Chance = Change

"What can I do for you?"....trying to learn Spanish one phrase a day, day by day, from the calendar I bought in London...En que puedo ayudarle? What can I do for you?...need to learn that language...want to...always have, ever since highschool, when the surface was scratched in a class or two...so...en que puedo ayudarle? THE NEW YORK TIMES is one of the major joys or having returned home...we have subscribed for daily delivery to our front door, as so many people in our building do, and so for several days now we have been enjoying that civilized amenity..and we have the time to actually read it, which of course we rarely did in dear Abingdon, where our Barter schedules precluded such a thing. And getting a daily TIMES was not so easy, though we did enjoy getting the Sunday TIMES at Main Street Book Store, weekly.Catching up this morning on a few days' worth of reading...read the fabulous coverage of Arthur Miller's life, in tribute to his death a few days ago. Remembered when his path crossed with mine, when, as a young New York actress, I was asked to do the initial readings of UP FROM PARADISE, a musicalization of his play Creation of the World and Other Business...the Adam/Eve story, with Austin Pendleton as Adam and little old me as Eve...Stanley Silverman wrote the terrific music...we did a long series of backers' auditions in the gorgeous Fifth Avenue apartment of Chuck Hollerith and his lovely socialite wife...i remember several years later, that lovely woman died and Chuck married Hope Lange...funny the things we remember...anyway, Arthur Miller was dear to me then, and he and his wife Inge Morath, the photographer, gave me a fabulous autographed book of their trip to China...i wonder where thatbook is now. and i hope i cna find it...I am swimming in the literary joys of being home again. The sheer material and literary joys of neing a New Yorker once again. The Christo event yesterday and the volume of NEW YORK TIMES pages to read today...enough to make a wonderful weekend. Today i go to a Womens Division Meeting for SGI and we will do some serious chanting for a while, which always makes me feel strong and good, and then Peter and I will spend some more time on visualizing how to paint this superb apartment the colors we want to paint it. Bit by bit, the boxes are being cleared away, and though are still too many piles of stuff to organize and clean up, at least we see our "enemy" more clearly. The more we clear up, the more I realize what a large apartment this is, and how large the rooms are. A great place to live in New York City. And, as I keep pointing out to friends down South: the Guest Room will soon be ready for use, with its own private bathroom,etc, so COME see us! There is a wonderful blue to paint it first though, and a serious blonde wood futon to buy for it. Cable TV is already hooked up in that room, however, and there is even a TV to go with it! God knows, we have plenty of TV's! In fact, we have plenty of everything! So...today is a sparklingly gorgeous day , a blessing of a day. I've been on line with Gil Braswell from the Barter, having a long chat or two...exchanging emails with Ann Johnson, whose cheerful face I miss...maybe i will drive down to Abingdon in March. Maybe see the few chows that are up and the few that may be in rehearsal. Maybe.