Miriam Feder

A scary tale for Hallowe’en: obsession; self-destruction; deterioration; and divorce

I’m a mad dog, a terrible creature who will be miserable my entire life through until a shell pierces my skull. She doesn’t like me. She’d just as soon see me dead. Mostly she’d like her ankle back.

I don’t know exactly why I bit her ankle. I hate ladies—I hate this lady: hate; hate; hate her. But I love having her ankle in my mouth. I’m so used to having this ankle in my mouth. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t bite it anymore.  Would life be as sweet?  Would I have all those fantasies again about ankles?
Would I feel lonely? Would I long to have my mouth fill with her blood?

Do I even like blood?  I don’t know–I’m a dog. I’m bred to hang on, so I do.

She was nice to me, once. She fed me, scratched my ear, but then I ran away.  When I came back she said that she was “really quite allergic.”  She felt better without me. But that’s not gonna work with me.  NOBODY stops scratching my ears. I’ll bite.  That’s all there is to it. I’ll show her.

She’s wondering how she can get rid of me. But she can’t. She can’t cut off her foot.  That’s not really a solution. I don’t think she’ll go for the old silver bullet. I mean she could wind up worse off than me.  She thinks I’ll get tired and fall off, or maybe I’ll get hungry, or distracted.

What if we pass a really good Bar B Que? Oooo that smell…that smell might get me.

Oh look, a ball–a kid with a ball. I could only go for that ball.

(starts chuckling) She is so frustrated; trapped by a dog this way.  She really cannot believe this is happening to her. She’s busy. I know cause she keep saying that to me after she stops screaming.
And she’s bleeding. Her strength is bleeding away. Yeah, right in my mouth.

She screams out  ”Won’t someone please shoot this dog?  Please, if I circle back around the block one more time, will you please have your gun ready and try to shoot the dog?  Shoot the damn dog and don’t shoot me? Please.”

But she is panting so hard, nobody understands her. Just like a dog.

 

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After the guinea pigs featured in Special Delivery there were more critters–of course.  This is the journey through reptiles and that most unbelievable pet–the rat. Can you imagine inviting rats into your house–ON PURPOSE?

I’ve always loved animals but I’m timid with them. I wrote endless reports on animals in second grade. I learned my eagle-eye parking skills combing the curbside at Lincoln Park Zoo most Saturdays. I knew all the dog breeds. I longed for companionship—but I wheezed. A mynah bird was my heart’s desire.

First in the line of furless pets were goldfish—an unrewarding, often suicidal pet. I would make fish gravestones for the toilet seat. This at least kept my parents entertained. I graduated to turtles. They were much more interesting; they could be carried, raced, and kissed—if no one was supervising.

I had a series of little red-eared turtles, too insignificant to remember. But I had one rather more complex turtle. He was a little bigger and a little more feisty. There was no debating his name—he was born to be Speedy Gonzalez. He usually ran in the right direction and fast.

They told me I’d outgrow the allergies but I didn’t, so my daughter had reptiles too—lizards. Turtles were politically incorrect, by then. The reticulated skink arrived for her 7th birthday. This animal was perpetually terrified. It was hard to catch, let alone hold and play with. When we sat down to the Passover Seder that year and the youngest asked “why is this night different from all other nights” we all knew the answer was because Skinky lost his tail after the visiting family mobbed and grabbed at him. Hours later, after both hunger and the Red Sea were crossed, the lonely tail was still twitching.

We took in a friend’s skinks, which were much bigger and better socialized. They would sit on our heads and whisper in our ears—charming lizard tricks. They also chomped down crickets like t-rex taking on a subdivision. They terrorized our original skink. We bought peace with partition. Eventually, we needed something bigger on the cuddle factor.

Some people just cannot have rats—that naked tail gives them the creeps. That was my husband. But for the rest of us, the rat is the Cadillac of rodent pets. They’re smart. Our rats were never so highly trained as the rat-lady’s rats that we’d visit at the pet store. Those rats would do anything you wanted, after a little belly massage. Who wouldn’t? But rats like to be handled and played with and they are good parents. I for one, had no compunction about selling baby rats to pet stores for snake food.

Typically we’d get rid of the old pair and all but two of the babies. Once, we kept two boys and a girl. I felt obligated to the little gray fellow, after he escaped for two days and collapsed, near death, in the laundry sink. When that little gray rat birthed the second of our litters to arrive in one week— and the same week as every other domestic rat in the metropolitan area birthed—I knew that rat sexing was not my strong suit. The pet stores all turned us down and the population explosion was terrifying for all of us.My daughter had become totally bored by the whole little-animal-thing. It was time to be done with it. At 4:30 one Friday, when the Audubon society said they would take all the rats for their injured raptors, we loaded up the car and got the lead and the rats out. Pet free at last, at least until the killer bunny.

 

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1/23/10 Yes, when the show is over I’ll be posting new material. I just can’t write other stuff while I’m doing this. Please understand and check in. If you’re in Portland–come to the show.

1/22/10 See what the audience is saying.

1/21/10
1/10/10 We’ve been hard at it and the Tech is mostly there! getting comfy on the set. We got an overture today! wow. Risers, chairs. Like a real theatre….

1/3/10 We loaded the show in the space. The lights are up. Tomorrow we’ll give her a workout.

12/29 Line of the day: “I don’t want my head in a vice or my ass in a girdle.”

12/26 Three more weeks. Terrifying and delightful all at the same time. Have you got your group together yet?

12/18 The new version of the music is on it’s way. can’t wait.

12/14 I’d better do this new choreography one more time before crashing or it’ll never stick in my tiny brain. But how exciting.

12/10  Tickets make GREAT Christmas and Chanukah presents. They always fit and the color is right. Fertile Ground Passes:   For $100 you can get into EVERYTHING that’s part of the festival. (My show opens before the Festival begins. If you buy a pass from me I’ll honor it on the opening weekend of The Only Way Out is Through–January 15, 16 or 17–and you can save your festival weekends for the other shows. GROUP OUTING? email me and I’ll help you plan.

12/05 We had our first session with Choreographer Kerris Cockrell Thursday and that was a lot of fun (with a few creaks in the knewws the next day.) It’s another wonderful hit of seeing something that has lived in my own head for months now take more shape in someone else’s and come alive. You’ll definitely want to come see us rock out to the X Song!

11/29 It’s interesting coming to understand my own play as an actor. I feel like I’m looking at a scene from another side of screen with a vague sense of deja vu. I’m glad for the experience.

11/21 playing in props and costumes and NEW PHOTOS!! Take a look. That’s my co-star Cindy Lyndin, who plays Dr. Dopfelganger and Laine and sings like an angel.

11/16 It’s great to be singing this stuff. I’m transitioning from playwright to actor. And man, memorizing isn’t like it used to be. Just because those words came out of my head doesn’t mean they go back in so easily.

11/13 I have two set-rooms set up in my basement for rehearsals. The Clackamas Women Lawyers are excited about their evening-to-be at the theatre. Wouldn’t your group like to come? email me–we’ll tawk.

11/6  This was a big week as we started blocking rehearsals and got a choreographer.   I’ve set up a mini-set in my basement and the props, they are a gatherin.  I even scored some pillows for seating. I still need more tho’.

10/27 I should have 3 pretty scores now it’s time to cleanup the website. Time to put on my waders…

10/25  Have you “fanned” at the FB fan page?  I’ve starting a discussion page on bringing your book group to the show in January.  This would be a great night out and it’s not too early to start getting on everyone’s calendar.  Special pricing for groups, meet the author (oo-wheee) and best of all–you don’t have to read a book!!! nochowfun@gmail.com–let’s talk.

10/22  Suddenly they’re words coming out of an actor’s mouth.  And songs too!

Today is 350 day.
Where?  All over the world there are creative actions. Find one near you and participate.

350 what? If atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remain above 350 parts per million, we face human and natural disaster.

who?  You, me, all of us.

Why?

In December in Copenhagen the world’s nations meet to agree on a new climate treaty. On October 24, the International Day of Climate Action we, those of us taking part in actions around the world, will call upon those nations to do Enough. It’s the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. There will be rallies and incredible creative actions across the globe. Find an action near you. Go to the website 350.org. Find 350.org on facebook. Do Something:

 

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I’m posting early to help celebrate Oregon’s Day of Culture. I’m not talking about high culture, or low, but rather that trickle of heritage we all carry around like our own little petri dish.  What is it?

Culture is that second skin, laid down so close to mosquito bites and freckles I didn’t even see it. Isn’t this how everybody makes soup, sets the table, welcomes the end of the week and tucks away to dreamland?  Well at Ellen’s the soup had dill. Mike’s Mom cried when we sang. Gina had Christmas. 

They rubbed my second skin with the liniment of literature: stories of stories the way my parents heard them; parts forgotten; untranslated; skipped or stopped; with belly laughs at punch lines that were never uttered. Well, everybody knew that old story—didn’t they?  

My Grandmother’s story left out different parts than Amy’s Grandfather telling. Practice paraded through ears, eyes and nostrils in cramped kitchens and mahogany halls. Orders and legions of never written mandates governed what dress to wear, who to greet and how—poked and prodded by grudges, invasions, and insinuations.

Perhaps those traditions were carefully embroidered on my cuticle, binding in biology, melody, and cadence, bathing each cell from womb-time. Each cell dies; each cell is born. The shield reinforces and reinvents, supports and censors.

There’s tension skin against skin: shushing breaths; whirring of earth beneath my feet; the heat,  cold, and indescribable smell of fall-turned leaves. The names that came, the reasons, the tastes that joined those season-smells. Where did I get that? How did it happen to me before I even knew?

It’s in there still, no matter what else crowds in or purges out. It’s in there, in charge, singing in the corners of my mind, spinning out minor chords and faded doilies.  It’s as inadvertent and essential to me as it always has been: step, by song, by soup bowl, by belly laugh.

 

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You write about places I will never go but you take me right there.  Jeanne