#TBT Happy Anniversary, "Widow Maker"

I didn't realize it until Facebook reminded me. But today is an anniversary for me.

July 23, 2010 my 36th and final radiation treatment for head and neck cancer. Surgery had left me without a tonsil, a jugular vein, or the ability to raise my right arm above my shoulder. Chemo had shut down my immune system. I was so weak from radiation, my legs were almost useless. I could wobble to the bathroom to puke or to the car to endure the agonizing ride back to the Markey Cancer Center. The outside of my neck was burned black. The inside of my throat cooked to the point that sipping water felt like gulping ground glass. I woke up so Mrs P could feed me or wash me or give me pills. I wrote. Saw guests. Wrestled with God. And I was getting sweatier and dizzier by the hour. Death had been coming to me in my Percocet flooded dreams for weeks. That morning, he took his best shot.

Saddle Embolus. "The Widow Maker"

My doc ordered a CT scan after that day's treatment to look for a reason for my erratic blood pressure. That's when they found it. They rushed me to the ER, and started pumping me full of Heparin: the nuclear option when you are trying to blow up a blood clot. The Pulmonary specialist's first words to me were, "You are a damned lucky man. You have Saddle Embolus, a clot we call "The Widow Maker." I later learned that her kill rate is 80%. I had been living with 50/50 odds of living till Christmas. Suddenly I had a 2 in 10 chance of seeing the next click of the second hand.

The clots formed deep in my legs: Deep Vein Thrombosis, a result of treatment and weeks of lying in bed, stoned on pain killers. One clot, a big one had broken loose and gone on a little riverboat cruise up the Inferior Vena Cava, through my heart, (Sweet Jesus, through my heart!) and hung up at the fork where the pulmonary artery feeds blood into the lungs. It became a dam in the river, keeping blood from getting to my lungs. Had it been a millimeter larger, had another clot followed up behind it, it would have completely blocked my circulatory system. It would have killed me faster than I can type its name.

Now, maybe you don't believe in miracles. Maybe you believe in coincidence or good luck or just random events that come and go for no particular reason, but whatever you believe in you can believe this. Five years ago today, Death pressed his boney nose right up to mine, stared me cold in the eyes, and just as our lips were about to touch, he changed his mind. He pulled away, whispered something in my ear, and stepped back out the door. What he said was a secret between him and me. What he did changed me forever.

Five years. Recovery. Depression. Weight loss. Muscle gain. Crawling, walking, running, racing. Depression. The YMCA. Two full marathons. A Divorce. A nervous breakdown. Therapy. Friendship. Playing King Lear. Becoming a teacher. And tonight. Oh my gracious God, tonight...

Abner Dillon: Investor, Optimist, and Joyful Dreamer

July 23, 2015 I am opening as Abner in an Equity production of 42nd STREET in my own home town. I am part of something that is the polar opposite of death. Today, I play a tiny part in making decades of dreams come true for hundreds of people. Five years ago, I was a dead man. But today I am again what I always have been in my heart. Today I am a professional actor.

There is a classic speech in 42nd STREET. Peggy Sawyer has been pulled out of the chorus to replace the injured star. It is her first night on Broadway. The moment is part of the mythology of the American stage, but it isn't just about show business. Director Julian Marsh's words to her are for everyone who has ever had to choose between giving up and going on; between playing it safe and risking everything. This is what life is about, in or out of the theatre...

Now listen and listen hard. One hundred people. One hundred jobs. One hundred thousand dollars. Five weeks of grind and blood and sweat. And it all depends on what you do out there tonight. Oh, I know what you're thinking. Here comes March with another one of his pep talks. Well, this is the last of them, Sawyer, and it comes straight from the heart. Our hopes, our futures, our lives are in your hands. Go out there and make them shine with your golden talent!

Sawyer, you're going out there a youngster but you've got to come back a star!

You're damn right I believe in miracles; I am one. I don't just believe in God's grace; I have it flowing through my veins. I believe that my life kept squeezing past that lump of clotted blood so that five years later I could say this to you:

There is no last chance in this life. There is no such place as hopeless. No such thing as an impossible dream. Your life is more important and more valuable than you will ever understand. You're going to want to quit a thousand times, But I promise you, there are blessings ahead of you beyond anything you can ask or imagine. As long as you have life in you, use it to reach for the stars.

Whatever role you are playing today, wherever the next scene turns out to be on your life's stage...

Break a leg, kid.

Love,
Pennsy

The Week We Changed Everything

Hundreds of people I know and love share a dream. In the next seven days, it starts coming true.

 

Since I came from New York to work at Actors' Guild of Lexington in 1995, many of us have dreamed about that elusive next level: a real professional theatre for adult audiences. Over the ensuing years, artists and producers have tried and failed to make that dream a lasting reality. A stream of talent flowed to other cities for opportunities that our town could not offer. Many who remained came to doubt that Lexington would ever support a local professional company. Seven days from now, we won't need those doubts any longer. 

The Lexington Theatre Company has assembled a company of national and regional professional artists, and blended them with local singers, dancers, designers, and actors to produce 42nd STREET: a classic American musical about hope, hard work, and the way a big enough dream can change everything. I didn't think they could do it. I didn't think I could be a part of it. 

I have never been prouder of being wrong. 

When a friend told me about auditions, I dismissed the idea. "They are seeing people all over the country. They won't cast anyone from here." I said I didn't want to be a bit player to a bunch of put of town ringers. But the truth was, after all these years as a big fish in a small pond, I didn't believe I had the chops to hang with real pros. I was wrong about them, and about myself.

I was invited to audition for a supporting role, after the nationwide search didn't produce anyone the director liked for the part. She gave me a fair hearing; I showed my best stuff, and I got the call later that day. Pre-production was as well organized as any I was associated with in New York. When the cast list came out, I realized I would be on stage with people I had only read about. I arrived at the first rehearsal in a kind of fearful awe. But as I looked around the room I saw other familiar, less famous faces. Performers I had watched grow up at SCAPA. Designers whose sets I had built and whose lights I had played under. A stage manager I first met in the heat of the June sun at the Arboretum. And a director who had grown up in Lexington, paid her dues in regional theaters, and climbed all the way to the Broadway stage before bringing her talented husband and their dream back to her home town. 

Our home town. 

These weren't carpetbaggers. These were Kentucky producers who believed that our city, our artists, and our audiences were ready to work with the pros. And guess what? They were right. 

I have spent the past week sitting on the house slack-jawed as nationally known performers crafted their roles. And right beside them, Kentucky's own were dancing, singing, earning laughs, and perfecting stage fights. These young people are learning lessons about the profession that they will never forget.  I know they are, because I am. 

Our theatre community has the opportunity of a lifetime here. We have so many smart, talented, hard-working people. There is no question about our passion or our willingness to sacrifice. What we lack is a true flagship organization: a locally grown leader that can put us on the map, and help point the way toward making our city a professional home for all kinds of artists. 

Look, I'm not a glamorous actor. I have always preferred grit to glitter and substance to spectacle. I know I'm not going to make my living as a song-and-dance man in Broadway musicals. I'm an Off-Broadway kind of guy. But I also know that you can't have Off-Broadway without Broadway. 

The people who make theatre in Lexington are my family. And I believe my family needs this company to succeed. I hope you will support the LEX however you can. I hope you see the show. I hope you talk it up. I hope you share this post. And I hope that 20 years from now, I will remember this week with pride and say, "That was the moment that this city decided to go for the brass ring. And together, we changed everything."

Click here to learn more about the show, the company, and ways you can buy tickets to be there when we take our first step together.

Into the Woods

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. (Henry David Thoreau. Walden: Or Life in the Woods.) 

I know of no better cure for the melancholy of lonesomeness than a walk in the woods. Here in the Bluegrass, it is our good fortune to have just such a place only a few minutes from downtown Lexington. At the Raven Run Nature Sanctuary, our city has wisely set aside 734 acres of wildlands as a nature sanctuary for plants, animals, and the dramatic geology of this stretch of the palisades along the Kentucky river. The trees and meadows are home to all kinds of bug, bird, reptile, amphibian and mammal. But Raven Run's 10 miles of hiking trails are also a sanctuary for human critters. Although I have only recently begun to explore them, these ridges, rivulets and meadows are quickly becoming sacred places to me.

The first time I went to these woods, I was caught in a dark mood that threatened to slip into one of the depressive episodes that I have managed to stave off for so many months. "The woods," I thought, "will be a good place to go, sit on a log, and have a good cry until all this sadness is wrung out of me." 

 
I was disappointed to find the parking lot packed with cars that Sunday afternoon. The sun was blazing, but as I searched for a spot, it seemed to me that hundreds of people must be filling the shady trails. I feared I might never find the solitude that my planned catharsis required. I soon discovered that the woods of Raven Run are lovelier, darker, and deeper than I expected.

The sanctuary sprawls up and down hollows and hills, with trails that ascend to ridge lines and trace along beside the many tributaries that feed into the Kentucky River to the east. Minimal construction has left the woods pristine, and those few bridges, stairs, and railings that are necessary are built so unobtrusively that the almost seem like organic parts of the landscape. It wasn't long before I had managed to hike down into a lonely valley where I could no longer see or hear any of my fellow humans up the trail. I found a suitable resting place, and sat down to sob.

And the damnedest thing happened. 

My head filled with the musty fragrance of moss and the decaying forest floor. I heard a strange brushing sound overhead, and turned my gaze upward to see an aging cedar, gently bending in the wind, rubbing on his neighbor for support. Below me, a tiny stream chattered over the rocks and logs that had tumbled into its path. And somewhere in the distance, I am sure I heard the scolding cry of one of the great black birds from whom these hills take their name. And there in the shadows, hidden from the glare of the high summer sun, I found myself breathing deeply and easily, without the slightest inclination to shed tears. The sweet earthy air, the music of the trees, the cool water had all conspired to create such a sense of serenity in me that I felt not just refreshed; I felt redeemed. 

 
My father introduced me to the woods of Western Pennsylvania when I was a boy, and it wasn't long before I felt his calming spirit settle down on the log next to me. I am never in the trees long without him, and on that mystical, healing afternoon, he came to me with the same comforting presence that he always had when he was alive. I could sense his quiet breath beside me, and the warmth of his arm as it rested across my shoulders. It's been more than 20 years since I bowed over his coffin and kissed his face for the last time, but there in the woods, I could smell the tobacco stained fingers as they gave my neck a squeeze.

We did not speak. We hardly ever do any more. No need. After a few more moments, we rose and walked together under the green canopy: father and son striding confidently through the branches, smiling quietly to ourselves as the great black birds scolded over our heads.

The Integrity of Ambivalence

Ridha Ridha “Normal Ambivalence”

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15, NRSV)

Honesty is telling the truth—in other words, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words... This requires an integrated character, a oneness, primarily with self but also with life. (Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, pp. 195–196).

A beloved preacher used to say, "We are living in the In-Between-Times." He was speaking of our place in the unfolding Biblical narrative: between Gospel and Revelation; creation and reconciliation; light and shadow.We live in an age of ambivalence.

The past week's news is packed with affirmation of his message. A mass murderer receives mercy from the families of his victims. A nation of equals is forced to confront the racism brewing just beneath the surface of even our best intentions. A law designed to protect the weakest among us barely survives a relentless assault by the strongest. And finally, a day of great celebration and great grief over the affirmation of a love that so many people find to be hateful.

Frank Gorshen as Bele of Cheron
(Star Trek, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield")

As it is with our world, so it has been in my life this week. Almost daily, I have found that my actions are not consistent with my principles. At times, my principles have not even seemed consistent with each other. I want to serve, but grasp at praise and approval. I shed tears of compassion for suffering  neighbors, then cut them to the heart with sharp words.

There is something comic in Paul's struggle to articulate the conflict. "I do not do what I want to do... I do do what I do not want to do..." Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo. Comic? Yes, but like all true comedy, there is pain behind the laughter. Who among us has not experienced the gap between the person we are, and the person we want to be? The shame of actions that fall short of principles?  haven't we all whispered in spirit, Paul's prayer, "[Wretch] that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7: 24)

I'd like to offer an easy answer. I wish I knew the magic words to comfort a devoted mother who lashes out at her demanding child, or a shame-filled son who obediently pees in a bottle so his father can pass a drug test. What peace there would be in whispering away my own conflicted feelings of love and anger; desire and apprehension.

Disintegration of Earth, (Sebikus)

How do such deeply flawed people walk in integrity through a disintegrated world?

For Paul, the comfort comes from God's Grace and the promise of Glory yet to come. And that would be a perfect answer if we were  standing in the perpetual light of Heaven. But we live in the cracks of the In-Between-Time. What are we supposed to do until our story ends happily ever after? What's the secret?

Maybe by undertaking the difficult task of forgiveness: offered, sought, and accepted. And by showing kindness and mercy to ourselves: the most difficult task of all. Believing that our failure is not final. Ambivalence is not the end of hope. 

There is something seductive about a Heaven of black and white. Heaven knows, plenty of people have grown rich and powerful peddling such a place. And maybe one day we will live there. But until then, we can only do our best to be our best in the world we have: a world of light and shadow where all the boundaries are gray. This is not a time for indignant, easy answers. This is a time for compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. This is the In-Between-Time.

If I've Seemed a Bit Weepy Lately...

Courage

The doctors left the port in her chest, so that she wouldn't need a new IV every time she got a chemo treatment. Some days, her left arm is so weak, she can hardly bend her elbow. Last week,they told her that the disease was not responding, and is much worse than they thought. She needs radical surgery, but they can't do it until she is stronger. She works out as if her life depends on it. Which, in a way, it does. I was spotting her in the weight room this week. Shoulder press with dumbbells. Hard for anybody. Nearly impossible for her. Our faces were inches apart when I saw the tear roll down her left cheek, same side as the tumor. "It hurts." "What hurts?" I asked quickly. You don't take pain lightly in my business. "Everything." I was about to stop her, then my glace fell to her jaw. It was set steel cable tight. "Two more reps," she growled, her lips barely moving. She ground two more presses out like an NFL linebacker, then dropped the weights to the floor, leaned into my chest, and soaked my shirt with tears of courage.

Thanksgiving

He was my best friend for a long time. A class mate. An ordained minister. A Christian education director. A flamboyant, joyful man, trapped behind the barely latched closet door that his church forced him to hide in. He was the one who reassured me that in spite of my curiosity, artistic temperament, and unsettling dreams, I was most definitely not a homosexual. One night, just after Thanksgiving break, he passed a joint and rubbed his eyes dry with the heel of his hand as he told me about coming out to his fireplug of an ex-Marine father. He trembled in fear as the old man smoked quietly for a long time, finally breaking the silence when he asked, "Ok. So, what is it that you do, exactly?" They talked long past midnight, gradually unpacking fears, truths, and a couple of stories about life in Greenwich Village in the 70's that still make me cringe. My friend was prepared to be disowned. Instead, he found a father's confused, but unconditional love. By the time he finished telling me about it, we were both crying tears of gratitude, cross-legged on the floor of his dorm room.

Bear Hug

The week before your first Marathon is not the time to discover a lump in the shower. No time for this shit right now. That Sunday, he broke four hours, and hoped the nub would go away. Three months later, he joined the 1%: only 2200 men are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. "Lucky me."  In spite of his initial denial, the docs said that they caught it early. Minor surgery seemed successful, but left enough doubt room for error that several rounds of chemo followed. Hair loss. Sunken eyes. Disappearing muscles. See-saw emotions. Weight gain. "Less than a year ago, I finished a marathon. Now I have to stop and rest when I walk to the john. I have to run again You have to help me run again." "I'm only a trainer," I told him the day we met. "I can't take a step for you. But as long as you're willing to run, I'll run beside you." For months, he was always early to class. inundating me with questions about nutrition, and exercise. He banged out reps in the weight room. Rocked the rowing machine. Made the stationary bikes hum. Soaked the treadmill belt with sweat before the rest of us were even warmed up. He was dragging through the front doors as I was clocking out after teaching an aerobics class this morning. "What's with you?" I ribbed. "You look like you've been pulling a plow." He glanced around the lobby with a weary sparkle, as if to be certain we were alone. "Last night. 3 miles in 32." Runners and cancer survivors: we have a shorthand all our own. We wrapped our arms around one another in the sunlit lobby: a big, back-slapping bear-hug that quickly became the kind of long embrace a proud father gives his son just before it's time to leave for college. "You son-of-a-bitch," I whispered. "Guess you'll have to run by yourself. I can't keep up with you now." He punched me in the arm, laughing. I was careful not to raise my head until I could duck into the men's room. I soaked a brown paper towel with salty pride.

Lessons from Coach Dad

Yesterday, I was asked to help a group of personal trainers at the West Side Y in New York City to  prepare themselves for leadership in the LIVESTRONG^® at the YMCA program. I doubt that anyone who has ever been a teacher will be surprised to hear that I learned a lot.

I told them my cancer story via a speaker phone . I've told it so many times that it has grown a little stale to me: the discovery; the preparation for treatment; the faithful, tireless support from my wife and my mom and my friends. How I didn't die. Started walking, running, fighting for my life. How finding the Y and the program gave me a source of focus and encouragement to achieve things I never thought possible.

Blah, blah, blah.

But I am not only a survivor, I am also a coach. I had something else to tell them. I told them that they were not ready.

They were not prepared for the tears they would shed as a room full of men and women told their stories of suffering and courage. How no PowerPoint presentation could get them ready for the miracles they would witness as victims became survivors and warriors and victors. And nothing on earth could prepare them for the funerals; for saying good bye to a heroic warrior whose battle had come to an end.

What advice could I offer them, these deeply compassionate, well-trained caregivers who were about to have their hearts broken with joy and sorrow on a daily basis? I told them to take care of themselves. To maintain professional boundaries. To never forget that their job, no matter how consuming or holy it might be, must never become their whole life. I told them to get their own workouts in. To stay in contact with friends. Read. Go to the movies. Go on dates. To have a life that mattered OUTSIDE the Y and the program.

It was good advice from a veteran of the cancer wars who had learned it the hard way. It is advice I need to take more seriously myself.

This Fathers Day one of the things I remember about the great man who was my Dad is that he did not take that advice either. He worked. He volunteered. He sacrificed. And he never did a damn thing to refresh himself or his own life's energy. He would have considered it selfish. He was 58 when he died. He maintained his automobiles with his own skilled, powerful hands, but drove his own tired body until the wheels fell off.

I guess my Dad taught me as much about being a Coach as my YMCA mentors did. Be a good steward of the God's gifts to you: your body, your mind, and your soul. Courage is a great virtue, but it only if you have the Strength to carry it out. Don't just do your best; BE your best.

So thank you Coach Melissa, for inviting me to help welcome the next generation of trainers into the program. Thank you to the five new trainers whose faces I never saw, but whose hearts and minds I did my best to reach through the wires. And thank you, Dad. In life, you taught me how important it is to serve. And in your death, you taught me the price of losing yourself, no matter how holy the work you are doing.

I'm going to imitate the best parts of you, and learn from the rest. It's the only way I can make sense of the way you lived, and the way you died. I think you'd be proud to know that you are helping cancer survivors learn to fight for life on the streets of Manhattan.

Because I sure am proud to have had you for my teacher. Thanks, Dad. Live Strong.

Resurrection

 Sunshine through the open bedroom window. A single robin giving thanks as a woodpecker digs for breakfast in the distance. 

I start to say a prayer, but we need no words. We have both come back from the dead. 

The gospel of Life is Love. You are bathed in blessings, my neighbor and friend; baptized in the glorious, gratuitous sunlight of Easter morning. Open your window, your heart, your hands; catch a blessing. Then pass it on. 

Happy Easter from Pennsyltucky.