Member-only story
Falling Apart
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
Pema Chödrön — When Things Fall Apart
*
I have always believed that I was in the act of writing comedies. Black, perhaps, certainly full of portent, but nonetheless comedies. I can’t help but believe that if you can’t find both the utterly tragic and utterly silly, the utterly insane and wonderful in life, you simply can’t cope, and you certainly can’t write. There is a vision in those people I consider to be artists that can see many sides and angles and colors to a character or a situation, and it is folly to exclude the comedic. Many do this, because there is a belief that the comedic is perched on some lower rung of the artistic ladder — that laughter is a cheap act; that seeking laughter is a mortal sin. I could not disagree more. People were always amazed that I laughed throughout Menagerie and Streetcar and Cat. Well, they’re funny plays at times. People are funny many times
