Nowhere to hide except together. It's about time.

Is this where I assemble the silliest strings of words? I suppose so. This is called, "A Union of In-Laws" and draws from a suggestion I received from another and refers to a wall street journal on-line extra editorial by, well, here goes.

On March 24th, 2003, echoing the title of Leni Reifenstal's 1938 Olympics film, Triumph of the Will, Peggy Noonan announced, with the invasion of Iraq, that we are witnessing the triumph of activism over fatalism (Among the actions not taken, consider: Saddam's sons, George's daughters, we never saw any efforts to bring together these perfect couples, and the possibility of solving with a wedding, in the tradition of the great rulers, any conflicts of interest with a union of in-laws. Can anyone suggest other actions?) Well, don't just stand there. We must do something, but let's
do it for a purpose
'cause to later find a purpose
is a steeper uphill struggle
than the purpose set in place
at the outset.
Hey, what WAS that at the outset? Is there reason behind the action?
We have to do something.
We cannot just stand here.
Fatalaties when activism
triumphs over fatalism
escalate to numbers
we can count in yonder galaxy.
What's at stake, enlightenment?
That comes to all in time.

Burl Ives appeared in a TV musical version of Bluebeard.

-------------------------
I go out for the day. See you tonight,” he told his redeemer, his beloved bride. And he added a warning, “Go in all rooms but one.” His words echo those of our most famous God, you know the one, who said (It’s just the just of it.) to his most God-like creations, “I leave you in paradise; eat from all trees but one.”

What do you expect Bluebeard’s bride to do? What do you and I want and wait for you and I to do?

Remember that his beard repelled most women, but her soul was sensitive, and his eyes gained her trust. She loved him and accepted his love for her. And we know from experience, from those nights by the fire, hers was a premium brand of love, on which they rise to new heights of awareness. Her empathy, surely, matches his toward her,

But she broke trust when she googled him, or rather;
When she entered the forbidden room, she found corpses, and she knew. Her husband is a killer, who insulates himself from the feeling of his prey. He is a coward nourished by the fears of his prey. He is a man who willingly causes what in the end must come to all.

There is only one ending to the story. She escapes to live another day, and Bluebeard, exposed, forthwith, is destroyed.

My variation is to say, feel free to explore all of my rooms, my papers, my website, and then watch me squirm as I try to defend what are clearly rotting corpses with my initials carved into them. I leave myself exposed, not out of honesty, but out of awareness that only truth is easy.

No one cares where no one goes, unless to consider my candidacy.

How could you allow the wolf to lead you down the garden path.

Do the wolf and the granddaughter ever save each other?

Let it be known, Bluebeard’s secret starts with an empty room, which he gradually fills with the corpses of the faithless, the independent minded fighters who refuse to obey him.

That’s his problem and he rots in it.

In our search for self-understanding, we allow ourselves to be misunderstood.
copyright 2003 Peter Dizozza ------------------

Hi, Tightness!
Hi, Taughtness!
Now that you've tightened me, what can you teach me?
Naught have I taught you.
How thoughtless,
Why think so?
'Cause I'm here to hype you.
Then I'm here to haunt you.

hit it.

Blow tropic wind,
Fill the air
With sound vibes, with light vibes, with solids, with liquids.

Thank you, O content provider. You're bill I'll pay monthly.

Stromboli Meets Snagglepuss by Peter Dizozza

All right, so the computer takes time re-establishing itself and its programs fight one other; it can process massive calculations, store them and translate them into familiar colorful sounds and images. It's my responsibility and a welcome one to catelogue and draw from the catelogue, even as I create new material.

'm getting blogged down just turning the computer on and off, loading up programs and shutting them down, moving files rather than using them. I threw away many papers and letters over the weekend and now I will attempt to follow their pathway to mulshland.

I'll take one task at a time, preferrably a new one. This is my journal essay moment, typing into a foreign repository. The doors are caving in, the computer's confiscated. Watch out you with your clicking and typing and seeing what is there to be seen, for the criminial indictment surprise.

Such affirmative action as that taken with Pete Townsend is for purposes of communication only. The punishment, after all, is contained within the crime.

We attended midnight mass at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Forest Hills, the church I attended as a child, the altar I walked off of when, at the height my holiness, I was relievedly dismissed from being an altar boy, the pews where I shook my eyes and stared and, as all around my pinpoint focus went dark, I would launch into a trance.

During the midnight Christmas service, this church had a tungsten brightness hitherto unavailable during the 20th Century. The priests brought a porcelain child around the pews and landed it in a nest made of hay.

Caesar had called for a census that year, sending everyone back to their hometowns to be counted, during which life went on, children were born, one child even born in a manger, among the calves, there being no room at "the inn." Try counting him in your census. (Only Isaac Assimov's actuarial table would dare factor in such a mule.)

His life would run a spectrum starkly displayed in the church: To our left was a stable dotted with an angel, to the further left, a wood carving of a man hammered to a cross bookended by two kneeling women prayerfully gazing up at him. Relive this individual's human path, from the manger to the crucifix -- a lifespan of 33 years -- from Christmas, Dec. 25, 2002 until Good Friday, April 18, 2003.

Everything's lovely, while we're eating and chatting when suddenly, chomp, my sharpened molar severs a piece of my own big tongue. Yum. and the dabbed blood makes the paper towel smell like hamburger meat served mmm mmm rare... Seven hours later the puncture wound's cauterized at last.

This is why I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The day began at 7 when Diana called me on the phone. I gradually awakened from there with the usual washing and preparing, not only to attend my Uncle’s funeral in Suffolk County, but to be in formal attire for the Annual Christmas Party thrown by The Men’s Club of Forest Hills, of which my sister’s grammar school friend and my more recent close friend, Peter Vairo, is president and of which I am one of the Vice Presidents. I piled the tuxedo into the car and picked up some coffee and drove to Diana, warning her of my immanent arrival, as the time neared, well, 8:15… The low coolant light in the car went on and stayed on. I double parked in front of her apartment and rang the bell. Then I phoned and she said I’ll be right down and I said, I’ll be right up. I need gallons of water. When I arrived up there she asked if I knew from where the coolant was leaking. Leaking? I thought it was just low. Down by the car pouring in two gallons of water I noticed the green fluid from the front. I saw dripping after I poured in the water, probably because I missed. It took my eye a while to catch the glint of the steady stream creating the green puddle on the street. Meanwhile a thousand guys, at least, were lined up along the block across the street, not for some parole program, but to take the fireman’s exam. How wonderful. I called Diana to say I was driving to the repair shop, the Three Amigos on Attorney Street. Oh, I called them first. Eduardo accepted my request for an invitation to come right over. When I then called Diana she said she was coming down and coming with me. We loaded her formal wear for later that evening along with mine hanging in the back. We were then driving to the shop, maybe twenty-five blocks away, and the low coolant light went on again and Diana noticed she had forgotten her ring. It was our engagement ring. I was wearing the wedding band her grandmother had worn. Her ring was the engagement ring my grandmother had worn. We would get it later. In fact, I said I didn’t have to take her to the repair shop but she said it was fine. Eduardo, pulling the wire of a plugged-in lantern, immediately located the leak in a hose covered with a plastic slinky wrap. I thought the slinky wrap was the hose and it sure looked terrible. I was about to open the radiator cap to release the pressure and get him started with the repair and he said no and Diana said no and he became emotional about the burn scars he still had on his arm. He went off to work on another car. I opened the radiator cap and left it on the radiator. Then we sat back in the car for coffee and a pecan ring. I called my mother’s portable phone, no answer, and then my sister called me. I just said what was happening and that I’d call them back. I stressed to Eduardo and then began conversing about the details, we are going to a funeral. Yeah, it was my father’s younger brother. He was driving a bus in June and it was lymphoma that made him appear like he had a rapid decline from Alzheimer’s. Two weeks ago I was at the residence where he kept saying “We got the wrong kid.” He must have thought he had a disabled boy who needed to be on another bus in order to get home, but it made sense to me, God, you got the wrong kid. What are you doing to this guy? What is he doing to himself? He retired from being a shoe salesman. His wife and constant companion, Diana, died 10 years ago and he wanted other work, so, until June of his seventy-fifth year, he was driving disabled children to and from school. The night before the funeral at the wake we saw his beautiful picture against the yellow background of his Bus Operator ID card. Talking to Eduardo, I only got up until the lymphoma diagnosis. The pipe was replaced (oh, you don’t wear goggles during welding – no. I close my eyes.). I gave him 60 when he asked for 45 and we were off, to the apartment to pick up the ring.

Through the Midtown Tunnel and off to Suffolk we went. Diana knew Pine Lawn but when I spoke to Monica she said St. Charles, but that’s a part of Pine Lawn. There’s even a Pine Lawn Road which runs through a military cemetery. Over the tracks we made a right. We were there before the funeral procession. They came in, after others came in, got in front of us, we followed and they stopped. My cousin Anthony was in the big white family truck/van in front of us. I walked past him to my parent’s car to say hello after tossing the coffee bag in the trash across the lawn divided roadway. I told him about my engagement to Diana and suggested I get her and he got out instead. We were talking for a minute. They shared Huntington in common. She grew up there; he was raising his family there. They knew the same places. This cemetery was actually nearby. We would put a wreath on her mother’s grave in the St. Pat’s cemetery after the burial. Again, the conversation didn’t get that far. When next we looked the procession was gone. They had just vanished. I called Monica after we followed Anthony around the chapel and she described being at a place exactly where we were. Lots 23 and 23 met as signs at an intersection. Then she said she also saw lots 110 and 43, which made no sense. There were plenty of other processions, some of which were stopped at the chapel and it was possible I could have asked a garden truck if it didn’t accelerate away from us in front of us… Oh, I had many ideas, like ask someone in the chapel when Diana kept saying, the only place to ask is administration. Yes, everyone in the chapels was preoccupied with the newness of the place and what had brought them there. Someone designed the chapels in a circle like slices in a round cake. I ran around the chapel circle. Each time I came to another chapel I thought I’d gone fully around. There must have been seven slices in that chapel cake. There was a big cross on the top. On the phone with Monica it was clear that from where she was, the chapel cross was nowhere in sight. When I got back in the car Diana was on the phone talking to the switchboard operator who was apparently on site in the cemetery. When I got on the phone she put me on hold until a man picked up who had no idea what I was talking about. I said, “Put the operator back on,” she got back on and after a moment I handed the phone back to Diana. I took the turn back to administration so that the operator could actually see us out of the switchboard operator window. We’re the gray Ace Ventura-dented car. She told us by sight what to do. Turn to a completely different section where of course we came upon the lot 23/lot 23 intersection signs, and a scrawled sign hammered in the ground saying this way to lot 110. Come to think of it, the word before the numbers was always “Section,” not “lot.” The burial was done. All they did, they with the casket, after removing it from the black 1960s style Station Wagon, was leave it on wood beams over the open grave. All the flowers are laid around it including the ones Diana had sent from us. We said our Hail Mary over the casket as the rain lightly drizzled and poor cousin Anthony was still in his van, and as the funeral procession left, my parents also remained behind. Then I ran to my parent’s car, which also held Monica in the back seat. Next stop, Miller Ridge Inn. Follow us. OK. Then Anthony who was waiting for us gave us instructions how to get there and bid us “farewell” because he had to return to his wife and children. My father took us out of the cemetery and made a turn into Welbranch or some such horrible Dickensian name for the welfare district of Suffolk. Diana said it was hopeless and had me call them to follow us. She called the Miller Ridge Inn for general instructions and then used her general long Island sense developed over the years to figure out which direction was West on a sunless cloudy rainy day. Eventually we reached 110 and the Long Island Expressway but not without the passage of an inexplicable amount of time. We quickly thereafter arrived at the Inn, Long Island’s Christmas Central. The shops, the tree, the fireplace, the clean food smell -- a lovely luncheon followed during which we heard about what we’d missed. My Uncle, Tony Dizozza’s grandchild, also Diana, chose Revelations Chapter 21 and Psalm 48. Never, said the priest, had he read these at a funeral, and asked who chose the passages. Her parents must have proudly referred the congregation to their daughter, Uncle Tony’s granddaughter. She is only 15 and during her free time participates as an imaginary delegate for India in an after-school Junior UN. Then I read through her father’s, Tony’s son-in-law’s, eulogy. He recalled the barbecue where he met Cathy at their house and of the love between Tony and his wife, Diana. Clichés like All You Need is Love began to be part of larger sentences. You don’t need material things to have a family meeting place, because that’s what their home in far off Brentwood was to us growing up, we’d go there once a month and Tony would barbecue and Diana would be making food in the kitchen. The house was a mirror image to the houses around it, except for those enormous hedges, but to create a place of warmth, welcome and abundance, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, and they had that magic formula running smoothly throughout our childhood. Then there was Diana’s bout with cancer and by then, we were no longer making those long family trips through the traffic to visit, and I never visited my Aunt Diana. All this came tumbling upon me as I realized how I hadn’t thought of this in years and perhaps never would have. I was grateful to have visited Tony before he died. The whole pointlessness of existence came tumbling down and I cried. I don’t know why, but I did have a good feeling because of the love they had, and it was hard to find other comparisons. Most hosts make for material abundance, and there’s that, too, but first, and another cliché finishes the sentence, THERE MUST BE LOVE. I don’t know where this leaves me, for I have buried love in irony and sarcasm. Diana is willing to go where I have allowed no person to go before, because I was sure the person who went there would just as quickly leave there, and that is no longer my experience.

Next we left the party -- all were delighted by our engagement announcement -- and proceeded to a nursery in Huntington. Diana had an idea for a floral arrangement for my grandmother and the young lady from FIT who worked there and who had created Uncle Tony’s Flower Basket created it precisely to her specifications. She also made a lavender ribbon for the wreath we chose. We picked out a few red and green leaved plants for my mother. That and an eight-foot bead for the Christmas tree amounted to 175. I missed the calculating as I was off getting v stands for the cemetery wreath, also missing the paying of it. We visited Joan’s grave. I thanked Joan for creating such a wonderful person and for having her after already having five children. She had a beautiful lavender grave with an inscription Diana wrote, Let the heavens ring with laughter, an angel is welcomed home… oh, that’s an inaccurate paraphrase… I wondered if we’d find a fully sculpted Celtic cross amidst the old tombstones. Her mother looks out over the entire valley of graves. The darkness was falling rapidly upon us. We drove to my parents because my mother brought my grandmother there for the evening. We call my grandmother Nanny. We presented nanny with the flowers and showed her the beauty of her ring on Diana’s finger. After dressing, we went to the community house where everyone welcomed Diana and we had a lovely time, even though I forgot it was a bring your own bottle affair. Maybe I just thought the idea of drinking was completely unnecessary. They do, after all, serve a constant flow of sparkling wine. Peter Vairo poured us a smooth cabernet. Everything worked out well.

I will continue to confront dormant emotions. I went home to sleep. Dreams of people politely suggesting I not perform as I was searching the world just to get to them, arriving late, unprepared, alone… It was a big school with many locked entrances and exits. There was a tremendous audience laughing raucously at the act performing before me. I was supposed to perform Prepare to Meet Your Maker. The two impresarios took issue with my telling the story of Isis and Osiris suggesting that the conservative administration would not approve. I was a mess. Oh, I was walking around in my bed sheets.

One of the controversial events Tyr Throne instigated occurred nearly three years ago at his Duane Street Dance Loft, which was, since then, lost or rather returned into the domain of the building's property owners. Tyr negotiated a 10 year 2,000 a month lease for the loft and by the end of the term other lofts there were renting for 16,000.

Last night we were deciphering the Prepare to Meet Your Maker performance history for suggestions of where it will next go. The performance that Tyr stressed was most worth screening was the one he called the Rimshot performance because that was the one in which he told everyone to improvise freely, and, we could see when we started watching the performance, folowing a long and shocking process of figuring out which tapes it was on, that the 11 castmembers entering the stage 'round midnight on Friday, December 10th, 1999, were clearly "in their cups," milling about with drinks in their hands like guests at a cocktail party. (The exception, I believe, was Chris West. I was delighted to see how outrageous Chris became during the performance because when he first entered the screen he was clearly holding a water bottle.)

What a window into the past was this tape. To Tyr's credit -- and it is sometimes a chore to suggest to some people that there is anything to his credit, when there is, in fact, a lot -- he directed us to perform the show within an imaginary cone. He placed the camera on the front and center aisle. We filled the flat frame picture with action. This is a rather effective idea. Only cast action is within the video frame. When we moved back (upstage)we had plenty of area but when we moved closer toward the audience we imagined we were moving into the funnel tip of a cone.

So, thanks to a VHC camera that was already 7 years old at the time, we viewed the chaotic festivity; and everyone was, in a word, rambunctious.

Remember MASH (1970)? It was on TV the night before, and I imagined the chaos of being there versus the pleasure of watching it. I'm talking about the conditions that appear to have actually existed during the filming.

Onto the personal ego element of realization. I saw myself playing Quasimodo, the lead role, in the videotape. In case you don't know, I'm a skinny fellow. I weighed 130 and looked kind of frightening and, well, like we were saying about John Candy and early Jim Carey, I'm acting almost like a whore for the comedy. Why is the implication contained in that statement encouraging to the audience? Actually, I'm miles away from my inner whore. Since when do I have dignity? Elegance is incidental. Children forgive me, your shameless, issueless father.

My last performance as Quasimodo was in December of 1999.
Tony Hightower took over at the height of the PTMYM popularity, as you may also know, but even before, the Tyr Throne backlash was clearly formenting, something that concerns me still, since it is pressure from many sides that suggests I break off involvement with him, and I once again affirm the benefits of his company. By the way, Tyr benefits from interaction with Gabrielle Roth, who must be quite an inspiring person. He called the Prepare to Meet Your Maker script "a map." He believes in shocking people into aliveness. I do, too.

Actors get the benefit of learning from their participation in the organized social interaction that is their script.

Audiences get the benefit of kernals of inspiration from observing from a safe distance a disorganized mess.

An expose' on the inner workings of the meme infested brain of Peter Dizozza.

Ah, the words of that great songwriter, David Byrne, come back to me as I open these pistachios...
"They say animals (ana muls) are hairy. They're living on nuts and berries." mmm, good. More nuts, more berries.

I love the moment, "Some people don't know... shit about the Ayyyyyyyyyyer." ( from "Air" on that live four sided talking heads album, the one where he coughs out, "mee mow mow, mama me mow mow.") I also love the song on there about "The Book I Read was in your Eyes." Is that the one with the chant, "wash that love away"? I think so. There is happiness in discovering that one's yelping can be pleasing.

It helps to have easy access to music, but there is a glut on the market, I think in all areas of US culture, disposable hundredmilliondollarmovies, more music than I can listen to in a weekend, in fact, why don't I a) listen to more music, b) see more movies, d) watch more TV shows, e) attend more live shows... I don't now and when I did, well, I was very controlling of the circustances under which I did. I enjoy my own material, it's full of illuminating surprises... I want an audience. Come on, I want to BE an audience. What if I told you I only write to fill what's lacking in what's already out there? It's true. I've gotta get more pistachios.

Art is my consolation. Trash it if you must. Our value system is askew, and I would dare to willingly profit from that.... I'm currently paying 120 a month for it, oh Time Warner Cable, would it were provided to me for free.

A friend faxed the inheritance letter from South Africa, she's the lucky recipient and if she doesn't claim it, it reverts to the South African Government, those scoundrels, of 25 Million Dollars!!! Then comes the letter from Canada requesting a transfer of 6500 in administration fees. They'll even loan her the money.

I get something intangibly helpful from entertainment, but it's helpful for me as an entertainer. We are experiencing a glut from good entertainers. In fact, when I hear inspiring music I want to and actually start to write. That's not self motivation. That's the bandwagon. But everything arises out of something else, it's just some things only affect a few of us.

We all know that Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but can you imagine calling The Crown Prince of Denmark a pretty nice boy? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. He is.

I'm listening to songs by Serge Gainsborough (thank you, Adam Green). Randy Newman (thank you, Brian Wayne) and Ben Folds (thank you, Kenny Davidsen).

All right, I saw the Palestinian film. There was formerly a British Colony, whose contract expired in the 1940's, called Palestine.

There was also once a country called Lebanon.

Moving right along, there was also a performance last night at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of songs from Johnny Johnson by Paul Green and Kurt Weill. We caught the last four pieces. What beautiful music!

I adopt Mr. Suleiman's suggestion of a world without borders. Does that mean I let people walk into my apartment at will? Yes, and they do not. They have their own lives to lead. Better we work together. Everything I have and am are yours!

The New York Film Festival is in its fortieth year! The panel respects the right of expression. Last night we saw a comedy produced by an auteur from Palestine.

I'm taking atenolol. And tegretal, a name I just made up because I never heard it before, is actually a name for another medication. Try it sometime. Make up something believable, or even unbelievable, and, surprise, it already exists.

Yeah, I'm actually feeling quite weird regarding my heart's ability to palpitate uncontrollably in a uselessly short-circuited rhythm. What's the sequence? Oh, forget it. I'm taking tegretal. Also, I lost my keys out of the hole in my jacket. Also, I managed to have a superhoot with no one there. I had a good set. Other people were there staying after the act before or waiting for the act after and I received 20 dollars in tips for a half hour set. Your events are what you make them, and sometimes more. I disappointed Fenton Lawless who came out for the superhoot. Apparently there was no 10:30 act so there was dead space from 10:30 until 11. That's what I get for leaving during the prior act. I'm on jury duty, too. The criminal cases are fascinating, but stupid! A rich callgirl cocaine afficianado calls his DEA friends when someone tries to extort from him, the other two I know less of... One involved asking the prospective jury the question, Do you have any reservations about the gypsy people or, as they are called, Gypsies???? Then one about an eccentric memorabilia collector who may have been robbed by a long haired lanky friend.

I'm transferring notes from a piece of paper, one step from being refuse, to the electronic media! Having just jumped from the michaeldouglas.blogspot I will proceed with the Goethe/Lange Werther quotes: Stir within me sensations of love, joy, rapture and delight, which I already possess, though otherwise dormant. I must already possess them for you to be able to make me feel them, because you cannot make happy he who stands before you cold and indifferent. -- that's quite a paraphrase. Werther was leaving the company of a prince to return to his principle obsession/love interest, the married Charlotte (She gives me access to all I possess.).

Here are some of his problems with the prince:

And now, here he is, talking only of things which he has either read or heard of, and always from the point of view from which they have been represented by others, it's The Prince!

I lose patience when, glowing with imagination, I express my feelings about art and nature and he, thinking to be especially understanding, spoils everything with his cliches!

Finally, "I have heard of a noble race of horses that instinctively bite open a vein when they are hot and exhausted by a long run, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein to gain everlasting liberty for myself."

(Paraphrases and quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), translated by Victor Lange (1949).

nothing nothing nothing monumental momentary clarity nothing nothing repeat repeat repeat repeat

Moods are off kilter tonight.

The words that reduce me to tears, sung by composer Kate Bush, are "I just know that something good is going to happen. I don't know when, but just SAYING it can even make happen."

"Comfort ye, my people."