Despite my best intentions of routine insomnia, I was awake too late because I fell into a 1990 BBC Radio 3 production of Michael Frayn's Benefactors (1984) which I had never read and barely heard of and if I had a nickel for every play by Michael Frayn which dips in and out of the fourth wall of the timestream as its characters post-mortem how it all went wrong in those complicated spaces between them so many years ago, I still wouldn't be able to afford a cup of coffee at these prices even if I could drink it, but since I've seen two productions of Copenhagen (1998) and heard a third, I still think it's funny. Benefactors is harder-edged as its Brutalist architecture, more pitilessly patterned, the structure of a double-couple farce where the doors all slam with a bleak wince: still a memory play of ideas without answers, still the lacuna of human actions radiating at its heart. "But then you look up on a clear night and you'll see there's only a dusting of light in all creation. It's a dark universe." If I have to be thankful for something at this miserable moment of history, the accessibility of art is a strong contender. Also cats.
2025-11-27
I had a small but very successful Thanksgiving with my parents, with both of my husbands, and with
nineweaving. I have been supplied with all the ingredients for a turkey terrific and a whole lot of apple crumble that doesn't need to be reconstructed into anything except me. My mother taped the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I leaned back into
rushthatspeaks while we talked books and movies and theatrical stories. The photo was taken by
spatch for
selkie in condolence for the stressors of her holiday for which she was not the responsible party. The Sallust is from 1886, but I work with what I've got.

