So, not much happening on the first day of 2024. New Year’s Eve was almost a total bust, except that I donated blood platelets for cancer patients. There are several kids with cancer in the children’s ward of the University Hospital here, so I was especially happy doing that if my donation goes to them. Tuesday, January 2, 2024, however, started with a ride to meet motorcycle buddies for breakfast. It was quite cold and a longer ride was not planned, but we had good conversation and good food at Jimmy’s Cafe. In the evening my in-person acting class was canceled and replaced with a Zoom meeting. I always enjoy the classes either way, since my classmates are quite interesting and range in style and age. Some are excellent actors and others are working to improve enough to get an acting job. Some write screenplays. One is an opera-trained singer in a superb classic rock band: 505 Unchained. One creates episodes of a show she calls Treasure Expeditions; she searches for treasure with a metal detector but also visits antique shops and historical houses. Her videos appear on Wire Ride TV, which is a channel produced by our acting coach and mentor, Steve Burhoe. I sometimes bring poetry to class.
On Wednesday I brought two recent spoken word pieces to a bar with a monthly event called Poetry and Beer. There is usually an Open Mic. Then there’s a Poetry Slam – a competition between poets for the approval of volunteer judges who score it like an Olympic event. Of late, there has been a cash prize for the top-scoring poets. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough non-poets in attendance to have judges, and the regular host hadn’t been able to attend. We had a substitute host and just had an open mike. It was glorious. We all had such a good time. The poets who planned to slam performed those poems, and a few were totally hilarious. There was a rule about doing only one thing at a time, but the rules ended up not being hard and fast. And there was music as well. Anything goes at an Open Mic. I had a lot of fun and two microbrewery stouts.
I received an audition opportunity, one I intend to do very well. It will be for a voiceover role. I can do that – everyone says I have a great voice for that. I have been working on it for days and had hoped to do it in class for some feedback, but the in-person acting class was canceled on Friday morning. I went out to breakfast instead. But, at 5 pm I attended a gallery show at a theater company’s place called Fusion. The art was way overpriced, but I don’t need any of that anyway. While there, I chatted with the woman staffing a kiosk of things to buy – books, small artworks, and games – things like that. I mentioned that I used to print and sell photos of mine. She offered me space in the kiosk for some small items I have, which is great because the two places I used to sell my prints closed permanently. So that’s good news.
Saturday was a fantastic day! I had performed in a short movie that had its premiere at a small theater and we packed the place. There were three shorts, and the one I was in was really funny – a parody of Popeye. I had some great lines that got some laughs, so I was elated. Afterward, we had a wrap party at the Slice Pizza place across the street. Today, Sunday, I attended a playwright’s Zoom meeting where new scripts are introduced and dissected. One of them was set in Ireland, and I loved the writing.
So that was my first week of 2024. This next year holds promise!
Tomorrow morning I will have professional help for my audition taping. I’m excited. Things are looking up after Covid, and after the writers’ and actors’ strikes, which left all of us without much to do. However, in acting class, I spent over six weeks working on a two-person play that my scene partner Abby and I performed. It is a Harold Pinter comedy sketch called Trouble in the Works (1959), with lots of tongue-twisters and sexual innuendos. My scene partner Abby was wonderful to work with. We got together often, in person or on video calls. Her drive to learn and excel, as well as her humor and creative spirit, were contagious and encouraging. On Christmas Eve we also delivered toys that had been purchased and wrapped by the Children’s Cancer Fund of New Mexico. We got them to the kids with cancer who are in University Hospital for the holidays. Their parents stay with them. I brought 24 delicious candy canes with me and ended up giving them to the parents, who looked so worn out. Abby arranged everything. She’s wonderful. She also just got appointed to the board of the Cancer Fund, so she’ll be doing lots more things like this.
Abby Max
Last month, I had planned to go with her and motorcyclist Santa David on December 11th to see some of the other children who were going to spend Christmas in the hospital, but I was scheduled to work on a film set. It was two days of background acting. I had to be on set by 7:30 am, so I had expected to get out early so I could go with them, but I worked 13 hours, well into the evening. However, that netted me enough money for acting classes, and I still got to go on Christmas Eve, and Abby got the overworked Santa Doug to come with us.
I woke up at 4:30 a.m. today, Tuesday, November 7. I wasn’t sure why. I was tired yesterday. I’ve been working out in this little gym where I live, but due to a trip way out of town, I couldn’t get more exercise than helping load a horse trailer with wood and unloading it. There must have been six cords worth. So, lots of carrying wood to the trailer, up and down, stacking it, and back and forth and back and forth, etc. My workouts are usually more intense than that. I had been doing much less hiking in the mountains than usual and gave up the running I’d done for three years after my heart attack. I had been getting soft. Some muscles were feeling flabby, and I kept putting on fat. So I spent this last summer working out, something I’d never done before. It is working. I feel better, have lost some excess fat, and have more energy. Three days ago I hit the gym again, and it felt good – I had lots of energy and did more than I had been doing. Yesterday I went at it again, but it was much harder to get into it. I felt sluggish and had to force myself to keep going. I would have taken a short nap, but I had things to do. By the time I finished all that I had to do, it was 9 p.m. and I was exhausted. I still didn’t get to bed until nearly 11 p.m., so I thought I’d sleep like a baby.
But, about 5 minutes ago, I found out what had aroused me from my much-needed sleep – a pack of coyotes was yipping and carrying on very close to the house I rent. It’s right next to an irrigation ditch, and there is much wildlife in the area. I heard a young coyote’s yips in with the others. They weren’t really howling those long, keening wails. They sounded more like they were interested in something, not hunting, but perhaps greeting some other coyotes. No growling or snarls, just really short abbreviated howls and lots of yips, that I thought sounded like they were having fun. There were quite a few of them out there. I’m glad I wasn’t on the other side of that fence. They might have found a lone human more interesting. But, 4:30 a.m? Come on, coyotes. Move along!
I’m up now, wide awake. I’ve so much to do, for a retired guy. I’ve been becoming an actor. I started years ago. I’ve taken so many acting classes. I’ve been a background actor on perhaps 200 movies and TV shows. I’ve acted in local, non-paid shorts. In fact, I was in one of those on Sunday, for a web series. I had a few funny lines to give, interacting with the title character. The other people there laughed spontaneously, and that was incorporated into the scene. It is a comedy, after all. I was really happy to get some laughs. The hasn’t been much to do, due to the screenwriter’s strike, and then the never-ending actor’s strike, but I’m not in the union, and there are exceptions for things like commercials and independent work. Still, it’s not much.
So, my acting coach teaches a lot of classes and decided to put on a showcase. Rather than shooting something, we will perform on a small stage – my agent and at least a couple of local casting directors might be there. I am studying a Harold Pinter play. It’s funny, with lots of wordplay. But, that’s not all, as the late-night commercials always say. We also have an ensemble piece to perform, and I have a long soliloquy to memorize, in addition to the Pinter play. We will rehearse all next Monday. Since it’s not film, we will have to deal with blocking and props, and we will be using more stage-like voices than film requires – quite the opposite of what we have been doing as movie and TV actors. It is exciting, but I’ve found my anxiety rising. I’ve been waiting a long time to show people what I can do. Now’s my chance.
Last night was one of the scene-study classes that I attend. Everyone was there, and together, we did about seven scenes for the upcoming showcase. I missed that last class because of my trip, so I found that the other students, many of whom are much younger, had forged ahead of where I am now. They performed their scenes well, showing great memorization skills. Our coach/director added blocking, and we discussed props and costumes. I was not yet off-book on either of my scenes. The second scene, the whole class ensemble piece, I had only received by email while I was away, and I have only read it so far. The showcase is approaching like a storm on the horizon, and I am feeling anxious. I just popped one of my blood pressure pills. I hadn’t taken them for a while, since I love grapefruits and grapefruit juice. The combination with my medication can have bad side effects. In actuality, grapefruit juice alone has a blood-pressure-lowering effect. But, until this showcase is a done deal, I’m going to take my pills. I’m hoping they will also help with my growing anxiety.
Don’t misunderstand me – I love acting. I did a little stage work in high school and in the 1980s, and there are the short films I’ve been a part of in the last nine years. I loved being on set either as an extra or with a speaking part. I had so much fun the other day on that web series short. It’s what I want to do more than anything now. For me, there is nothing more satisfying than performing, except perhaps seeing my name in the credits. There’s a certain amount of vanity required to want to be an actor, after all. Perhaps it’s more like a need for approval. Even at my age, I find I still want that. This may be a make-or-break moment for me. I know I can do it, and I am certainly not going to run away. “Just breathe,” I tell myself. “Relax. Calm down.” No distractions! No TV. No movies. No novels. No pop songs.
Focus. I really need to focus when I’m learning a role. But my scene partner! She’s so gorgeous and fun to be with I could howl at the moon.
I dreamt on Monday. I don’t recall having any dreams in quite some time. Usually, if I dream in the morning, I forget it by the time I get out of bed, no matter how hard I try.
So, Monday I was waiting for a message to let me know my call time to be on a movie set.
[ I had driven to Santa Fe three days earlier to work as an extra, but we all call that “background” now. We say we are background actors, which is to say we are like moveable set decorations. However, that day, after getting stuck in highway maintenance that had Interstate 25 almost at a standstill – it took 20 minutes to go 4 miles – we were informed that production was behind schedule. They couldn’t use us yet, and couldn’t afford to pay us to stay. (It’s a low-budget pic). But, we were asked to come back the next day. They had only planned to use us for four hours, but if we would come back the next day, they would pay us for eight hours. Well, that took some of the frustration out of having to drive up and back for nothing. So, I went back, and got stuck in traffic again. We were on set, however, not for four or eight hours, but from 11:00 am to 11:30 pm (12.5 hours). I was excited about the overtime, but that didn’t happen. Just a flat $120. Still, money is money, and they needed us back the next day too. So Saturday, Oct. 15th, found me on set again. This time they only used some of us to complete a pivotal scene we’d been in the previous day. This time we were there from 6:00 pm to 1:30 am the next day. Pay: $90. Like I said, it’s a low-budget pic. On certain projects, we work at a rate of $100 for eight hours. ]
I got to sleep in on Sunday, and I had back-to-back acting classes to attend that afternoon. I was able to sleep for a reasonable time Sunday night. But, my system was still adjusting, so, while waiting for a new call time on Monday morning, I took a nap.
That’s when the dream hit me. In it, I had just picked up my mail and was walking up the stairs of a porch to my house. (It seemed like I lived there, but I don’t have a porch.) As I was standing on the porch, absorbed in opening my mail, I glanced left and saw my former stepdaughter there. She was wrapped in blankets, one of which was very colorful. She was in a bed or on a small sofa. There was a young woman sitting near her. Both of them were smiling. It was a shock to see her there. (Recently she moved away from here to California.) I sat down next to them and asked what was going on. She and the woman laughed, but she turned to me, and said, “I have to go.” The dream ended, but there was a red/yellow afterimage of her in my eyes and she seemed to wink before she disappeared, like Lewis Carroll’s disappearing Cheshire Cat. I messaged her, telling her about the dream, She replied: “Interesting dream and very vivid!” I was surprised to hear from her at all because sometimes she doesn’t reply.
The Cheshire Cat — with whom Alice had just had a conversation — fades away as it sits on a tree branch. Date first published: 1865
Anyway, I never got to set on Monday. There was a 3:00 pm call time, but then production cancelled shooting that day, and for Tuesday, because of the heavy rains we were having. I expected to be on set today, but production took another day off (“company day off”) so it’s Wednesday, and I’m waiting to hear about the call time for tomorrow,
Meanwhile, I had another dream about my former stepdaughter this morning when I woke up. In it, I was standing around with several people, like at a party, and she was there, speaking with her father. Someone came up and asked her about her brother, she reached into her cell phone/wallet case, pulled out a folded newspaper-like photo with her brother and others in it, and handed it to them. She went back to her conversation with her dad. The person she’d given the photo to tried to give it back to her, but she was still busy in her conversation so they handed it to me and walked away. I tried to give it to her, but she ignored me. I put it in her hand. She grabbed it and tore it up, without looking at it, tearing only about a third of it off. That was strange and rude, so after a few moments, I walked away.
I still miss my former stepdaughter. I say former, because, over a year ago, long before she left, in a Father’s Day message to me thanking me for all I had done for her, she referred to me as her ex-stepdad. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I use “former” instead. However, perhaps “ex” is appropriate after all. She posts updates and photos on Facebook, and I comment on them; sometimes she likes or comments on my FB posts, but that’s the extent of our relationship now – digital only – after she’s been gone for four and a half months. I wrote letters to her twice, hoping to revive that antique custom, but it hasn’t happened. In fact, it turned out that she took a trip back here, and went out to see the balloons during the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, but never let me know she was in town. I didn’t find out until she posted a photo. I messaged her why she hadn’t at least called while she was in town, but she never replied. Her house had been on the market since she left. Perhaps it sold, so she had a reason to come back for that, or just to visit her dad and her friends, and was just too busy to want to deal with me too. My status with her is vague.
I have to think she appears in my dreams because I’m still trying to accept that she’s gone, and the old days of sharing our birthdays and holidays together, or of blind wine tastings, or lunches on the patio I built for her, are gone. We had kept our relationship after her mother and I divorced, seeing each other for birthdays and holidays. For a year and a half, after she could no longer drive, I picked her up to take her to her job and back to her house. Her brain surgery for a tumor had ruined her peripheral vision on the left side, and after totaling four cars, she gave up driving before she hurt someone. Then I began working for a winery for ten years, and six months after that, she joined me in that endeavor on weekends, and on holidays from her jobs. I enjoyed driving her to the winery in the mountains east of here and working with her, picking fruit, filtering, bottling, labeling, and selling wine together at festivals and at the winery. She has ended her life here. She had put her house up for sale, and then sold, donated, or threw away nearly everything she owned before she left. It is a new start for her, a new job, a new place, a new time. I accept, realistically, that she must live her life on her terms, and try new things.
But, to never see her again after 30 years? That’s hard. Family is still important to her, but I am not family to her anymore, I think. I asked her what I am to her now, but she never replied, I mentioned coming to visit her, but I received no response, no welcome to do so. I had told her how much I missed her, but for her to come back and not even say hi – that’s rough. She hasn’t severed her connection with me totally (It’s just digital now) but it seems tenuous, like a rubber band stretched beyond its elasticity until it breaks. And now, I’ve made myself sad again. Any more of this and I will cry. I guess there’s a reason why I prefer to just post photos now. As much as I love her, I suppose I will stop dreaming about her someday.
So, today, I was inspired to fix the steadily decreasing flow of hot water in my bathroom sink. There was a good flow in the bathtub, and in the kitchen. The connections underneath the sink had leaked years ago, leaving the brass fittings corroded green. It looked awful under there, so I took all of the plumbing for the hot water apart, including the flexible supply line to the faucet, which broke when I tried to remove it. It was a bitch getting the shut-off valve off from the fitting on the copper pipe coming from the wall. First I shut off the main hot water line, but, for safety, shut off the separate cold water feed line. Where I live we get hot water from a community boiler, which is used as both hot water and for heating. Both valves (common globe valves, which I drew in mechanical drawing classes in high school), were hard to close so I had to use a pipe wrench to turn them.
After I had removed all of the connections I biked down to the hardware store to figure out what I needed. For some reason, whoever had installed or replaced the connections had added extra parts from the faucet which only extended the length. Made no sense. I only needed a new faucet supply line and a new shut-off valve. ($18) It took hours to get it all done. When I turned the water back on, I found that the hot water still wasn’t flowing more than before – a very weak stream. So, back to the drawing board. I took the faucet apart to remove the valve stem. The stem looked clean, but I rinsed it out as best I could. It hadn’t looked clogged at all. I had been anticipating buying another one, but I put it back in. The hot water flowed freely after that. When I turned the cold water faucet on, a whole lot of crud came out, rust and dirt and such – very discolored water – but it all cleared up. The tap filter on the output of the tap suddenly filled with tiny bits of stones (probably calcium and other hard water minerals we have in our tap water).
So, hurrah! Problem solved, and I finally got rid of those old corroded connections underneath.
I had been ignoring the problem until I had a guest, and I had to explain that I had been putting off repairs because I suspected the work would not be simple, and I had been incredibly busy with things I found more important. My guest was fine with that and used the kitchen sink to wash up, but today was the first chance I’d had since she left this past Sunday. She is from Arizona, an old friend.
This past weekend we had traveled to Santa Fe on the lovely “Railrunner” train that runs from Los Lunes to Santa Fe. $3.50 round trip for the two of us the first day, but we missed it the next day and had to drive up. She had rented a car so she drove. It was nice to be in Santa Fe again. Indian Market is an annual event that had been postponed for the last two years. This year was the biggest I’d ever seen. The booths stretched from the plaza, north for half a mile at least, and up and down side streets.
George R.R. Martin’s Train
All of the galleries in and near the Plaza in Santa Fe were open, providing enticing food, drinks, and demos of art in progress to entice the thousands of visitors into their shops. I had already filled up on a Frito Pie from the original Five and Dime store on the Plaza, which is where Frito Pies were invented: beans, ground meat, red chile sauce, and Fritos, all served in the Frito’s bag itself. I never miss getting one when I’m in Santa Fe. The best thing is that the Häagen-Dazs shop is close by, so I cool off my mouth with a scoop of coffee ice cream after my Frito Pie. Frito Lay, of course, was initially upset that their name had been used without permission, and had sued the little drugstore for using their name, but it all got settled years ago. Hell, around here, you can get a Frito Pie almost everywhere, so that’s a lot of Frito’s Corn Chips that people need for those. Good business for Frito Lay.
Anyway, we walked and walked and gawked at all of the fancy sculptures, paintings, jewelry, and such that show up at Indian Market. There was a pottery sculpture of a dragon-like creature on display in a shop for $13,500. Other pottery goes for thousands as well, especially of the famous potter Maria Martinez, who died in 1980, but her pottery is always around. The artwork in Santa Fe is some of the most expensive that I have ever seen. Antique sculpture, pottery, and rugs fetch a pretty penny in Santa Fe. It is a popular destination for people around the world, so that stuff sells, as well as western clothing, hats, belts, and boots.
I have to admit I got in the buying spirit myself. I avoid buying anything in Santa Fe besides the Frito Pies and ice cream, but I had recently lost a good Panama straw hat to high winds on a movie set. Someone crushed it by stepping on it to stop it from rolling away! I managed to buy a Beaver Brand straw cowboy hat at an estate sale a month ago for $10, but it is a little big and cowboyish to wear around town. The Beaver Brand Hat company has gone out of business, so it seemed like a deal I couldn’t pass up at the time. Here’s what it looks like:
Beaver Brand hat
So, while in Santa Fe, I bought another hat. It is black and made of wool. My friend kept saying how good it looked, so the next day I went back to the store and bought it. I don’t usually care for style. I like hats that keep my head warm or keep the sun off of my face but got the hat anyway. In my defense, it is water resistant, and not too hot to wear during the change of seasons. I think it will do nicely through most of the winter here in the Southwest as well. And, IT’S ADJUSTABLE with a string inside. Here ’tis:
It looks better in person – my mirror is not very clean, and the shadows suck.
I often need to bring a choice of hats to movie sets.
So Indian Market over, I had things to do this week before I could get the sink fixed. Monday morning I was off to the public library downtown, where I was to meet a writer/moviemaker who is putting a radio program together for a podcast. We had already done this, with another actor, but I was too far from the microphone the whole time, so my voice needed to be redone. It’s a good role. I play a nasty villain, and I had to put myself in character for that. We got it done. For once, I didn’t need a hat! The sound is good. The other actor’s voices are recorded, and the writer/director has a truckload of sound effects, a good audio editing program, and a really good script. We’ll see how it goes. I certainly enjoyed the experience.
Yesterday I joined my motorcycle buddies for breakfast in Los Lunes, after which a few of us went for a longer ride. We rode through beautiful country, on side roads, through small towns, country roads, and lots of empty desert, under mostly blue sky with a bunch of fluffy white clouds in it. It had been raining every day, and parts of northern New Mexico that had been on fire got soaked, and there was some flooding along the burn scars. We were lucky and got treated to a glorious day and a great ride with a cool wind.
For the previous two weeks, I’d been memorizing audition roles. I had someone tape one in which I had to do two completely different takes of the same scene. I feel pretty good about my work on that one. No word yet, but that’s normal.
After that, I had to do a self-tape to audition for a healthcare commercial. It involved lines from multiple characters. It seemed like there was to be humor involved, from my interpretation of the scripted lines, so I improvised what I thought went along with the script and was funny. I even added some physical humor. I was really happy with the results. I hope to hear from them. Meanwhile, I have an audition upcoming that’s due in early September – I usually don’t get so much time in advance, but it gave me time to do other things, like a birthday party dinner with people I know in the movie business, a poetry slam competition, getting estimates for dental work, and all the other stuff I’ve already talked about.
Which reminds me – I’d better find that other script and get working on it. They are giving me time to be creative, so I’d better do some thinking about this and create a few different takes on it. The sooner I get that submitted, the better. Then there will be more to do.
We’ve been having a lot of rain in New Mexico lately, after 70 days without any measurable rainfall. We’ve all been waiting for it. We love rain here because there’s so little of it. The state has been in drought conditions for years. the longest duration lasted 329 weeks beginning on May 1, 2001 and ending on August 14, 2007. The most intense period of drought occurred the week of January 19, 2021, affecting 54.27% of the state. After what seemed like an unending explosion of fires throughout the state, the rain is so very welcome. Of course, now the problem is monsoon rains that have brought flash floods and landslides. But that’s New Mexico. I love it here, although the fires have been getting worse with such extremely dry conditions, and now the fire areas (burn scars) don’t have the vegetation needed to prevent mudslides in such heavy rains.
But the rain, predicted to last through June 21, is still coming. It’s Sunday now, June 29. The rain has been falling for hours, off and on. I enjoy the light rain pattering on the roof, and I love the heavy pounding of rain during cloudbursts. It’s all good here. When I went for a short walk a while ago, after one of the little rainstorms, I found a large clump of snails on the sidewalk. There were all mostly out of their shells sliding all over each other. I saw a couple strays nearby, but it seemed that about six to eight snails were having an orgy. Imagine that – a snail orgy.
But I also noticed that the rain sounds so different while I paused under the huge Mulberry tree outside my front door. It had a strange resonance. Usually, people say, “The rained drummed on the roof,” but this sound was so unlike that. No drumming. Repetitive, yes. But also extremely pleasant, reminding me of an orchestra of wind instruments. Imagine that: strings played by the rain, for the pleasure of the snails.
Well, I put a movie on tonight while the rain played its tune. I had a copy of The Leisure Seeker on my shelf since last year, and finally popped it in the player tonight. I bought it because it stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, two consummate actors. And, you say? Yes, I liked it. Comedy and tragedy. So very well done. I say comedy, because, in the short interview with the actors after the movie ended, Sutherland called it a comedy with a tragic ending. But it’s not any kind of laugh-out-loud comedy. The comedy fell out more like British comedy, funny, as in strange, with unpredictable actions and words.
In actuality, Sutherland’s character has advanced Alzheimer’s, and Mirren’s character is gravely ill, but they spontaneously take a road trip in an old, oil-burning, well-used RV. The movie seemed more like a slice-of-life adventure, with it’s real-life ups and downs, just as life had been for this plucky couple. The denouement of their lives plays out throughout the movie until the movie itself reaches its climax.
Throughout, we experience the inexplicable devastation of someone’s mind as Alzheimer’s disease takes its slow toll on memory and quality of life. Yet, these two people have a chance to share their love and laughs, and even painful memories, as the unexpected surprises even them.
Through it all, I could see myself in the characters, as I often do when reading books or watching movies. I feel the deterioration of my body and brain all the time, and it is already far more than just being easily distracted, or having the body run down slowly. My heart is not well, and it was very noticeable in the aftermath of an extremely painful and traumatizing tooth extraction recently. As the pain continued, unabated for days and nights on end, my heart struggled. I felt it leaping and struggling to keep up. There was pain. And, the antibiotic I took caused severe stomach pain with constipation, and it added to the malaise generated by the pain in my entire jaw. My eyes are rapidly deteriorating now, as opposed to the barely perceptible changes over the last 40 years. My right hand and shoulder move randomly, sometimes spasmodically. My driving is becoming erratic. Working on a movie set for 13 hours is thoroughly exhausting, and much more difficult to recover from than it was just a few years ago. Driving home late, through the very dark section of interstate highway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque has become nerve-wracking and scary.
As I was writing this, I realized that today is Sunday, and I had purchased a ticket to Chatter Sunday, and forgotten to go again. I so enjoy the music and the poetry. Nothing kept me from going. I knew I was going as recently as last night, but it slipped my mind again. Well, c’est la vie, as the French say. Fuck it, I say. Except, it is simply late, in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I hadn’t noticed it was even past midnight. I will probably go to Chatter Sunday after all later on today. It’s still Sunday.
I will continue on, abandoned as I am in life. I have my motorcycle to ride, and buddies to ride with. I have my acting classes to memorize things for. I’m creating a storyboard for a class commercial project that I will add to my clips. I will also create both a sad and a funny monologue for the same reason. I will be part of a movie the whole class will create. It’s also for my clips and resume. I keep going. One day I will run down. I will be no more. But not yet.
There are so many things rambling around in my head. It’s hard to concentrate, and I only slept a few hours last night. I tried but woke up at 3:30 am. So, it’s time for my therapeutic writing, my stream of consciousness.
Yesterday I was preparing my motorcycle for a long ride today. It is a three-hour roundtrip to Mountainair. The 1923 hotel is unique, and the food is good. There is great scenery along the way. At one time in the early 1920s, before Hitler rose to power in Germany, a swastika was almost a universal symbol of life, the swirling arms indicative of the cyclical nature of life, and well-documented as having been used in Native American and Asian cultures. Native Americans in the U.S. Southwest say that it was not a major symbol. One Albuquerque high school used the symbol for their yearbook. The Kimo Theater in Albuquerque was built in the 1920s using swastikas as decoration, and they still adorn the inside walls. The nearby old Federal building has a similar motif. Of note, the Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair still incorporates the swastika. It was used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality. The last time I was there, this is the view of the front of the building:
People stare but it stares back
Hitler, who believed in numerology and astrology among other things, chose the symbol to give his new Reich some gravitas grounded in ancient history. It was not a good luck charm for him.
Here are some more photos of the inside of the Shaffer Hotel:
I have been to the area more recently than the photos I took then since the area also has the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, where you can visit the ruins of Spanish colonial rule: the Abó mission, Gran Quivira Pueblo, and the Quarai mission. I’ve taken too many photos of those over several trips to post them all now. The way the Natives were treated then, and later by the United States, is eerily prescient to the way Hitler’s “Third Reich” treated Jews, gypsies, and non-conformists, and in a way, the immoral, villainous treatment of American Indians makes the twisted use of their own symbol not seem oddly placed here.
So, back to the narrative flow. The reason I didn’t go on the ride is that I fucked up my Honda Shadow Phantom motorcycle. As of now, it is unrideable. I did not crash it. I bought it in 2020 after my 1997 Honda Magna was stolen, after 19 years of riding that wonderfully fast, smooth machine. I was only able to recoup $2,500 from the insurance company, for the bike and accessories. I put it down on the Phantom.
The 2014 Phantom.
I was seriously pissed off. I did it through stupidity. All I was doing was checking fluids, making sure it was good to go for the three-hour trip to Mountainair and back. Somehow, the little old ladies around here all made it point to bring their little dogs by as they walked them around this compound I live in. I had just topped off the oil when one of them interrupted me. I had been planning to turn the bike on for a bit to warm and circulate the oil so I could double-check the level. After speaking to them and keeping an eye on the anxious little dog trying to get at me, I forgot that I hadn’t tightened the oil dipstick. I had left it just sitting in the hole. As soon as the old biddy, and her little dog too, were gone, I fired the bike up. Holy mindfucking crap! The racket was incredible. The engine had vibrated the dipstick, which tipped to one side, and before I could reach the off switch, it bent the dipstick at a 90° angle and spit it out.
I still can’t believe I was so stupid. I looked at the dipstick and realized a small piece was missing. I used an extension magnet to fish around in the oil reservoir but only found a small piece. A thin length perhaps 3/8 inch to 1/2 inch was somewhere inside. Reasoning that perhaps it was chewed up into smaller pieces I stopped trying to find it. I tried straightening the dipstick rod and replacing it. I got it very straight, so I could barely feel where it had been bent. I had to see if the bike would run OK. It didn’t. The noise was still there. I cut the rod off just below the screwcap, replaced it, and tried again. Same thing – a god-awful racket. Things are bent and ruined in there. It is going to be damned expensive to have it taken apart to replace the damaged parts. I’m a moron. I just can’t believe I did that after riding for the last forty years or so. I took care of my bikes, worked on them myself when I could, and got expert help when I couldn’t. Perhaps my riding days are over. I only had that bike for a year and a half. It’s a 2014, but I bought it in September of 2020, with only 2,662 miles on it. I’d only gotten the odometer up to 5,550 miles since I last rode it. I am devastated again. The loss of the old bike was bad enough, especially after some pricey work I’d just had done, and the fact that it rode so smoothly and quietly, I was just getting used to this one. Crap. Fuck. Piss and moan.
To top it all off, my blood pressure recently shot up to a dangerous level, and my cholesterol, despite regular use of a statin drug, healthy eating, and regular exercise, is also higher than it was before I had a heart attack in 2013. I saw my doctor after a long wait and scheduled a stress echocardiogram to see what things look like in there, but on March 1st, they discovered that my blood pressure was dangerously high, and canceled the test, even while I was standing on the treadmill, ready to go. The next available test date was to be March 28, and I will still go, but the cardiologist’s office called me this morning to tell me she won’t be available (for the originally scheduled March 29 follow-up visit) until May 9. I had asked for this test because plaque in a major heart artery had caused the artery to close off before, and I wanted to know how bad it was now. But I won’t know my status and what to do about it until May 9? In the meantime, I’m on a blood-pressure-lowering drug, and I have to take my blood pressure twice a day.
I’m no longer sure I’ll live to May. If the test itself was too dangerous for me, what about hiking in the mountains? Working out? How much can I do? I guess I’d better update my will, although the motorcycle repair or replacement may take what’s left of my savings. I sound like a “Debbie Downer”, but this is all depressing.
Well, one good thing, I should have an acting agent soon. An agent looked over my resume, learning, and experience, and is ready to have me audition for her. My acting coach recommended me, and she trusts him, representing several of his students already. I was really pumped about that, but a little less now. Well, all I can do is keep trying, keep auditioning, keep learning. It would be nice to have a good, dramatic role in a feature film before I die. I’ve been working on that for eight years. I feel I’m close. I have good acting chops, my memorization is good, and I will have an agent helping me find auditions for a feature film before the productions arrive. There are a lot of movies being shot here all the time, all over the state, but they usually already have their principal actors before they get here. I want to be one of those, even in a small role. It’s pretty much all I live for.
As a thank-you for reading this far, here are a few pictures from the Pueblo Missions National Monument:
Steal Away is the true story of Ella Sheppard and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a choir of young former slaves. It is based closely on Andrew Ward’s heroic chronicle: Dark Midnight When I Rise. As they seek the right to an education, for the right of everyone to seek an education, they become targets of rabid KKK terrorism against all such schools. Although they and their school are physically attacked with bullets and bombs, the choir respond with powerful, deeply-moving songs of faith and freedom. Steal Away follows the choir’s impressively shocking rise from the inhuman depths of slavery to the ballrooms and throne rooms of Europe as they conquer the world. But they must also conquer their own personal demons. It has been said that Dark Midnight When I Rise is one of the most breathtaking and timeless true stories ever told.
Although not yet in production, Steal Away is still auditioning actors and crew, processing auditions, and raising funds and awareness of this awesome production. I will do my best to help. I am one of the thousands applying for a role in this production.
Here’s a video by Steven Blake, Steal Away’s producer: About the movie.
The character that I have applied for is Milo Cravath. Cravath’s parents were abolitionists and part of the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to enslaved people from the South. It developed as a convergence of several different clandestine efforts. The exact dates of its existence are not known, but it operated from the late 18th century to the Civil War, at which point its efforts continued to undermine the Confederacy in a less-secretive fashion.
Erastus Milo Cravath was a hawkish, militant civil rights crusader, the fearsome Director of the American Missionary Association. Cravath’s lifelong war against Southern supremacists and their armies of terror has shaped him into a merciless war hawk that some liken to Genghis Khan. But though a legendary enemy of racial oppression, Cravath’s hard-charging, take-no-prisoners crusade cruelly enslaves the African-American choir touring for his cause, making Cravath resemble the very enemy he’s fighting. Notoriously unsentimental, Cravath’s intensive eyes and moving backstory might tell a far deeper story.
Here are my auditions, somewhat hurried, one of which is unprofessionally self-recorded, but both are heartfelt:
I’d love to hear your reactions. I hope for a callback at some point, which will allow me to polish these rough performances and add different takes on this complicated character.
Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath was a pastor and American Missionary Association (AMA) official who after the American Civil War, helped found Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and numerous other historically black colleges in Georgia and Tennessee for the education of freedmen. He also served as president of Fisk University for more than 20 years. (from Wikipedia).
Queen Victoria was so moved by the Jubilee Singers that she commissioned this portrait of them in 1874:
As I was rinsing roasted green chile skin off my fingers, after having prepared an extra-sharp cheese with tomato sandwich, and about to top it off with the green chile flesh, I was thinking about writing. It’s been a while. I did write some poetry amid the pandemic, but it seems like it will never end now. After having a low-key “breakout” case of Covid-19 in August – likely the delta variant – even after having had two inoculations against the damned virus, I found myself swamped with background work for movies and TV shows in September, October, and November. I managed to get on the Better Call Saul TV series again, in their last season, as I had hoped. It’s only background work, but it’s safer than being in a western these days. Speaking of which, yes, I was indeed on the movie set of Rust, one cold, rainy day about a week before the shooting. Alex Baldwin was not there that day. Usually one does not speak about being on a production, or who was in it until that movie or episode is released, but that movie is never going to be finished, never going to be seen.
I did not know or meet the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, but she was ever-present that day. One of the scenes involved my standing next to the main camera as it rolled by on a dolly track. The camera went into a building while I looked on, standing perfectly still. The camera was just a couple inches from me, and one cannot step on or kick a dolly track, or bump the camera. Then they turned the camera around to catch us lookie-loos staring into a dramatic murder trial.
Halyna had a strong Eastern European accent, and I heard a few recognizable Russian words coming from her. I did not know who she was at the time – background actors are given few details about much of anything on set – but I saw this woman hovering around the cameras constantly, checking angles, lenses, lighting, etc. Every time I heard that accent, I turned, and there she was again. I did know a camera assistant there whom I have the random pleasure of running into from time to time. He was the man behind the camera on a seven-minute short in which I had my first speaking role. He spoke at a candlelight vigil for Halyna, and how they worked together, how they were both camera nerds, loving the business, trying new lenses, new angles and such. He was nearly overcome with grief and left hurriedly after speaking – a brief hug and he was gone. If you’re interested, there is a scholarship in Halyna’s name now.
I’ve been by the ranch where Rust was being shot. The last time I saw it was over the course of three days I spent further down the same road on another ranch – life goes on – on another western set for a completely different movie. I passed that locked gate six times. It was never opened. I don’t know how long that ranch will be shut down. Many movies are usually shot there, sometimes concurrently.
The production I was on this time was centered around some well-known western characters. One morning, after passing the sadly locked, guarded, and well-lit gate again, I arrived on this other set well before anyone else, even the crew. I’d been told to come back the night before, but the time I’d been given was changed later that night, and I didn’t get the text. I was there a bit before 7 am. It was still dark. I knew something was wrong when I saw no other vehicles coming and going, and no one was there with a flashlight to guide me into the rustic site. I walked around for a bit, tossing my thick jacket back into the car, because it was unusually warm, seeing as the sun was not yet visible above the horizon. There was nothing to do, so I sat and watched the sunrise. I enjoyed that. I thought about nothing. I just enjoyed the rainbow colors, the brightening sky, the mountains, and the warm quiet. As soon as the sun was full “up”, the wind started. I had to go back for my jacket, thankful that I’d brought a warm navy peacoat with me. One car showed up. It was a security guard, a Navajo woman, and we talked a bit. It was nice to see a friendly face in that deserted place. I remember her name as Doreen, but I have trouble remembering names.
As the sky lightened, I noticed something gleaming in the dirt near where the action was the night before. It was a knife, shiny and clean. When people began showing up I asked around, but no one in the production staff or the film crew identified it as theirs. I figured some grip had been using it to help cut and strip wires, but I was never able to return it to its owner. Perhaps it belonged to the horse wrangler that was there the day before, but I hadn’t thought of him until just now. The knife is likely a handy tool for cutting rope or leather, I’d imagine. There are strict rules regarding weapons on set, and no actor can bring one on set, but this reminded me more of a tool. I found out that it is a type of curved one-piece steel knife called a karambit, with a big hole in the grip part. With my hand wrapped around the grip, my pinky fit right into that hole – a good defensive weapon. It’s not legal to conceal carry such a knife in New Mexico, so perhaps that’s why no one claimed it. When I mentioned it to a PA (production assistant), he freaked out a bit, anxiously asking me if I had it on me, so I had to reassure him that it was safely stashed in my car. Safety is a big concern on movie and TV sets, and with the recent focus on the shooting death down the road from us, he was rightly concerned.
I was pretty damn excited to be there that day because there was a good possibility that I was to have an actual speaking part in a small scene. After breakfast, and after sitting on my ass for some time, which is part of a typical day on a movie set for background actors, I did get some lines. I rounded up another extra and we wandered off to a nearby horse trail to rehearse the scene. I had to be really worked up to deliver these lines in character, so I spent some time after I learned the lines running up and down that trail. I got the lines down pat and had a good idea of who I was and how I’d react to the news I was giving, and what else I’d feel. Later, I went looking for the AD (assistant director) who had given me the lines. I saw her in a serious discussion with someone and waited quietly off to the side.
She finally mentioned me to the man she was speaking with. He turned out to be the picture’s director. I mentioned earlier that we background rarely know much, but it’s just as well. Most times I’d never have a reason to speak with a director, actor, or crew, other than the PA who wrangled the background actors. But the AD told him I could do that scene. It was a scene added by the writer because the actor who would have given those lines was no longer on set, and the lines were necessary to set up a chase scene. So, the director turns to me and says, “OK. Do it.” He meant right now, right there. I must have blinked, because he added, “Just give me the lines straight,” which I could easily do. When you add emotion into a scene, sometimes the lines give way to your character’s mental state, and you end up winging parts of it. But, I knew the lines, and rattled ’em off, with a pause between each line to react to what the other actor would be saying. When I finished, the director gave me a big thumbs-up, and said, “You’re hired.” Those are the best words I could have heard, better than hearing, “We are wrapped,” after long days and nights on a set. I was elated.
Alas, hours later, I found out that they had decided they had no time to do that scene and dropped it. We were indeed wrapped. However, I was still happy to have had something to do, something that would further my craft. And those magic words from the director had really buoyed my spirits. I do like acting. And being on set. This was the last day. The few background actors still around had been asked to stay and help pack things up, which I was only too happy to do. And we’d get a bit more money for doing so. It was a non-union set, and we were paid in cash.
Since then, Tina Fey was in a nearby town, and while I didn’t get to meet her, I was very happy to see her up close. She really is gorgeous, especially with the New Mexico sun lighting her face like a golden sunrise. I’ve always admired her since her Saturday Night Live days. Her witty writing appealed to me. She made me laugh out loud with her Sarah Palin impersonations. Her acting on 30 Rock and her dramatic role in the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which was shot in New Mexico, had made me a solid fan of her work. I knew she was good-looking. I loved her look in glasses. But I had never realized just how strikingly beautiful her face is. Lovely woman.
Recently I rode my motorcycle out of town to be on a movie set. They needed four motorcycles.
It wasn’t too far away, but the temperature in the early morning was in the mid-20s, and construction on that portion of Interstate 40 had traffic bogged down at times behind an endless line of bumper-to-bumper semis. It took much longer to get there than I like in that kind of freezing weather. I researched the wind chill factor; it turned out that at 75 mph in 25°F weather, I was chilled to 1°F. We worked a long day after that, and I wasn’t looking forward to that cold, dark ride home among those long lines of trucks. Even though I just then found out that my taillight had burned out, I started back, sandwiched between two other riders. However, we got separated, and I wasn’t up for racing by those trucks each time a lane opened back up, jack-rabbiting from truck to truck at high speeds. It turned out I was exhausted from being up hours before dawn, that cold ride, and the long day of work, so l did not feel safe. I pulled into a Casino lot a half-hour from Albuquerque to rest a bit, but as soon as I saw the motel there, parked, and got a bite to eat, I got a not-cheap room and passed out on a soft bed. Breakfast was free. I hated to waste most of what little money I had just made, but I made it home in one piece, well-rested, well-fed, and happy.
But, I have a script now. It’s for a movie I know little about, like when it will shoot, where it will be shot, or if it will ever be seen if it is shot, but I enjoy working a character, forcing my mind to work, to memorize, to learn, to not act, to just be.
And then I just today applied to work on another project that will shoot all this month, and I’m ready for that. I’d like a speaking role. They want people who are athletic enough “to run, jump, and do minor fight scenes.”
After 8 and 1/2 years of winery work: cleaning ditches, irrigating, picking fruit, bottling wine, handling thousands of cases of wine every year, lifting 14-gallon demijohns, cleaning empty wine tanks, planting fruit trees, and after climbing mountains all that time, having run three half-marathons, having poured molten bronze years before that, having worked for a carnival before that, and having bicycled across the country before all of that, I’m ready. I’m quite a bit older, but still fit enough. Bring it on.
Random Writings and Photos 
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