List the good things:
1. Just Us Theater is going to do my play.
2. I get to interview the big-time playwright when she comes to town.
3. Topper Carew called me yesterday and today about writing a play about Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune.
4. My column has started up again.
5. I’ve got a good idea for a program at Clark College.
6. I’m collaborating with a dance company on a piece of new work.
7. I’m reading my work in Indianapolis in October.
8. Deignan is very cooled out.
9. I am not falling in love with anyone.
10. MY CONFIDENCE IS COMING BACK!!!!!!
I feel so good. I can’t think of one fly in the ointment. Now I feel immediate guilt: Ma is so sick. All her hair out and her standing before the mirror saying to herself: “Cool out. Are you your hair? Are you only your hair?”
But that is not me. I am able to help her if she will let me help her, but I am not her. That is not me.
I wanna have my play done. I wanna make some money on my work. I want Janie Geiser to make me a seven-foot puppet.
Yes/yes/yes! Gotta be/wanna be free.
And, yes, he said. I’m free. Married men always say they’re free, but they’re talking to themselves and we who want to believe them watch them like what they are saying bears any resemblance to the truth. Sounds bitter, but I’m cool.