Post 663 - October 18, 2024

I do not have any official work scheduled for the rest of the year. I am advancing a few events from the comfort of my well-worn couch, but nothing that requires me to get on a plane and fly off somewhere.

Of course, there is plenty to do. Our storage unit is getting cleaner and emptier by the day. I have managed to consolidate the souvenirs of a lifetime of working in the theatre into one extremely organized and now, unliftable, plastic crate. The satisfaction I feel from having done that is indescribable.

After a summer of working on my family writing project, I have now hit a point that requires research, so I am trying to concentrate on doing that for at least two hours each day. There is a stack of books next to my bed that aren’t going to read themselves. It feels like there’s going to be a pop quiz at the end of it. That our storage unit is getting cleared out likely has more to do with my avoidance of the research work ahead than it does with anything else.

There is a sameness to this current string of fall days. The same is true of the news surrounding the election. Early voting has begun in some places although here in New York it doesn’t start until next week. Even so, the die is likely already cast. There is little that could happen that will change the outcome.

Maybe because they’ve been called out on it so many times, the press is finally starting to report on the Republican candidate’s obvious cognitive decline. Try as they might to avoid it, they couldn’t help but tell us about him doing nothing more than swaying to the canned music at a recent rally for thirty-nine minutes. Thirty-nine minutes is a very long time to sit and watch nothing. I sometimes find it hard to sit through my Sonicare toothbrush’s two-minute cycle. What must have been going through the minds of the people who stayed with him the whole time?

I believe what we are going through now is what is called the calm before the storm.

When we were kids, we had a newscaster named Tappy Phillips who worked for our local ABC news affiliate. Sometime way back then, we were expecting a hurricane.

For days we had been warned about this approaching storm which was going to be enormous and destructive. People had stocked up on food and supplies and we were all anxiously awaiting its arrival.

On the day, Tappy was posted next to a storm drain on a suburban street so that she could give us on-the-spot updates as the wind and rain began. She stood there and waited. An hour passed. Then another. Nothing happened. There was a bit of rain, but the hurricane-force winds blew themselves out before they got to us.

Poor Tappy was forced to report from that storm drain all day. Her cameraperson kept showing us shots of water trickling into the drain, but there was no flooding and no destruction. From a news perspective, the storm had been a complete bust.

It could have been a disaster. At the time, we had no way of knowing. Afterward, our anxiety seemed ridiculous, but leading up to the day, it was very real.

We all need to be prepared for what might happen during and after this election. Should we panic and stock up on supplies? No, that’s not what I mean about being prepared.

Anything can happen to us all at any moment. Were we prepared for the coronavirus pandemic? Were we prepared for 9/11?

We weren’t even prepared for what happened after the last election. Who would have guessed that after nearly four years, a huge swath of this country’s population would still believe that Joseph R. Biden wasn’t lawfully elected the President of the United States in 2020?

Israel has reported that they have killed the leader of Hamas. Yahya Sinwar was out with two fighters in an area of Gaza on Wednesday. An Israeli unit happened to be patrolling nearby and ran into them. The three Palestinians split up and two were shot. The third ran into a building. The Israelis located him with a drone, shelled the building, and killed him. It was only after they saw his corpse that the Israelis realized who the dead man was.

Some news outlets have reported that Hamas will now be forced to give up. Others have reported the opposite. They believe that Hamas will now dig in and escalate their attacks. Like the path of an approaching hurricane, nobody knows for sure where this is going to go.

In my experience, when I hope for something to happen, the result is never quite what I imagined it would be. Sometimes, I get what I want, but not in the same way I thought it would unfold. That happened enough to me as a kid, that I stopped ever hoping for specifics. It seemed to jinx the result when I daydreamed about concrete outcomes.

Holding onto the daydream that things will unfold exactly the way you want them to, puts you on a rollercoaster of hope and despair. More than anything else, the ride becomes time-consuming and pointless. How much better to just take things as they come and deal with the actual consequences of those actual events. All that unnecessary worrying about things that never come to be is exhausting.

Hurricane Milton really looked like it was going to take out Tampa last week. People were right to be worried and to get out of its way. It still killed many people and caused countless millions of dollars of damage, but it could have been so much worse. People had to prepare for the worst, it would have been foolish not to.

I don’t want to jinx the outcome of this election by predicting who I think is going to win. We are still several weeks left until we know the results. Anything could happen. The only thing I know is that it is extremely unlikely that anything that the press and the polls say, is what we will all experience.

After Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, North Carolina, one of the things people found in very short supply was ready cash. Credit cards didn’t work. The limited food in grocery stores was available on a cash-only basis. We should all have a supply of small bills hidden in our homes somewhere. We should also all keep a supply of canned goods and important medications.

I’m not suggesting that we line a bunker with twelve years’ worth of food, but something to get through at least a few days makes perfect sense. There will be bigger problems at hand to deal with if a few days respite isn’t enough.

It’s only because I have nothing pressing on me now that I am even thinking about all this. I want to take advantage of this time because in my experience, these kinds of days are few and far between.

In none of my imaginings do I think that we are going to need food and cash after the election. No more, of course, than we ever do. There’s always the unforeseen chance, I suppose. Such is life. Michael and I live in New York City. One of the things we all accept as residents here is that we are a big shiny potential target for just about anything.

When you live on the west coast of Florida, you accept that you might get nailed by a hurricane. When you live in Los Angeles or San Francisco you accept that you might get rattled by an earthquake. When you live in New York City, you accept that if something like 9/11 is going to happen, this is the likely place for it.

I don’t have a crystal ball. Who knows what’s coming. On my walk today, I am going to get a supply of small bills to store somewhere in the apartment. Michael and I have been talking about doing that ever since we started dating. It’s high time we stop talking about it.

Our living room is a mess with half-empty crates from the storage unit. There are stacks of old playbills to take down for recycling. (The interesting ones will wind up in the next Broadway Cares flea market.) This is the kind of work that never gets done when I’m busy with other things.

It’s a beautiful day. Some of the trees in Central Park have a touch of yellow in them. There are already leaves on the ground giving off that amazing autumnal aroma. The heck with pumpkin spice, the dusty smell of old leaves beat that scent every time.

May Tappy Phillips’ successor stand next to their own stormdrain during this upcoming election and have nothing to say for hours on end.

Nothing would be better than that.