Since I started keeping a daily diary in 2001, it's become something of a tradition to read through each year as it ends. So much one forgets! This picture is actually from January 4th three years ago, on the beach in California near the close of day. The angle of the sun makes the curve of this piece of sea-grass seem more dramatic than it was... but it could be that the exaggerated contours of retrospection show the shape of things better. Or not! (Remember that every picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.)Anyway, here are three of the things I rediscovered in looking back over 2006. One, something I'd quite forgotten, is a quotation from a book I taught for the first time last (northern-hemisphere) Spring in a class on religion and democracy. The book is John Dewey's A Common Faith, and this sentence neatly encapsulates one of the main points of my own book-in-progress: goods actually experienced in the concrete relations of family, neighborhood, citizenship, pursuit of art and science, are what men actually depend upon for guidance and support, and … their reference to a supernatural and other-worldly locus has obscured their real nature and has weakened their force. Re-encountering it I am confronted again by a nagging question: "how on earth is my argument going to connect up to religion?" which reveals another: "isn't my argument really about how much we can do without religion, and when will I admit it?"
The other things are not rediscoveries in that I haven't and couldn't forget them. 2006 was the year I returned to the stage! Sure, I had only small parts (but there were six of them) (that's how small they were!).
And there were only two performances (three including the invited dress rehearsal). And none of the other actors had even been born the last time I acted. But no matter, acting in Cecilia Rubino's documentary theater piece "The Odets Project" was unquestionably among the highlights of the year! It was an amazing experience of collective effervescence, of creating a world together and sharing it.And the third thing: can there be anything more wonderful than watching children grow up, discovering the world? Unclehood rocks!
I was going to do a "best films of 2006" list but can't be bothered. Just this: "Jindabyne" and "Ten canoes" are terrific Australian films - go see them if you can! The comedy "Kenny" is wonderful too (worth a hundred "Borats," a film to avoid like horsepoop in the road), but I doubt it'll make its way overseas. See "Children of men" rather than "Babel." I really enjoyed "C. S. A.: Confederate States of America" and "A Scanner Darkly," and loved "Volver."
