Never Trust a Convenience Store Umbrella

I have few steadfast beliefs but I'll share one with you: Convenience store umbrellas are a farce. You know the ones I'm talking about. It's raining, and you find yourself without an umbrella, so you dash into CVS, Tedeschis, 7-Eleven, and there they are--a bunch of brightly colored umbrellas perched innocently by the door, handles out, ready to be taken. They're always in the price range of $5.99-11.99, but pay no mind to the price--no matter which one you buy, it won't work.

Time and time again, I've purchased one of these umbrellas during a rainstorm. I take the thing out of its plastic case that it will never fit into again, and I walk outside, open it up and prepare for salvation. Approximately ten seconds later, with the first phoosh of air, the thing is flipped inside out, one of the Edward Scissorhands metal bits is poking through the fabric and my self is soaked.

I don't know if, for the last decade, we've gotten the wrong shipment or what. These convenience store umbrellas seem fit only for a pattering of rain on a completely calm day, where not even one leaf is dancing in the wind. A rainy day in New England is completely uncivilized. It rains sideways. In fact, sometimes it feels like the raindrops are boomeranging back up from the ground. On a rainy day here in New England, there is wind and it is strong. When it's raining, people walking down the street holding an umbrella look like a mess of Harry Potters fighting with fiesty wands. When you walk by a public trash barrel on a rainy day, it's stuffed with broken umbrellas, the air of rage from its previous owner still floating around it.

I had an umbrella that worked once, and for one rainy season in Boston, it was glorious. I bought it for $15 from H&M and it was worth every penny. It was transparent, and the shape was more of a U so it was not given to being flipped inside out. Then I left it in a cab one day when I was apartment hunting. I didn't even go with the apartment--it was horribly sketchy. I still long for that umbrella. I realize it would take ten minutes of Googling to find myself an umbrella just like it but it's more fun complaining about this one than finding a solution. 

For now, I'm just going to walk down the street, let the rain fall on me and fancy myself a thirsty flower.

Untitled, or, The Spark of Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe is happy to be here. 

That's the impression I get as I'm sitting in the bucket seats of BU's Tsai Performance Center on Comm Ave. Dafoe has come clomping out from backstage with Dean Harvey Young, the College of Fine Arts' newest dean, and he's smiling.

The whole auditorium is abuzz to see and hear the actor who donated his archives to BU's Howard Gotlieb Archival Center. Dafoe is here tonight to be in conversation with Dean Harvey as part of the Friends Speaker Series.

I'm abuzz too. I'm here to listen to, and be in the same room as, the man who has startled and delighted me throughout the years with not only the work choices he's made, but the way he has brought the roles to life.

“When you’re hanging on to who you think you are, it can block you, and prevent you from living life.”

I first saw Dafoe when he played Paul Smecker, an eloquent, outside-the-box FBI agent-turned-vigilante in one of my top five movies of all time, The Boondock Saints. Dafoe knocked me flat with his strange inhabitation of Agent Smecker. He was strange, he was unpredictable, he was real. It was unlike anything I'd seen before from an actor. Throughout the years, he's popped up in other movies, and always arrested and surprised me with his spark--The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Spider-Man and others.

Tonight, Dafoe looks like Wolverine with his wild hair and cut cheekbones and jawline.

The talk begins.

Dean Harvey peppers Dafoe with questions about where he's come from--Wisconsin (though Dafoe is quick to point out his mother's from Dorchester and his father attended Harvard Med School)--and how he got his start in acting (highlighting his involvement in community theatre and the Wooster Group in New York). The conversation is light and easy, and they invite questions from the crowd. On life and his craft, Dafoe offers wisdom like drops of rain: 

• [On the process of acting] Invest in the finding out. Cleanse yourself of expectations.
• [When acting] My ambition is to be like an animal--natural, graceful.
• [On working with first-time actors in the Florida Project:] It was fun to be around people who didn't have a shtick.
• [On how he finds happiness:] I find happiness disappearing into a certain role. [I find happiness] when I'm not there anymore and I lose myself.
• When you're hanging on to who you think you are, it can block you, and prevent you from living life.

Dafoe's desire to explore human fallibility, our human-ness, what we're made of--this vibrates. He puts it that he wants to "shine the light on what the truth is". His energy, his humility, his presence, his way--I find myself thinking of it all days later, and nodding as I wait for the green line train.