and judged, and I'll never be able to get past that.

My world has changed and shifted yet once more...another in a string of major shifts since April of this year. I used to dream about what it would be like to spend my life with J. I've had the opportunity to find out.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with that information.
  ¶ 09:15

 
Tonight, J and I had dinner. It was an effort to start creating some new and interesting experiences for ourselves outside of the context of the crap we'd been going through for the past few months.

Got a phone call during dinner that I decided to answer. It was a guy in Pennsylvania, Ian Duffy, working for a company called NEP. Turns out that they'd hired a local tape operator for the PGA Tour in Kohler who didn't know how to operate tape (which, to be honest, is completely beyond me how something like that could happen), and they were wondering if I was available.

Turns out that I was. After being on hold for Boettcher, he'd called earlier in the day to tell me that the folks he was coordinating a crew for decided they didn't need an audio guy. So I was suddenly free for the week...the only guy in Milwaukee who was, it seems.

So after going through some gyrations of talking to a couple producers and production managers, they hired me. I start the 11th. Woohoo!

The only problem is that it's GOLF.

  ¶ 23:26

 
In the 2000 Italian film Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips) Rosalba is a frustrated housewife. She married her husband, a plumbing supplier, when she was young, has teenage sons, and is unfulfilled.

During the family’s summer vacation, no one in her family notices that she’s in the bathroom when the tour bus leaves, and she’s left behind. She’s forgotten her husband’s new cell number, and waits at the truck stop until he finally calls, unsympathetic to her plight, and orders her to stay put.

In a fit of rebellion, Rosabla decides to hitchhike back home, forgo the remainder of her vacation and have some time for herself, a rare and precious commodity in her life. One of the people with whom she rides is amazed that she’s never been to Venice, and on impulse, she changes her travel plans.

After arriving in Venice, she rents a room at a small penzione that’s due to be torn down, and goes to have dinner at the café Marco Polo. There, she meets Fernando, a reticent Icelander who’s waiting tables and informs her that she’ll need to have cold dishes because the cook has come down with appendicitis.

When she returns to her room, Rosalba calls her husband at the hotel to let him know that she’s OK and has decided to take a short vacation in Venice. He meets her announcement coldly, yelling at her until she hangs up on him.

As she extends her stay and starts to run low on money, Fernando invites her to stay in his extra room, and she decides to get a job with Fermo, a cantankerous anarchist who runs a floral shop. She sends periodic postcards to her family to let them know she’s OK. Meanwhile, her family is eating convenience food, the house is a mess, and Rosalba’s husband sends one of his plumbers to find her and bring her back home.

During a chance meeting with her sister in law a the flower shop, Rosalba learns that her son Nick is using drugs, and is suddenly overcome with a sense of motherly duty. She returns home to find the house neat and orderly (her husband had called a maid service) and everyone pretty much used to the fact that she’s not there. They’re getting along fine without her.

Of course, Fernando is heartbroken that Rosalba has left Venice, and comes after her to tell her how he really feels about her. He finds her in a parking lot, bouquet of flowers in hand, and as Rosalba loads groceries into the back of her car, with Nick standing by, Fernando announces that he’s in love with her, and would like her to return to Venice with him.

Rosabla’s been able to discover things about herself that she’s been unable to discover previously because the day-to-day routines of her marriage make it nearly impossible. The way of life she’s always known is suddenly not the only option available to her, and the possibilities for her to become the person she always wanted to be are laid in front of her. Rosalba can do nothing but embrace the only choice she has to make.

This article is the eighth in a series of film reviews based on the major arcana of the tarot. It was published in the Diana's Grove Mystery School Newsletter in August of 2004.
  ¶ 08:10