At Last

How do things end? I made a whole career out of writing very short “Thoughts.” But where does a thought end? For years, I’d been jotting down various ideas. They could be a new form of literature. But every such form must have some structure, and a crucial dimension would be its length. Looking through all those I’d written thus far, I found that none was longer than sixteen words. So, I gave myself just one more word, “for emergencies,” and set a maximum limit of seventeen words – but no minimum.

But little did I know – when I published the first ten – that the list would grow until it reached ten thousand. I only stopped then, because I felt there must be a limit. But what should the last one say? After much agonizing, I finally settled on this for #10,000:

You are now leaving the Universe –
Please come again!

That took care of the epigrams. But something else I wanted to write was a play. I got my chance when I was awarded a Fellowship at what was called the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, in the mountains between Los Angeles and San Diego, where writers and artists could have a cabin to pursue some particular creative project. In order to qualify, I had to concoct a project, and said I was writing a play. Actually, I knew nothing about playwriting, so the first thing I had to do was study up on that craft. At a local bookstore, I found one book called Play Writing – How to Write for the Theater, by Bernard Grebanier. This turned out to be exactly what I needed. And the most important thing I learned – which seemed counter to what I had assumed – was that the climax of a good play does not come at the end, but somewhere around the middle. 

So, off I went to my mountain cabin, emerging weeks later with a finished play, which I called Begetting. The plot was based on my own life in Santa Barbara. The “hero” was a man named Sidney, who had a wife named Minerva. They were then in their 40s but had no children. And that was the nub of the plot – because Sidney has become obsessed with their childlessness. He wants to father a child, produced by an ordinary sexual process, which means finding a younger woman to be the mother.

Sidney is a professional teacher, and he has founded his own “School of Thinking” (representing my real postcard business in which I printed and sold my own Thoughts). At first, Minerva supports her husband’s idea, but the more she realizes how serious he is, the more doubts she has. Her doubts become more acute when he reveals the “mother” he has chosen – one of his own students; a young woman in her twenties named Susan, who has agreed because she has so much admiration and respect for Sidney. 

The crisis (or “climax”) comes when, in an open classroom, Susan announces that she is pregnant – and the reaction of Minerva, who is also present – leaves no doubt as to who the father must be.

There is a critical scene when Sidney goes to his mother’s home to tell her what he expects her to greet as good news, since she had given up hope of ever being a grandmother. But to his horror, he finds that Minerva and Susan have already been there, and his mother has given them money to pay for an abortion.

How was I to end the play? What I decided on was more fantasy than reality. Sidney is so dismayed that he goes away and travels for two years, doing some things he had always wanted to do, like having guitar lessons in Copenhagen. He returns to find that Minerva and Susan have become close friends, and are actually living together, in what was his old house.

But I gave them all a very happy ending. Susan is about to get married, so his old room will still be available. Minerva has somehow kept the school going in his absence. Susan is just at the age their own daughter would have been, if they’d ever had one. In an atmosphere of mutual forgiveness, they both accompany Susan, as she leaves for a practice wedding. 

The play was performed by a local group, The Unitarian Players. But I couldn’t even bear to watch the rehearsals. I do have it on a video tape – which I’ve also never watched.