death of a playgoer

I was just about to make a promise I know I cannot keep.


I was about to promise this was my last post with "death" in the title. But that would have been a lie.


I have been obsessed with death since I was at least four. When my brother and I moved our mother out of her last house, I found an Irish Linen stationery pad. The pages were littered with the scrawl of a 4-year old writing his first two stories.


The first was about Dr. Bunny, who owned a dummy bunny. He spilled grape juice on the dummy and left on vacation. The police looked in the window and saw the dead "Dr. Bunny." They arrested the housekeeper for murder and electrocuted her. The end.


The second was about a boy whose mother baked him a rabbit-shaped cake for his fourth birthday (a somewhat more autobiographical tale). During the night, the cake bunny made a wish to be a live cake bunny. The cake bunny fairy godmother (apparently, it is a very specialized union) granted the wish. The cake bunny was attacked by rats, who devoured it. The end.


In the 1950s, the stories were prized as imaginative. In the 2000s, the child would be popped into years of therapy until he climbed a clock tower to settle scores.


But that is not the real topic of this post. Last Friday I scheduled dinner with Cynthia and Mike -- as you all know. I thought I was supposed to attend a performance of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman -- not one of my favorite plays -- on that same evening. "Attention must be paid" may be a fine sentiment, but a full play it does not make.


I started looking around for someone who might want to warm my season seat and who is not prone to being depressed by the turgid prose of Mr. Marilyn Monroe. It was just as well that I could not find anyone who met both criteria -- because my ticket was for the prior Friday.

That chronological handicap was consistent with another incident last week. In a meeting, I told my colleagues that we needed to get to work on revising some projections before the end of the year because we only had three months left. They just stared at me. I thought the current month was October.


As my time in Oregon begins to wind down, I suspect that I will have a few more of these time warps. And for those of you who said I did not need a list, this is why I need one.


Near the end of Annie Hall, Alvy and Annie, after breaking up, are dividing up their books. Alvy pulls out a copy of Denial of Death and nostalgically reminds Annie that it was the first book he bought her. She responds: "Right. Geez, I feel like there's a great weight off my back."


I have always loved that scene. Maybe this move I will be able to toss several of those books in the box that remains in the past -- just like Dr. Bunny and the gnawed cake bunny.