Enchantment And The Poetry of Life
“I gave a speech, as one does, as one ages, to a room of students of the theatre, of film, of the performing arts. They shone with ambition, but I soon found myself annotating virtually every sentence I uttered, and this is not terribly comfortable: It badly alters the flow of things. They looked at me blankly when I mentioned Tennessee [Williams], and I had to throw out the play titles, at which they nodded their heads and murmured the names of Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.
— Mike Nichols
*
When my grandson Conor was three…He turned to me, and with his gravelly toddler voice, he said — Grandma, you’re dying, and it’s okay.
What? I said.
And he said it again: Grandma, you’re dying, and it’s okay.
I turned to Mika — my five-year old Toddler Translator and asked her what her brother said. Mika was into the movie, so she repeated the words without taking her eyes off the screen — he said you’re dying and it’s okay.
Later I was walking Hanalei Bay with a friend, and I told her this story — and we laughed, really, really hard…
I have tangoed with death, but also laughed in the face of her — not mocking her, but feeling so very alive having brushed against her. She has inspired me to see Broadway plays…
