I don't think I'd make a very good disabled person. I find that when I'm sick, my whole system shuts down, I become depressed and sad for myself, and have no motivation to do much beyond watch movies on television. After a week and a half of diahorrea from food-poisoning, I began to feel better mid-week, and felt fully recovered by this weekend. The zest for life, when I got sick, that vanished without even a whimper, returned full blast, and I spent Saturday rushing around working out, going running, shopping, going to galleries, going out with friends. But I wonder how I would cope if I ever became permanently ill, such that there was never going to the be knowledge that I'd be soon up and about again.

I'm thinking of New Year's Eve, when I was only just getting over my first bout of food-poisoning. Brett and I went to the movies in Berkeley, and, long-legged thing that I am, we sat in the row of seats with no chairs in front of us, behind the spaces reserved for wheelchairs. Just as the opening credits came up on the movie, a woman motored up in her wheelchair, by herself, taking up that precious leg-room in front of me. As I watched the movie, I kept glancing at the back of the head of the woman in front of me. From the way she held herself, I guessed she had something like spina bifida. But it was only a guess; maybe she'd had a devastating car accident a few years ago and lost the use of her legs.

As we left the cinema, I imagined myself in her position. Would I have had the pluck to go out to movies by myself on New Year's Eve? Or would I have cowered at home, in self pity? If my sense-of-self and appreciation for life is so bound up in feeling physically strong and healthy, how will it be when I'm old and decrepit? I've often thought that once I can no longer be physically active, I'll just get it all over with. I'd prefer to think that I'll be like the woman in the wheelchair - determined to make the best of it, and enjoy the things I can still enjoy.

I haven't done any serious acting since grad-school. And, back then, after two semesters of method-acting training at the Wilma Theater, and a couple of parts in plays, I'd realized that I was unlikely ever to be any good. I'd taken up acting with the hope that it would somehow free me up to be able to express the emotions I could never feel in real life. Of course, at that stage in my life, I had absolutely nothing to draw on, as an actor. I'd lived a sheltered life, and had never experienced loss, tragedy or heartbreak. I stank, as an actor.

I'm trying to learn, this year, how to direct actors, and the tried and true method of learning that craft is to take acting classes. So my friend Scott and I have started to meet regularly to do scene-work. Scott is an experienced actor, and theatrical director; he now wants to learn how to make movies. So the plan is that we'll take turns directing each other in tiny little one-scene movies. He'll give me feedback on how well I directed his acting, and then I'll help him learn how to frame shots, and setup film scenes. We had our first meeting this week, a rehearsal, and it had fallen to me to be the actor, and Scott to be the director. He'd asked me to learn a monologue from The Glass Menagerie.

I've been reading enough books about acting, recently, to know the basic kind of work that goes into preparing to act a scene. But I was having problems with the flowery language of Tenessee Williams. How can you say things like: "The cities swept about me like dead leaves", or "Blow out your candles, Laura!" in any kind of natural way? I mean, who talks like that? But it wasn't until the moment of truth that I truly realized how difficult it was going to be. We were sitting down in Scott's apartment, and he asked me to start doing the monologue. I'd already filled his ears with my excuses about how bad I was going to be. But now it was time to act.

I felt acutely self-conscious and unnatural. The first half of the monologue, I felt, was not too difficult. It helps that I'd be performing for film, which doesn't require big moments but, on the contrary, feeds on tiny little moments. But even in those quiet moments, where my character, Tom, talked of how he'd spent a few years wandering, to escape his family, you had to endow the words with some kind of personal meaning, and, as such, allow some of your own emotional truth to be displayed. I suppose that the fear of that moment distills a much larger fear of mine; the fear of being myself in case myself isn't likeable.

But that wasn't the worst of it. What am I to do with the second half of the monologue where Tom starts to get more emotional, as he tries to free his mind from the spectre of his physically disabled sister, Laura. I'm so scared of over-acting; of being false. As we reached that part of the monologue, I ground to a halt, and Scott and I spent the rest of the rehearsal talking about these issues. Thankfully, we ran out of time, so I was never put to the test with the second half of the monologue. But our next rehearsal is in two weeks. I'm going to have to deal with it somehow.