When I was nineteen, I apprenticed in upstate New York at
the Spa Summer Theatre in Saratoga Springs. Apprentices do everything no one
else wants to do and they do it for very little pay. The big reward for theatre
apprentices is brushing elbows with wizened live-theatre professionals, thereby
gathering experience and anecdotes to last a lifetime.
I sold tickets and intermission refreshments, ushered
ticketholders, cleaned bathrooms, swept the stage, painted a lot of scenery,
helped actresses with their quick changes between scenes, and ran errands for anyone—property
master, costumer, business manager, theatre owner. I laundered demanding
Margaret Truman’s “delicates,” took clothing to the cleaners for gracious Joseph Schildkraut,
tidied the makeup table for kind Celeste Holmes, swept the dressing room floor
for irritable Groucho Marks. The list goes on. One of the highlights was joining
Paul Linde for breakfast, a man as funny offstage as he was on, after partying
all night with him.
Oh, yes, we did party! Nearly every evening after the show, we
closed down an After-Hours Club that produced a drag song-and-dance show
starting at midnight. “We” were the four apprentices along with our seasoned colleagues,
a number of professional, experienced staff― stage manager, electrician,
box-office head, prop-master, scenic designer, business manager—some old enough
to be my parents. New York’s drinking
age in 1959 was nineteen, so my drinking
of hard liquor was legal, as well as frequently excessive. I learned a lot about life that summer!
Needless to say, I still harbor vivid memories about that summer,
not the least of which was meeting David Johnson, a young air force recruit
stationed nearby. He was tall, handsome, and crazy about theatre. He’d was as
close to being a groupie as the Spa Summer Theatre had. He hung around the crew
and began to join us at the After Hours Club. One night he sat down next to me and
began talking about poetry. The more we drank, the more he expounded on poetry’s
place in the world and the more attentively I listened. His passion for Kahlil Gibran, a
poet/writer/artist I’d never heard of, was so contagious I don’t know whom I developed
the greater crush on that night. Within a few months of returning to Seattle I’d
bought nearly every one of Gibran’s dozen or so books in print. I read them all
and marked up passages with underlining and check marks—my heart resonating
with the mystical writing of this Lebanese-born mystic Christian who lived his
adult life in the U.S.
In my middle-aged years I culled many books from my youth, but
kept four of Gibran’s works—the ones with the most notation and highlights—because
I wanted to keep in touch with my younger self. Today I pulled out my worn copy
of The Prophet for the first time in
a decade and fell in love all over again with the chapter called
“JOY AND SORROW”
Then a woman said, Speak to us of
Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentimes
filled with your
tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into
your
being, the more joy you can
contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine
the very
cup that was burned in the potter’s
oven?
And is not the lute that soothes
your
spirit, the very wood that was
hollowed
with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into
your heart and you shall find it is
only that
which has given you sorrow that is
giving
you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again
in
your heart, and you shall see that
in truth
you are weeping for that which has
been
your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater
than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is
the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are
inseparable.
Together they come, and when one
sits
lone with you at your board,
remember
that the other is asleep upon your
bed.
Verily you are suspended like
scales be-
tween your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at
standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you
to
weigh his gold and his silver,
needs must
your joy or your sorrow rise or
fall.
I have understood from the first moment of my bereavement that
if there had not been joy in our fifty-two years of marriage, I would not feel
such sorrow. I am lucky to be missing Jay. This Thanksgiving-week Monday I’m feeling
grateful for being introduced to The
Prophet fifty-five years ago—and the pleasure of rediscovering it again
today. Thank you, David Johnson,
wherever you may be, for that enduring endorsement. Thank you Mr. Gibran for
your beautiful expression of truth. And thank you, dear Jay, for a good and
long marriage.