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November 24, 2020
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
I first started sending out this newsletter in November, 2012, seven months after we took on the mantle of Clinton Street Theater stewards. Yes, yes, technically, we "own" the business, rent the space, but the Clinton Street Theater is more than its 222 seats or its cantankerous popcorn machine lovingly kept alive by Tony. During this never-ending ten month closure, the CST remains viable only because of its community of patrons, our champions--all of you who have so generously made sure we could keep the rent paid and the lights on.
That first year, 98 people opened up the email. In 2013, the number had grown to 438; 609 in 2014; and the following year, the number of our readers had jumped to 1,087. These days, around 1,300 people open this missive. It's a strange thing to send it out into the great internet unknown. Even if the newsletter is opened, I have no way of knowing whether or not it's read, let alone appreciated, and I am ever so grateful when you write and say that something I've written or shared has touched you.
Our first year at the Clinton, we booked Martin Scorsese's brilliant music documentary, THE LAST WALTZ, on 35mm. We had just upgraded the theater's sound system to Dolby 5.1 surround sound, so we could, as requested in the opening credits, PLAY THIS MOVIE LOUD! At the time, I had hoped it might become our annual Thanksgiving weekend tradition, but within two years, the Clinton became home to the Amazing Bubble Man and Jet Black Pearl, and we have been fortunate beyond belief to host them every Thanksgiving weekend since 2014. And while we had bubbles in the mornings, BLADE RUNNER (The Final Cut) usually filled the screen in the evenings.
This November is like no other in my lifetime. Instead of Bubble Man and BLADE RUNNER, or THE LAST WALTZ and ALICE'S RESTAURANT (another Thanksgiving favorite hosted with our partner, KBOO Community Radio), we find we are cut off from our CST community, along family and friends and the multitude of little traditions that mark the passage of time through the seasons and the years of our lives. But just like the theater doesn't "belong" to us, neither does Thanksgiving live only in Cousin Annette's ambrosia salad or Aunt Erma's minced meat pie. It's more than Uncle D.V. and Uncle Earl setting aside their political differences to play a hand of Rook. It's more than the men taking over the den to watch football while the women stand in the kitchen to wash dishes and swap recipes and stories. "Thanks-giving" is something humans have done ever since we understood that our survival depends on one another and our ability to cooperate. At this time of year, as we start to slide into the silence of long winter nights, we gather--grateful for the bounty we have received; compelled to share our joy with kith and kin.
However you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I hope you find comfort in the hope that 2021 will usher in not only a new administration, but also a renewed opportunity for us to work together to fix all that ails us. Modern life is "koyaanisquatisi" --a life of moral corruption and turmoil, a life out of balance. It's the virus and the economy, and it's also the unrelenting threat to human and civil rights, our warming planet, displaced species all around the globe, the ugly specter of racism and xenophobia. Whatever sacrifices you make this weekend and in the weeks and months ahead to keep you and your family safe, know that whatever we do in our little corner of the world, either for good or for ill, is like a small stone dropped into a pond, causing ripples far beyond what we can see or imagine.
I started including a poem and a send-off quote at the end of each newsletter in 2014. I began to include these almost selfishly, as if to legitimize my hunger to read poetry as a means of finding some semblance of truth in the fragmentary and muddled world that surrounds us. I'll share a few of my favorites from Thanksgivings past.
2014
The Needs of the Many
Brendan Constantine
On the days when we wept—
and they were many—we did it
over the sound of a television
or radio, or the many engines
of the sky. It was rarely so quiet
we could hear just our sadness,
the smallness of it
that is merely the sound of wind
and water between the many pages
of the lungs. Many afternoons
we left the house still crying
and drove to a café or the movies,
or back to the hospital where we sat
dumb under the many eyes
of Paul Klee. There were many
umbrellas, days when it refused
to rain, cups of tea ignored. We
washed them all in the sink,
dry eyed. It’s been a while,
we’re cried out. We collect pauses
and have taken to reading actual
books again. We go through them
like yellow lights, like tunnels
or reunions, we forget which;
the older you are the more similes,
the more pangs per hour. Indeed,
this is how we break one hour into
many, how healing wounds time
in return. And though we know
there will always be crying to do,
just as there’s always that song,
always a leaf somewhere in the car,
this may be the only sweetness left,
to have a few griefs we cherish
against the others, which are many.
2016
Any Common Desolation
Ellen Bass
can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
her precision a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein—
that sudden rush of the world.
2017
To All My Friends
May Yang
That I could be this human at this time
breathing, looking, seeing, smelling
That I could be this moment at this time
resting, calmly moving, feeling
That I could be this excellence at this time
sudden, changed, peaceful, & woke
To all my friends who have been with me in weakness
when water falls rush down my two sides
To all my friends who have felt me in anguish
when this earthen back breaks between the crack of two blades
To all my friends who have held me in rage
when fire tears through swallows behind tight grins
I know you
I see you
I hear you
Although the world is silent around you
I know you
I see you
I hear you
Blessings
Jay Parini, 1948
Blessings for these things:
the dandelion greens I picked in summer
and would douse with vinegar and oil
at grandma’s little house in Pennsylvania,
near the river. Or the small potatoes
she would spade to boil and butter,
which I ate like fruit with greasy fingers.
Blessings for my friend, thirteen
that summer when we prayed by diving from a cliff
on Sunday mornings in the church
of mud and pebbles, foam and moss.
I will not forget the fizz and tingle,
sunning in wet skin on flat, cool rocks,
so drenched in summer.
And for you, my love, blessings
for the times we lay so naked in a bed
without the sense of turbulence or tides.
I could just believe the softness of our skin,
those sheets like clouds,
how when the sunlight turned to roses,
neither of us dared to move or breathe.
Blessings on these things and more:
the rivers and the houses full of light,
the bitter weeds that taste like sun,
dirt-sweetened spuds,
the hard bright pebbles, spongy mosses,
lifting of our bodies into whiffs of cloud,
all sleep-warm pillows in the break of dawn.
2018
When Giving Is All We Have
Alberto Ríos, 1952
One river gives
Its journey to the next.
We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.
We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—
Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.
Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:
Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me
What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made
Something greater from the difference.
2019
Perhaps the World Ends Here
-- Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
Don't be a stranger. Write until we can meet again.
Kind regards,
Lani Jo
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