Hi, Mom.
[LAUGHS] The reason we're in Tucson this year is that,
primarily we're doing something that we
planned on doing for years.
And that is spending a year living
in the same place with our best friends, Mark and Bobbie
Halperin and some new friends we've made.
And especially Steve and Gail Orlen who live next door to us.
Steve and I have been friends for about 10 years now.
We lived in the same rooming house
at opposite ends of the upstairs when
we were students in Iowa City and we
share many of the same neuroses, so we hit it off right away.
We wouldn't get up until the mail came.
There was no reason for getting up, otherwise life is trouble.
And we both slept naked in our individual rooms
and this is my first remembrance of Steve,
is why I'm telling you this.
We hear that, though, but well, he'd hear a screen door slam,
it meant the mailman had come.
And the mailboxes were set up in a row in this rooming house
downstairs, so Steve and I would get up, bounce around
on the walls or whatever, meet each other
at the top of the stairs, walk down, watch the mailman
while he put the mail in.
And it wasn't until years later that we realized
what a strange experience it must have been because here's
this guy--
Oh!
The little girl, a little girl next door.
Not in years, in size.
Had a crush on Steve and she used
to steal flowers every night and put
big sprays of bouquets in Steve's mailbox,
sticking out of the mailbox.
So every day, here's this mailman come in and he comes in
and there's a mailbox full of flowers and two naked guys
watching him put the mail in those slots.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm going to start with a bad poem, all right.
Then things can only get better.
It's not a poem that I'll probably even publish,
but it's a poem that has some sentimental value to me.
It's for Steve.
I've written a number of poems for Steve.
This one for all its badness comes
close to the sentimental truth, I guess, in certain ways.
It's based on an odd circumstance,
as I said Steve and I go through the same crazinesses
together very often.
Part of our friendship is based on the fact
that we put up with each other when our wives won't, things,
you know, things like that.
And we were off one afternoon doing our basketball therapy,
which is going out and standing there and shooting
the ball at a basket and deciding
that we're going to lose weight that way or whatever.
And I was telling Steve about morning fears
because when you teach, when you don't get up to an alarm clock,
you don't have to get right out of bed.
What you do is you lie in bed for as long as
possible and after a while you start getting the crazies.
You start getting the crazy fears, or at least we do.
So I was telling Steve about this
and that I was going through it again,
and he gave me a piece of advice.
He said, as soon as you wake up, start crawling.
He said, crawl into the bathroom and just lie there for a while.
[LAUGHTER] Not only is the advice crazy, I think.
But I'm so neurotic, I can't even do it.
I can't even draw it.
Here's a little poem called Insomnia.
For my old pal, Steve Orlen.
Pal, we live alone.
It shouldn't be so with such as us and ours.
How come?
How come you said crawl away from the bed,
lie on the cold bathroom tile a while?
Get up when you're ready, you said.
How not to think.
My pal, ready to praise the poem I didn't write.
I praise your lovely face as awkward as my praise.
You are the moon by which I fall at night, the sun by which I
sleep, if sleep is my reward.
I keep your arm across my shoulder.
We'd probably die for each other.
Sleep.