I took my wedding ring off the other night.

It’s a simple platinum band with the question “Pie?” on one interior side and the answer “Yes.” on the other.

Heather put it on my wedding finger on May 14, 2005.

I’ve taken it off here and there — once for an X-ray machine thing, once because, well, I can’t remember — but it’s been on my hand almost continuously since.

I’ve never really think too much about it when it happens. It comes off and goes back on so quickly.

But last night, there was an itch so I decided to take it off and give myself a scratch.

It was hard to get off. I had to really work it over my knuckle with a slow twist and pull.

it was clear my body and my life had grown literally around the promise and commitment it represented.

The impression that had been created by years of wearing it was deep and noticeable, something that woudl take some time to disappear if it were not on my hand every day..

And it did not seem free or lighter with its absence, but more like my hand was missing something.

Not something weighty, but something important and true — and comfortable.

Something I would not know if Heather had not said yes at top of the Beekman in New York so long ago, or stuck with me through all my foolish words and actions.

Something I would not know if I hadn’t trusted myself to ask her and opened myself up to sharing everything with another, even the dark and ugly parts that I could barely look at myself.

I could’ve waited until May 14 of this year to celebrate all that has been good that this space made by the ring represented, but that seemed like a long time.

And so I got up and kissed my beautiful freckled red-headed wife in the chair where she sat watching a TV show neither of us will remember tomorrow.

My dad suggested I take a Second City Improv class because all the ad creatives he knew took classes there. His theory was that I’d somehow parlay my way into a useful job by hobnobbing in the world of “Yes and.”

Though the first class I went to had one crazy-eyed woman from Leo Burnett in it, the group was mostly made up by people who wanted to be standup comics (it was that era).

During introductions, these would-be standups made kooky faces and modulated their voices like that somehow would make whatever they were saying “funny.”

They rolled their eyes when the older woman teaching the class said the point wasn’t to be funny, but to play and find something unexpected. “Funny” was all they had on their minds.

We did some work in a circle and it was quickly clear that they we’re very sure if they just talked over everyone else that we’d all start cracking upThen someone, out of nowhere, got on all fours and started acting like a dog. They barked. They scratched. They lifted legs. About a third of the class got down and copied it. I looked around. Almost all of the comedians were standing there like frozen posts looking around. They couldn’t believe what they were being asked to do. Terrified, indignant, judgey.

I looked from them to the dogs rolling and baying on the floor at my knees.

I asked myself: If I came here to just stand around like these jokers and not put everything I had into it, I’d never get anything out of it.

So I got down on all fours and started sniffing someone’s ass - like a dog does when they meet another dog - while hopeful standups looked around plaintively for help.

Still remember that moment 35 years after the fact.

My dreams take twists and turns depending on what’s happening in my life.

Lately, there’ve been a few about moving the family around to keep them safe with the specter of putting them in more peril by forcing change. A few others have been about traveling with lost luggage and missing tickets and going anyway. In one, I was given inedible food that I wanted to spit out but couldn’t find a place to get rid of it in an airport.

Makes me wonder what my father’s dreams were like when he in the midst of crisis. What twists and turns did his mind take behind closed lids in his final nights.

I don’t know why I wonder these things.

But I do.

On the boat, when I was moving the snorkel gear, the lunch tin spilled open and the gluten-free sandwich I’d requested special for you fell onto the deck floor.

Without looking, I could feel your jaw set and your teeth grind.

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Later on the curving beach, with the boat 30 yards away, you said I’d made it about myself. That I didn’t think of you first. Because I started with “I didn’t know” and “I didn’t know” isn’t about taking care of you, but taking care of me.

The sand floor of the beach shimmered through the clear Kauai’i waters like a school of sliver dollars darting in a blue glass.

I made no mea culpa because what is there to say? My intentions are meaningless. Any explanation or words I use to pull it apart and say my truth will just be heard as a defense. A defense of me. And who I am. And how much I care. A reflexive reflection of the selfish animal I am, the man who doesn’t think of his wife first. The man who makes everything all about himself.

Silently I looked back at the small pontoon boat lined with tourists in bathing suits. Our two boys worked their feet into fins, on their way to us.

20 years ago, I wondered, is this how “I didn’t know” was understood? Would your observation have been the same as the one you have today? Have we really come this far from where we started?

“It’s fine,” you said pulling down your mask. “You just don’t take care of me the way I want you to. You never have.”

Then you splashed into the water like a mermaid and made your way back to the place where the tin fell and this conversation began with a simple, “I didn’t know.”

I stood in the shallows, jungle behind me, wondering how 20 years came together to make this moment, a moment where my intentions were so unseen and I have no where to go but back to the boat that I thought we were in together.

Sometimes you just want to say: Cut the shit and get the thing done.

Instead we talk, talk, talk.

We talk instead of step forward to understand the things that are changing.

We talk instead of opening our eyes to see the things we can’t change.

We talk instead of exercising the courage to change the things we can.

We talk instead of finding the wisdom to know the difference.

But sometimes, really, it should just be: Cut the shit and get the thing done.

“Don’t Wait.”

Anne Bogart, theatre director, used to tell us this when we were working on pieces under her supervision.

She had a bias toward action that made sense.

The only way to actually make anything was to literally make it.

Thinking it through, planning it out, carefully working through details — those could be actions. But to her, it seemed to me, there was nothing like just going and doing it to force questions, make evaluations useful, and see what there really is.

Since then I’ve discovered other expressions of it as well.

Act now and ask for forgiveness later.

Bias for action.

Share early and often.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

But lately, waiting has become important. And understanding when and where to wait before not waiting.

Think of it as the hunter who finds the spot where the game will come, readies himself, loads, and then, when the stag comes within striking distance takes his shot and makes a clean and fast kill.

It might be minutes of waiting. It might be hours. It could even be days.

But he waits.

He waits with faith and conviction that the way he has chosen is right and will bear fruit.

It takes just as much bravery (maybe more) as the artist who stands on the bare stage and moves suddenly and with insistence to make a moment that is HERE and NOW.

When do you step in?

When do you step out?

When do you step up?

When do you step down?

Which question you ask, when, also makes a difference.

Seems so easy to boil things down to these four questions.

And that assumes they are the right questions.

Are they?

She says I always make it about me.

I don’t know why she says that. I just tell her it’s my fault.

And how I’d do it.

And what it reminds me of.

Is that so terrible?

(I thought it was what you wanted.)

It’s a good day to remember what’s good.

Healthy kids.

A house.

A wife who I love and loves me.

An imperfect everything that still has a future in front of it.

And plenty of reason behind it to believe it’ll work out.

It’s a roller coaster to be sure.

But it’s a roller coaster.

The scary thought isn’t when my brain says the world would be fine without me.

Or even better off without me.

It’s when I think I’d be better off without me.

That that is the only - and best way - to get away from me.

It’s apparent I missed something.

Was it when I had it all and traded up for what I thought would make it better?

I wish I’d never moved here. Or taken the last two jobs.

I’m deeply unhappy with everything.

When I talk to H, she hears anger.

When she responds, all I hear is judgement.

She says she’s happy, but I don’t hear it.

All I hear is how much she feels it’s all on her.

It’s like she never really considers what I’m going through.

What I do.

I’m supposed to suck it up.

Just keep doing it.

My kids will end up in debt.

We’ll end up broke.

I really don’t see the point this morning.

I hate this life. I’m not sure it’s worth pushing much farther.

When and how did I miss the fork in the road?

I should’ve seen it as a shadow of the future.

Even if I had, I would’ve done it all the same

But after you said yes, we walked across Manhattan

August twilight winking down 5th avenue

Throwing shadows from the trees of central park

Across the stomping horse carriages

And yellow cab lines.

I love you, you know.

So much all else is crowded out:

The heat lightning means nothing to us

For us, the summer storm that will bring big wet drops

Laces the air with the excitement of change

(I remember your click clack shoes and jingle jangling bracelets: in front of a silver looping ribbon named Contrapunto at 3rd and 53rd)

My breath is short with possibility

Kissing you in the rain-scented air

And we ignore the storm above as it gathers power

It will show us how small we are

How big our hearts are too

Still are.

Always will be.

Enduring shadows of the future

Whatever they hide.

This week the therapist wondered if I was depressed.

I got some bad new last week about the way I’m working with my team, from my team.

I’m not sure how things will work out but I’m definitely angry.

And that anger works like a slow moving poison, waking me at night the way alcohol processed into sugar by the liver would wake me in my younger days.

I’d like to care less.

To just say, this is how it will be.

But I’m not built that way.

In the past, I’d look for a new job: Fuck these assholes, I have better things to do.

Naturally, it may come to that.

Except that I’m not there now. Now I have something to prove. And some direct action to take.

I might know what the outcome is most desirable, but I can’t future trip on it.

(It rarely turns out the way I imagine it anyway.)

The road to the right thing starts with doing what’s next.

Carefully. Methodically. Responsively.

And let what happens… happen.

The universe tends to know the way.

Who am I to question its direction?

I miss the old me.

I miss the guy who was 15 lbs lighter and didn’t suffer from plantar fasciitis.

The guy who was older looking but had energy to take on new things and didn’t feel confused in the morning about what to do first. Or next. Or first. Or next first.

I miss the man whose wife found him sexy enough to put on the tall shoes and tell him to get undressed.

The guy who took it all seriously but didn’t seem weighed down by any of it.

The up-and-coming star who still had an unwritten future and made people say: He just might do anything.

I miss that guy.

The old me.

And I’m trying to figure out how not to.

So I can be the new me. The next me.

No regrets.

No sorrow.

No looking back.

No missing the old me.

the house creaks in the dark

like a mother moaning for her lost children

she knows better

she knows why you’re there

to divide the now things

from the yesterday things

from the tomorrow things

but the scales are invisible

and the mind is useless

(because even though you know the answers

your heart grips to hold onto it all)

tears are the real masters now

follow them

they know what to do

don’t be afraid

of the bears in the midnight orchard of your ancestors

you belong among the pear filled branches

you will pick the ones that are sweet in the mouth

the ones that nourish the forever in you

in all of us.

you

are love in action

you

are goodness in our midst

you know where you are

because the house doesn’t really creak

for lost children

but in joyful grief

for the all the beauty that happened there

and needs to move on

to live (elsewhere)

and live on

in us all

(I will never forget the afternoons under the window

the flour of Christmas sweet rolls in the kitchen air

a spatchula handed to me in the dusk

the streaks of the perseids in the sky from the back porch;

that is how I know you will never forget all the things.

It is why you hear the house creak; it is why I know the bears know

who you are)

You might be unique, one of a kind, unlike any other.

But that gives you no special status.

Even if someone takes you into the room, away from the crowd, and tells you different and says someone has to teach you, you are not exempt from the things that make you one of us all.

You are not really in a place that gives you privileges to do what you want without asking others.

Or believing you have powers and insight and knowledge that put you in a place to be treated like a king.

And if you think that you are only a slave to yourself, a thief of your own happiness.

Because when you are unique but not special, you are on the verge of being ready to be of use.

And that is the greatest power you can have, to be there for others instead of your status.

I can hear them in the wall

moving

pushing

looking for ways in

not knowing they are in

waking up the sleeping doubts

the angry voices

the doubts that can’t stalk me when I’m in motion

in the sunlight

in the day

not like here

laying in the dark

listening to the moving

and scratching

and rubbing

in the wall

Fuck me boots

and jeans tight enough to be painted on

you stretch on the floor

the dirty wedding cake that is the ritz looks in on us from the window above:

shot of whiskey

click clack cluck goes the tongue

let’s go you say

and we’re off:

owl tree: market pool: red room: castle

sambuca is a menthol poison adventure juice

who knows where this will lead

(we know)

c’mon let’s get a cab

let’s fuck with mouthes

and stumble up steps with greedy hands

click clack cluck let’s fuck

like rock stars and whores

in the elevator, in the door, in the hall

like a fox in sox in a box

click clack cluck

fingers go where they go

and the dirty wedding cake looks on

and in the morning I wake up and think

never again

I’ve got a lot of friends getting the pink slip these days.

It is not an easy time.

Markets are odd. War in Europe has been going on for months. Old enemies are acting like old enemies.

There are bitter and angry disputes over what is true. The earth is looking exhausted.

If you’ve scraped a few things together, you are wondering, will it be okay? Do I have enough?

The more thoughtful wonder if it is worth anything at all.

I don’t know what is happening, but I’m trying to look at it all with positivity.

I don’t see another choice. And, to be honest, it’s more fun.

The last time I held a drink in my hand, I was 36.

That was 22 years ago, yesterday.

It’s important to remember all the things that brought me to that moment — the garbage dump at the end of an airport runway, the car in a ditch at the side of the road, the people I hurt through withdrawal and selfish acts of neediness — but what’s more interesting to me today is what has happened since.

An MFA in playwriting from Columbia.

Making films for work that end up in the MOMA archives.

A relationship with a woman that has endured the ups and downs of 21 years of imperfection because it is anchored in love and a commitment to try to be better — always.

Two boys who fight and laugh and get excited about music and sports and going to the 7-11 to get Slurpees after dinner.

A sister, two brothers, and a mom who show up for each other between all the other things they do in life.

A career that is rooted in relationships and is motivated by trying to be of the most service I can possibly be in any moment to those around me.

A mother-in-law who handed me the keys to the barbecue on her back porch in Ashland, Oregon some 19 years ago and comes over to dinner on Sunday nights.

A group of people I can call and reach out to when I’m going crazy at three minutes after midnight.

That’s the stuff that really interests me because I didn’t see any of it coming 22 years ago. Back then all I knew was the sound of the smallest voice from within saying, Enough. (Quietly, firmly, thoroughly.)

And that was enough to make room for all that’s happened since.