clouds (and Sam Shepard)
I refuse to admit I had a crush on Sam Shepard. I kept a distant eye on him over the years, mostly because I was mistaken--twice--for Jessica Lange.
Once, in 1996 a women with a strong Korean accent followed me down Broadway until I finally stopped and explained that I wasn't who she thought I was and when she refused to be deterred ("My husband very big fan! Very big!"), I panicked and signed the slip of paper she thrust into my hands. With my own signature.
And the second time, more recently, at the top of Union Square Park, I responded with a friendly New Yorker I'm-happy-to-direct-you-poor-lost-souls-from-Minnesota smile to a middle-aged couple who flagged me down with their subway map. The women told me that her husband (apparently the guy sheepishly toeing the ground next to us) was a big fan and asked me give them an autograph. I demurred instantly. "I'm not sure who you think I am, but I'm not anyone," and I started to put my ear buds back in. When they told me they thought I was Jessica Lange, I laughed--we ended up all laughing--since I bear no real resemblance to the remarkable Ms. Lange.
Mostly I'm telling you this because it occurs to me that I've been musing quite a bit about change and death and transition, so I'm worried that maybe you'll think I only have morbid thoughts. The title about clouds could be a bit of a bait and switch. Except that they are part of this musing of mine, in that they are part of the fascinating landscape of change, and Sam and Jessica are part of it because he wrote, on the start of his nearly-thirty-year relationship with her, "I know even this will change." How much I resist that! How I dig in my heels at the very thought! How I want to savor and hang on to the good stuff!
On days when I'm supposed to be writing, I'm sometimes sitting around watching the clouds. Since I haven't done that since I was a little kid, it's taken on a whole new meaning. The clouds gather up in bundles, they stack up into storms, they clear out; they are completely impervious to me. When the conditions are right--also having nothing to do with me--it rains. Those clouds carry a great reminder about experience generally. When the conditions are right, the sky is clear or it's stormy. I cannot take the weather personally.
What is it with these reminders of transience that I seem to be pondering so much lately? Even stories--was it really so long ago that woman chased me down the street for an autograph?--are made more precious by their fleeting place in our history. My joints creak a little, the seasons change again, my kids' noses nuzzling into my neck have become my grandkids' noses and then when I was I was determined to never make another memorial commentary, Sam Shepard died, damnit.
"If you love something, know that it will leave on a day that you are far from ready." From Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk by Kathleen Rooney
