Current and Developing works: Poetry and Plays

Approaching New Year's Eve

2012-01-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

dark road
from wet--
a slight rain
looking out the car window
wipers click
watching center line dash forward.
mist curls hills
turning to dark froth
i can hardly see the sun.

This road is long and straight
and flat-- stretching-- reaching out
like my longing
for what I don't quite know
but it does seem straight forward.

An occasional fir tree
the hum of diesel
greys, browns, tips of green
other colors sleep in the ground
reverberations of emptiness
and me
as I drive
into winter.

christmas morn

2011-12-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

there's a crow
outside my window
this christmas morn
his throat in
thribulating throes
of jubilance--
coming out
in rasping
throes of
caw caw
caw.
flying by
the song is gone.
his black wings
flapping making
sounds of breath
whispers
then sweet nothings--
sips of
silence.

Blank spots

2011-11-06T18:16:00.000-08:00

You will see some blank posts on this blog. This is because I'm submitting some poems for publication and found out that posting them on my blog is considered to be publishing which is considered conflict of interest. So, I'm complying and taking the poems off. So just scroll down and you'll find plenty more. And I'll go through my waiting and growing chap books and post some more soon.

And if anyone out there has ideas for publishing or knows good publishers for poetry let me know. Deidre Scherer (the "illuninator" for the mermaid book) and I are getting closer to having a finished book and want it to find a publishing home.

just repeating a post

2011-10-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

YOU MUST WALK THAT LONESOME VALLEY

(Sing) You must walk that lonesome valley
You have to walk it by yourself
(Speak) The valley of longing
The valley of regret
The valley of despair
The valley of broken childhood
But you can be held.
(Sing) You have to walk it by yourself
(Speak)The valley of broken dreams
The valley of broken love
The valley of gratitude
The valley of patience
The valley of waiting
The valley of opportunity
(Sing) For nobody else
(Speak)
Can walk it for you
But you can be held
The valley of darkness
The valley of silence
The valley of light.
The valley of forgotten love.
The valley of plenitude.
The valley of perpetual longing...
(sing)
For nobody else can walk it for you...
(speak)
And you walk on your hands and knees
You walk running all the while
You walk whistling through your mouth
You walk slipping through the cracks
You walk crashing about
slogging, stumbling, breezing through...
(sing)
You walk it by yourself.
(speak)
And you shall be filled.
You shall be filled.
(sing)
Because we...
(speak)
We walk it
hand in hand
step by step
and when we walk it
Step by step,
we go
hand in hand
in the darkness
and in the light
and if we glance
when we glance
to the side
to the front
to the back
we will find
we are not alone.
Two by two
we are not alone.
Three by three
we are not alone.
to the side,
on and on,
we'll see
we actually walk
together
we walk
together.
though often it
doesn't seem
like together
we gotta see
through our heart--
which is never direct
which is never straightforward
which is never as it seems,
but then it is.

But you gotta
(sing)walk it
by yourself,
For nobody else
Can walk it for you...
(speak)
The walk adds
The walk contributes
Our knees get skinned
Our heads get bumped
Our sides split
Our throats get lumped
Our feet get tickled
Our skin gets parched
Our lips get kissed.
Our stomachs get filled
and then emptied
again
Our thirst gets slacked
Our fingers reach and grab
Our minds get bored
Our patience gets sore, split, excited, worn out, ramshackeled, evanescent,
rewarded, discouraged, enervated, redundant.

And we shall be filled
(sing)
But we must walk
it by ourself
(speak)
and together
we walk
together
we walk
to find ourselves out
to fill ourselves out
to find the spring in our step
the love behind the door
the footloose and fancy free
the mooring for our heart--
around the bend
beneath the waters
on top of the highest peak
we walk it by ourself
(sing)
for nobody else
can walk it for you...
that lonesome valley
(speak)
we walk in the same step
the same moment, at the same time
we just can't see it
but we are held
we are held
(sing)
you have to walk it by yourself.
(speak)
we build ourself in that valley
we find our sisterhood in that valley
our brotherhood
our familyhood
our nationhood
our worldhood
our neighborhood
we find peace
in that valley
our hearts are healed
in that valley
we continue there
in that valley
(sing)no where else.
(speak)
to walk is to lay down
the tread of our life.
(sing)
in that valley
we must walk
we must walk
(speak)
we walk,
in the valley of our heart
the valley of our pain
the valley of our love
the valley of life.

Notes: A wonderful version of the song this poem is based on is John Hurt's Jan. 2008 rendition. Just youtube it.

I realized this poem could be a "participatory" poem. You could easily add your own lines depending on what you are wrestling with at a given moment. That's what the poem is inviting you to do. And it's easy because the rhythms in this song are very forgiving.

Also the poem is a nod to my friend Patti Trimble who has an amazing poem written to "Shenandoah".

SHADOWS

2011-10-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

Shadows
gave me
some small comfort
as I looked down
to the ground
to the gravel
my feet
crunched
on the path.

CONNECTION

2011-08-13T01:32:00.001-07:00

I am a spark of god
I realized as i slid my arm
across the sheets
shoulder
turned down
head
dropped
to the pillow.

Earlier as I gazed
out the window of the bathroom
I saw the brightest
star in the sky
its light
still--like the
seed pearl
in an oyster.

A NIGHT WALK

2011-07-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

mauve sky
under the moon
the lamplight
casts my shadow
blue
through thick
grey fog
lights glim
birds tweet
fall to the
ground.
around
walking back
my shadow
black
air still
on my face
I forge
from prayers and love
a cloak
to go lightly
over my shoulders.

keep tinkering

2011-06-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

well i keep tinkering with the punctuation on MORNING WALK TO GET THE PAPER. hope it's not dizzying for you.

morning walk to get the paper

2011-06-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

soft flight of birds
hear wings
leaving twisted wire--
crunch into
apple delight,
pale yellow with
clouds of green,
bite 'round
bits of bad
spots.
stopped in tracks
by massive black limbs
and slender leaves
on gum trees
mirrored in a
puddle of silver
also slender.
a tiny permutation
a ripple
wider arcs
spilling out
a breeze?
a drop
from sky?
drop drop
here there
everywhere
waves
waves
life is so
fragile.

as i posted in the last blog, i'm still tinkering with punctuation. any suggestions? i started out with only 2 question marks: the ones after breeze and sky. i liked the flow and the simplicity, but then was afraid i was demanding too much of the reader. what say you?

Will post a new poem in this place.

2011-05-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

a simple for emily

2011-04-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Big black bumblebee
With a buzz so strong
It pulls me
Out of my
Reverie--
To the simple
Task
Of looking.

"YOU MUST WALK THAT LONESOME VALLEY'

2011-04-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

(Sing) You must walk that lonesome valley
You have to walk it by yourself
(Speak) The valley of longing
The valley of regret
The valley of despair
The valley of broken childhood
But you can be held.
(Sing) You have to walk it by yourself
(Speak)The valley of broken dreams
The valley of broken love
The valley of gratitude
The valley of patience
The valley of waiting
The valley of opportunity
(Sing) For nobody else
(Speak)
Can walk it for you
But you can be held
The valley of darkness
The valley of silence
The valley of light.
The valley of forgotten love.
The valley of plenitude.
The valley of perpetual longing...
(sing)
For nobody else can walk it for you...
(speak)
And you walk on your hands and knees
You walk running all the while
You walk whistling through your mouth
You walk slipping through the cracks
You walk crashing about
slogging, stumbling, breezing through...
(sing)
You walk it by yourself.
(speak)
And you shall be filled.
You shall be filled.
(sing)
Because we...
(speak)
We walk it
hand in hand
step by step
and when we walk it
Step by step,
we go
hand in hand
in the darkness
and in the light
and if we glance
when we glance
to the side
to the front
to the back
we will find
we are not alone.
Two by two
we are not alone.
Three by three
we are not alone.
to the side,
on and on,
we'll see
we actually walk
together
we walk
together.
though often it
doesn't seem
like together
we gotta see
through our heart.
which is never direct
which is never straightforward
which is never as it seems,
but then it is.

But you gotta
(sing)walk it
by yourself,
For nobody else
Can walk it for you...
(speak)
The walk adds
The walk contributes
Our knees get skinned
Our heads get bumped
Our sides split
Our throats get lumped
Our feet get tickled
Our skin gets parched
Our lips get kissed.
Our stomachs get filled
and then emptied
again
Our thirst gets slacked
Our fingers reach and grab
Our minds get bored
Our patience gets sore, split, excited, worn out, ramshackeled, evanescent,
rewarded, discouraged, enervated, redundant,

And we shall be filled
(sing)
But we must walk
it by ourself
(speak)
and together
we walk
together
we walk
to find ourselves out
to fill ourselves out
to find the spring in our step
the love behind the door
the footloose and fancy free
the mooring for our heart--
around the bend
beneath the waters
on top of the highest peak
we walk it by ourself
(sing)
for nobody else
can walk it for you...
that lonesome valley
(speak)
we walk in the same step
the same moment, at the same time
we just can't see it
but we are held
we are held
(sing)
you have to walk it by yourself.
(speak)
we build ourself in that valley
we find our sisterhood in that valley
our brotherhood
our familyhood
our nationhood
our worldhood
our neighborhood
we find peace
in that valley
our hearts are healed
in that valley
we continue there
in that valley
(sing)no where else.
(speak)
to walk is to lay down
the tread of our life.
(sing)
in that valley
we must walk
we must walk
(speak)
we walk,
in the valley of our heart
the valley of our pain
the valley of our love
the valley of life.

Notes: A wonderful version of the song this poem is based on is John Hurt's Jan. 2008 rendition. Just youtube it.

I realized this poem could be a "participatory" poem. You could easily add your own lines depending on what you are wrestling with at a given moment. That's what the poem is inviting you to do. And it's easy because the rhythms in this song are very forgiving.

Also the poem is a nod to my friend Patti Trimble who has an amazing poem written to "Shenandoah".)

saw my first hummingbird of spring

2011-04-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

sound

2011-04-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

words come to me in poems for how they sound. how does it sound out loud? sound penetrates. sound is so primitive-- sidesteps the rational. sound holds us speaks to us rocks us pushes us. sound borns each moment.

here is a poem about daily sounds:

The comfort of
Making
Your way
In the world.
The clunk of your
Shoes
Up the stairs
Thud of the
Mug on the shelf
Rattle of
Vitamins
In a bottle
as they’re
Lifted up
from
The table
Tapping unshod toes
again
To get a pen
Scratching
Skritches
Across
The page…
Tumbling water
to the tub
Begun
By the
Twist of my hand.
Ruckle and thump
I come into
Being
With
Sound.
Clabbering
Back down
To get a
Towel.

6/23/2010

a word about a word

2011-03-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

A note about my poems which have one word on each line. These really do need to be read out loud. I call these my "falling" poems. They're to be read tumbling down the page

A BLACK BIRD AT DUSK

2011-03-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

CAAAAW
CAAAAW.

LARGE clear pearl
puddles,
sticks
to eyelash,
spills
in moonlight
down
my
face.

I knew it would come
at dusk I heard a black bird.

EVERYDAY MERMAID POEMS

2011-03-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

Just got the first fabric sewn "illuminations" from Deidre Scherer (www.dscherer.com) for the first six poems of the book. I'm thrilled. Can't wait until it's a book. Anyone know any publishers? We're shopping around.

SHADOWS ARE ON THE AIR

2011-02-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

Don't you love
shadow?
I walk
toward the moon
it walks behind
I walk
away
it walks ahead
it mimics
the most
intimate minutiae
of me
like my right hand
swings straight back
in full fling
while my left
holds itself still
in a cup.
On a surfboard
such paddling
would bring me
a-round.

SKELETON WOMAN books have arrived

2011-02-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

THE COVERS ARE BEAUTIFUL.

friends and supporters and cast will begin receiving books in the mail. if you don't get one and feel you're in this category contact me with your address and i'll send you one.

SKELETON WOMAN WILL ARRIVE AGAIN SOON

2011-02-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

Andrea Dunlap, the book designer, sent lulu a great e-mail describing the botched covers and they got it. So the 50 books are due any day.

huzzah huzzah. my first book is done. you can order it through lulu.

also had a wonderful design consult with deidre scherer who is "illuminating" my poems from EVERYDAY MERMAID POEMS. quite exciting. I won't tell what we're up to, but i think you will like it. All I'll say is that it leans towards the abstract. Our goal was to have a genuine equal dialogue going on between my work and hers. we've been talking and playing with ideas since a year ago January. You know all that research and exploring basement work before a project begins. And now it's begun.

You can look at Deidre's work at www.dscherer.com It's a unique form of art which she's created out of fabric and thread. take a look. it's quite special.

a confession and rambling

2011-02-02T17:17:00.001-08:00

i put some of these poems up too early. i just get too excited. and then i find myself tweaking and editing them online. part of what i'm playing with in my art is to let go of the need for perfection. i could go on and give you other rationalizations :-). just so you know i'm both serious about this and not at the same time.

emily dickinson wrote version after version of her poems. editors often don't know which one was THE ONE. guess what. maybe there isn't a ONE. Playwrights often get talked into one version by directors and years later go back and change it. writing my poems: some days i like one version. some days another. sometimes it's mood dependent. sometimes an experience of the event gets richer and i'm clearer about what i want to say. sometimes another experience changes my original experience of the poem. it's like the "choose your own ending stories and films". of course many times "the penny drops" and you get that feeling of resonance and letting go. the search for perfection is limited in the constant multidimensional, plasticity of our world.

WHY I WALK AT NIGHT

2011-01-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

I walk
clomp clomp
under the face
of the full moon.
Right hand swings forward back
while left goes forward
halfheartedly.
Eyes look down
at the dirt road
feet meet street
and angle right
moonlight in sheets
blankets
wet macadam.
A car speeds by
leaves
rivers of red
crickets whirr
two nights ago--
it was frogs.

(still tinkering with this one.)

SKELETON WOMAN DELAYED

2011-01-17T22:06:00.000-08:00

Well i ordered a bunch of "Skeleton Woman" books from Lulu to send out to friends and I was so excited to receive them it took me awhile to realize how terrible the printing job was on the covers. Andrea Dunlap my editor went back to Lulu with a complaint and we just received word they will reprint my order. So i will be sending out a bunch of copies to friends and interested parties. Yay! And thank you to Lulu.

one from emily dickinson

2011-01-16T11:04:00.000-08:00

a prebirth poem

Color - Caste - Denomination - (970)
by Emily Dickinson

Color - Caste - Denomination -
These - are Time's Affair -
Death's diviner Classifying
Does not know they are -

As in sleep - all Hue forgotten -
Tenets - put behind -
Death's large - Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand -

If Circassian - He is careless -
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde - or Umber -
Equal Butterfly -

They emerge from His Obscuring -
What Death - knows so well -
Our minuter intuitions -
Deem unplausible

just sharing a moment from the day

2011-01-15T23:11:00.000-08:00

Walking back
from getting
the mail
looked up to
see that ol'
familiar slice
of yellow moon
fatter than a
quarter.
I've ached
for it.
Didn't know.
Our Mouths agape.

I hear
my footsteps.

BLACK

2011-01-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

A black hole
the soul of dread
lives in the
middle of the
bird
with the
many colored
feathers
in its tail.

At night
in the
dark
prequel to sleep
all my pain
all my pain
pain
all in this
world.

Clouds gather
some light
some dark.

watching the lunar eclipse on the solstice

2010-12-21T00:19:00.000-08:00

this hasn't happened in over 400 years.

happy returning of the ligh.

more lights

2010-12-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

A LIGHT ROMANCE
For Meara

I look at the
Christmas tree
tiny tiny lights--
slide into tear drops
at the point
there are almost as
many yellow as green
as blue.
Not so with red and pink.
Yellow burnishes
needles with a glow.
Blue is drop of sky.
Green greenifies tree.
Red and pink--
a dialogue of tease:
Is pink, a red? Or red a…
quiet
enters in--
Lights begin
to blur,
body settles in,
shimmers
shifts
sways
to lights.
Then the tree
in millimeters
begins
to bend
its spine.
My hands
drift to my side—
a dance.

Heading towards the darkst day of trhe year

2010-12-20T05:07:00.001-08:00

12/6/2010

Flat Black
December night
impenetrable
stars behind
shields
stop lights
like jewels
fallen from
heights
the time of
year when
heaven is
on earth.
I drive ‘cross
country roads
a winter wrap
of black
insurmountable
silence.

no poem: just a footnote about my poetry

2010-12-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

Many of my poems are sound based and have to be read out loud. The meaning comes from the intertwining of sound, rhythm, and physical image.

continuing light

2010-12-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

58 11/20 (111)

Did you ever
look up
into the
night sky
and one star
seemed to
claim your presence?
Tonight it
was a
blinking
rose
a treasure
to the left
of Orion.

Coming to the earth's turn at winter: Poems of light

2010-12-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

50 9/5
My daughter
pointed to me
stars in
the water
I could not
see them
one left upper
another right
middle
below
lower left
more more

fabric
in a dark world
inner light.
I see more. (103)

54 9/17 (107)

tears in me
stars
hold me
in their constancy
mirror me.
how could
have I thought
the whirring chirp
of crickets
were frogs?

LIGHT AND CRICKETS

2010-12-17T23:09:00.000-08:00

I want to include the following poem in poems of light. I guess “clarity” is a form of light.
48 8/23
CLARITY

crickets turning whirr
circling
wrenching to
sphere
orange
emanates
small
a baby’s
ear

hold it
in my hand
slips to touch
sideways glance
secures
not to know
but hear
say not
see but
touch
taste
my tongue
a cherry stem
twists
to
knot. (81)

This poem speaks to the part of ourselves where clarity is born. Not from the mind but the deeper regions where feelings, heart, mind are roiled around in a crucible and create a solid, dimensional object.

48 8/23
The crickets
began
chirping
at 4 P.M.
the sun in
golden light
chipping away
at the night
in its slowed
descent
now in pitch
black warm
the steady
hum
turning of the
Ball. (82)

LIGHT BEARER

2010-12-17T00:36:00.001-08:00

35 8/2
I want to hold
the world
together.

dawn
penetrates fog
blue
everything
infused
in its wet web

doors blown
straps, bonds, hair pins, belts, buckles, thread. ropes, duty, lunch, jobs, punctuation, sleep,
buttons slide

jagged desire.
Lucifer comes
rises Venus. (68)

getting closer to the solstice

2010-12-17T00:32:00.000-08:00

26. 7/21
Saw a
moth traveling down
around the bend
in the stairs
just like I do
toward the
sconce
of fluorescent light.

celebrating light

2010-12-15T13:23:00.000-08:00

28 7/23
Sun go down
on me
the stars
the silent
places
in my heart. (58)

29 7/25
Wake up
there is a
new dawn
and the light!
is glowing (59)

30 7/26
light below
sun above
no sky in
the middle. (60)

31 7/27
cleaned the
cob webs off
the panes
of the
porchlight
now all
that is left
are the
mirrors. (61)

will post another poem

2010-12-13T22:47:00.001-08:00

more poems of light for the Solstice

2010-12-13T18:02:00.000-08:00

16. 7/10
In the rear view mirror
Bright car yellow cat eyes
Following me home
Until I turned left. (45)

17. 7/11
light on the clay damp sand
underneath the gravel
sprayed
by the tires of my
bike
as I lie
far too close
with the road. (46)

18. 7/11
the light of this
summer day
stays in my heart.(47)

19. 7/11
soft golden grasses
brighter than
the dawn fog
above. (48)

20. 7/13/10
Up the hollows down the inclines
in rivers
falling down the road
sunlight on my face. (49)

22. 7/14
silver light
breaking through clouds
birds quietly sing
a square of paper
on our front gate
two, three of them
clothes pinned
dashed off by felt pen
she has that artist’s touch
arrows
pointing across across then up
to the side gate
quashed in between slats
sticking out
towards me
a newspaper
ours
from our neighbor. (50)

21 7/14

A PRAYER

the sun can seem
like a thousand lights
it lights up everything
every glen every glade
every stream
every pocket
if you hold it open
every wrinkle
on every face
if you’re out in the open
god’s laugh
tumbles down
with kisses
‘less the
woods too thick
mountain too tall
a shuttered house
a tree falls across a road
a damn to block a creek
Ganesha come to us. (51)
* (a magic number to be used at the discretion of the poet.)

Solstice continued

2010-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

13. 7/7/10
sunlight everywhere
today
on the roads
on the tops of trees
top of the steering wheel
on my hands
more light,
as they turn the direction towards the west,
it drips down
my left arm
stops at the
elbow.
I have to feel it. (42)

14. 7/8
driving down the road
this dark night
two rivers of
orange lines
in front of me
lit up by headlights. (43)

for tim
15. 7/9
the road today
is lighter
light all around me
even though I
can’t feel it.
I can’t
then I can
then it’s not there
then it is.

the tangling dance of light. (44)

16. 7/10
In the rear view mirror
Bright car yellow cat eyes
Following me home
Until I turned left. (45)

17. 7/11
light on the clay damp sand
underneath the gravel
sprayed
by the tires of my
bike
as I lie
far too close
with the road. (46)

18. 7/11
the light of this
summer day
stays in my heart.(47)

19. 7/11
soft golden grasses
brighter than
the dawn fog
above. (48)

20. 7/13/10
Up the hollows down the inclines
in rivers
falling down the road
sunlight on my face. (49)

Winter Solstice

2010-12-11T00:55:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the winter solstice i'll be posting poems about the impact of light on our lives. These come from an ongoing project. The goal is to reach a thousand lights and will be compiled into a book: WINTER SOLSTICE: A THOUSAND LIGHTS. The numbers at the end of the poems indicate the number of lights reached. You can see I have a long ways to go. And you can see sometimes I cheat a little.

1.
moonlight
Closing the
window
my body
leans
towards the thick
lit fog. (1)

2.
a red window frames
it
my eyes
burst open
to see
sunlight
on the white lily. (2)

3.
1-2-3- shining spots
under the eaves
of our home
a box of light
on the outer wall
next to the front door
two floods
spilling more
a chorus of light. (8)

4.
a sliver of orange moon
about to vanish
behind the trees. (9)

5.
walked into the barn
last night
plugged in two strings
of lights
left over from a wedding
two years ago
where my daughter and her husband
danced
the marriage dance
line by line
the guests were illuminated. (33)

6,
light shines
into my tired eyes
in the middle of the
night
trying to read
I droop
Eyes burn
Light is not my friend. (34)

7.
white light heat
of summer
birds stick to the woods (35)

8.
no light outside right now
but fog and wind
but glowing hills
does this count? (36)

9. for susan kleckner
no light all day
then a square of light
cast down
shadows of leaves (38)

10.
smoky white
on the horizon
in the
middle of the night
what magic is this? (39)

11.
sunlight
strikes
my eyes
through
the
crack
in
the blind.

I won’t wake up. (40)

Winter

2010-12-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

Flat Black
December night
impenetrable
stars behind
shields
stop lights
like jewels
fallen from
heights
the time of
year when
heaven is
on earth.
I drive ‘cross
country roads
north right
behind west
a winter wrap
of black
I stop
get out--
silence.

(still working on this but wanted to put it up anyway)---feels a bit abstruse in the beginning. any thoughts?

SKELETON WOMAN ARRIVED

2010-12-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

50 paperbacks: beautiful cover, easy to read, beautiful back. great punctuation. reading flows. darkness of dark and blues and hidden faces. i held one in my hand for a long long time. one of those moments so big to hold you want someone to share it with. also one of those moments i know where Skeleton Woman never leaves us. hope she sings for many people. Andrea Dunlap (book designer), Betsy Pffeifer (editor), and Tim O'Reilly (took the bones of her and first published)--you have helped her appear in a form so approachable. thank you.

today we hear about the discovery of new life forms

2010-12-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

this discovery will blow apart our conception of what is life in this world and others--here is a poem glancing at the mystery of connection.

Did you ever
look up
into the
night sky
and one star
seemed to
claim your presence?
Tonight it
was a
blinking
rose
a treasure
to the left
of Orion.

SKELETON WOMAN IS LEAVING LULU

2010-11-30T21:29:00.001-08:00

and is due to arrive in a couple of days!!

Sonoma County Summer Reading

2010-10-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Last summer, Patti Trimble, Nancy Dougherty and I did a poetry reading in our barn...

Here's Nancy's segment of the reading:

And here's Patti's:

AN EROTIC FAIRYTALE

2010-10-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

THE SECRET IN A WOMAN:
An Erotic Fairytale (mid 1980’s)

Fairytale, fairytale.

Long, long ago, in a village, in a remote part of India, there lived a little green frog. She was a stunning little frog. Colored vibrant, shimmering chartreuse, much like the green peepers found in the West.

This frog was very frog. She hopped, climbed trees, ate bugs, dove under water. You know Basso: Old Pond. Frog jumped. Splash.

But then one day she started to do different things: She watched the bees; she watched the trees; she watched…the flowers grow.

Anyway this frog became obsessed by watching. She watched and watched and watched. She got so she could see the wing of a hummingbird in flight; she could see a rock becoming smaller; she could see herself as frog. And at that point, she began to change.

Soon after, she began to spend her days differently than before. She played hide and seek with the bees. she danced with the trees. She became…a flower…opening. At the same time she became both more silly and more silent.

Her nights were different. There was darkness. She would sit small, black frog next to tall, black Banyan tree and wait. She would wait and wait. After many nights of waiting, a darkness began to well up in her…Discontent… Discontent swirled into sadness. Sadness… turned to grief… Desire emerged… Rushed headlong into unutterable longing. Longing. Longing. And the rain poured down into her heart.

One night as the moonlight glanced off the swaying, swishing branches of the Banyan Tree and the warm, sultry breeze kissed her body a thousand times, she thought she saw something. Maybe it was the edge of a flute. Maybe a tall dark shadow, dancing….

And the next day she danced. She danced and danced. She felt a funny sensation in her toes.

The next night she thought she heard a haunting, lilting, echoing sound…calling her.

And the next day she cried. She cried and cried. She began…to melt…inside.

The following night… the Dark One came, and touched her. He caressed her smooth, wet skin, now shining of love. He blew flute notes, sent them sliding down her throat, gliding slowly, softly, into her pool of joy. Her body ached…. His dark, blue body arched into frog shapes. Shape upon shape. Small dark frog mingling with tall, Dark, Dancing Lord. Dark to dark. Limb spiraling with limb…. Who could tell …whose was whose?

(NOTE: I'm posting this older piece because I love it and some day I will dance it.)

FALL

2010-10-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

Calling
call
owl
sound
flat
pressed
‘gainst my
brain
like the
lid of
pan
not piercing
ear
like the dive
of swallow
compressing
containing
consoling
twining in my flesh
like a woven paper
basket.

I hear death
strand by strand
is a great unraveling
and I wonder
has this note
kept me
whole
and I wonder
will this be
the last sense
of me
and will it go
back to the wood
where it
began.

Will post another poem

2010-09-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

a new poem

2010-09-23T06:31:00.000-07:00

tears in me
stars
hold me
in their constancy
mirror me
how could
have I thought
the whirring chirp
of crickets
were frogs?

2010-09-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Will post another poem

2010-09-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Will post another poem

2010-09-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

SKELETON WOMAN APPEARS

2010-09-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Well you're not going to believe this but there was a sighting of SKELETON WOMAN, my play, a few days ago. The first four books came back from Lulu which we're going to be using as galleys and hopefully within a few weeks the book: SKELETON WOMAN: A DANCE WITH THE DARK will be available. We're very excited about it. I'll be sending copies to everyone directly involved in the production and if you are inadvertently left off the list let me know. An exciting time.

2010-05-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

EVERY DAY MERMAID POEMS

2010-05-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

I've written a book of poetry and am collaborating with a fabulous illustrator Deidre Scherer. Just google for her and you can see her fine work.

Playing with sounding out the poems and hearing the different voices in them. Hearing cadences and trembles and music. Getting ready for a reading. I'm also choreographing the poems --that will be awhile :-).

Here is a poem I'm noodling with and posting it because it reminds me of tonight:

ALL WEEK

All week the night sky
Has hinted at red lavender
The moon has shone out
All the stars
Except a few
Casting shafts of light
On the meadow.
Gone are the flesh
Of Orion &
The Pleides.
The crickets hum
Caress the air
And I wonder what
Is to come
In the spaces
I have not foreseen.
I am enveloped
In a dark wool
Blanket.

GRATITUDE

2009-12-20T18:10:00.001-08:00

I want to write all my friends
All my acquaintances
All my strangers
All my family
Who have helped me
Given me support
Given me insight
Given me their hand up
Their hand out
But it is too numerous
It’s like the apples
On the tree.

The birds circle the sky
The creeks get
Deeper and deeper every year
The trees know their role
They gather
Their roots sucking up water
Water sucking their tender shoots
Moment by moment
The dirt leaves
And then the fall
A bridge
A ramp
A railing
A calling
By the side.
Their greenness
Dissolving in the dark
Of the river that the creek
Became all those years..

And water cutting
Through dark earth to stone
Is grateful for the
Gift of green
Buried in its depths
Not seen, but known.

8 days of workshopping with george

2009-09-08T18:34:00.000-07:00

Still shimmering from all the work ending in 8 hours of work yesterday and my friend Bob Poole filmed 8 takes in 3 hours today. Lots of fabulous exploration. Cutting words, improvising, on script, off script, on the chairs, on the floor. Working from connection is bliss where we arrived and hard trying to get there. So so worth it. We both ended up in another world. That's the joy of acting. We'll edit it and if we've got interesting film for public viewing we'll put it up on this site. I need to let the tapes cook for awhile or I should say I need to let it all simmer in me so I can see with more objective eyes. I've learned so much about this piece.

Goodbye sweet George. Off he goes back to New York. And a big heartfelt shout out to Bob who came in at the last minute with time, heart, and clear precise thoughts on changes. Working together where it's all about the work and nothing else is such pleasure.

And now I know when you're lucky enough to have it going well you get energized not depleted.

(posted a few days later)

Workshopping it.

2009-08-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

My friend George Wright and I are planning to workshop the first eleven pages of the play the first few weeks in September. A preliminary goal is to film it if we get that far and put the rough cut up on this blog.

It's getting exciting.

And now to put our feet in the actual water.

Emily is dressed.

2009-08-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

I found a costume for Emily today. It's a more contemporary version. You'll have to wait to see.

like a 12th century mystic

2009-07-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

Fun reading the book THE MURDERER AND THE POET about the forger who foisted a made up poem of Emily Dickinson's on the world. It was sold by a sloppy Southby's auction to the Amherst Library. The forger used Franklin's documentation to create the "authentic poem". In passing the author said Emily Dickinson was like a Twelfth Century mystic. The Saint Francis bell is struck again. Nice authentication for me.

SURPRISES IN THE NIGHT

2009-07-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

I thought I had taken a break from working on the play. I've been finishing up editing SKELETON WOMAN to be published and working on poems for a book. And treading water while looking for the next step forward. So I finished a poem in the middle of the night. Got up out of bed to write it down. I was sort of bent over and started to straighten and then I started dancing how it is to wake up after a long long time. It felt like Emily in the beginning of the play. And then she began to see the world.

Happy 4th: In appreciation of our country

2009-07-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

THE SEBASTOPOL FARMER’S MARKET

I loved the market today
The way the little girl
Crawled around
On her belly
In the fountain
While I ate
Hard boiled
Duck eggs
Atop
Shredded
Lamb
On top
Of
Mole sauce
And the newborn
Sitting next to me
On her daddy’s chest
Was a wrap in a
Blanket
To ward
Off a chill

And the way the
Deformed peaches
Tasted
And the African queen
Selling her shea butter
Amidst
Dreadlocks and drums
And the ten year old kid
Amidst the bongos
Amidst his father
Playing guitar
Amidst His father
Singing
And the little boy
Banging and
Chewing his gum
And not missing
A lick of beat
As his smiles
And eyes drifted
Off to the side
And a young teen girl
Doing cartwheels
And hoops around
Her middle
And the woman from
The Middle East
With amber and jewels
And turquoise
And silver crosses.

Then there’s the couple sitting by my
Side from the
Big city talking
About how their
Eating here was
So ecological
So sustainable
So retainable
Replaced later by
A walking couple
who remarked on why
the flags?
And I said
“It’s June.
There’s flags.
It must be flag
Day.
And isn’t it nice
I’m starting to
Like the flag again.”
And they agreed and said,
“ We’re starting to like our country again.”

My community ‘tis of thee
“Sweet land of liberty”
And pastries and salmon
And strawberry ices
And baskets and flowers
And tied dyed
Saris – all for
Reasonable
Prices out
In the open
Air
Folks
Shuffling,
To and fro,
With colors
Sublime
Mauve
And puce
And saffron
And lime and
Tastes
Shuffling,
Fro and to,
And scents
“And the living
Is easy.”

an old time friend

2009-06-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

George Wright has been visiting from the East Coast. And by old I mean 35 years. Dare I blush. Well he took some acting classes in New York so I asked him if he'd like to read my play with me. He drops into the Saint Francis character with such pathos, fun, and depth. It's helped me see why I wrote some of the scenes I did and helping me see through lines in the play I wasn't even aware of. (Remember this play came out in a rush in two weeks as opposed to SKELETON WOMAN which I worked on on and off for over twelve years). And, as an actress I'm getting a clearer sense of the evolving relationship between Francis and Emily. It was a sweet experience to read with someone who knows me so well and vice versa and have that bubble out of the characters. Lots of laughter.

CALLED BACK

2009-06-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

Finished reading this book last night. It was the last book Emily Dickinson read before she died. Gave me goosebumps. Themes that would have really resonated with her: the main character had bouts of blindness and embarks on a perilous adventure when he's blind. The second main character has no personal history for most of the book. And this character goes into extreme withdrawal after a great tragedy. Emily is reputed to have gone into massive retreat upon her nephew Gilbert's death. She never came out. And, Emily's last written words to her cousins before she died: CALLED BACK.

CHOREOGRAPHY CONTINUED--

2009-06-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

Today exploring themes begun yesterday plus the ending arcs of a movement. Realized I frequently get to the end and don't stay with it letting the end have it's most precious moments. That's the time of transition to the next move and also remembering that a choreography teacher said the ending of any dance piece is 80 percent important. So why not each move. I'm learning a lot about what is revealed there and like in an outbreath that's also the time of the most fun. Also playing with minimal movement to music (still listening to tango :-) ) and letting a still slight sometimes sculptural move happen in the most inconsequential time of a rhythmic sequence. Fun. Teaching me patience.

Choreography for Conversation I: OVERATURE

2009-05-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

Emily will begin on the floor and I'm exploring the most rudimentary movement. I'm exploring the source of the movement from a purely physical exploration. I'm taking movement training from Kathleen Langermann and learning that arm movement should be initiated from ribs and loose scapula on top of core strength. Leg movement needs to be initiated from deep in the pelvis. So I'm rolling around on the floor playing. (Listening to fun tango music in the process. And yes this is totally irrelevant.) I've sound ideas for the movement and inspiration is also coming from my little grandson. So the physical place will underpin the movement and then there will be layers on top of that which will be influenced by sound, context, and the impulse for the movement.

A side note: It's amazing how much work I have to do to just get physically ready to do this play. Physical presence comes from strength and I'm slowly building that up. Pilates reformer, cardio-rhythm dance classes, movement training, walking, swimming.

A Side Trip

2009-05-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well with the delight of a new grandson and all that entails I haven't been able to muster the concerted effort I need to put up a full play - even work on the first 11 pages. I figure I'll get back to it in a month or two. In the meantime I've been writing a series of poems for a poetry book called EVERYDAY MERMAID POEMS. In the planning is a collaboration with Deidre Scherer to illustrate them.(you should look at her website by googling for it). And now the tie in to the play. In writing the poems I've realized how much I've learned about poetry by immersing myself in Emily Dickinson's work. She's such a nimble wordsmith and wrote on so many different levels. I've learned about cadences, line breaks, punctuation, simplicity, playfulness, slant rhymes, ordinary rhymes, patterns of lines. Of course I'd known a lot of this before, but Emily Dickinson writes with such precision and clarity of thought (even when she's deliberately obscuring). I love thinking I'm learning and or doing something for one reason and all of these side benefits crop in. Also I've learned a lot from haiku and had fun reading one review of haiku that said if you like haiku you'll love Emily Dickinson. And an aside note: I love how TWITTER is like composing haiku.

Choreography Tool

2009-05-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

I learned today that Eric Hawkins pointed out 3 main movement curves of the body: 1. a forward circle (develope) 2. a backwards circle (envelope) 3. spiral. This is a fun tool for choreography. It can make the movement clearer by being decisive about which kind of curve is used.

The First Eleven Pages

2009-05-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

I've decided I am going to work up the first conversation in this piece. Figuring out the staging and choreography. I did a reading with an actor friend cold for him and he showed me some softer ways of doing certain parts. I did this with my SKELTON WOMAN piece. It's really useful to have many people read different parts since there can be so many different points of view. Actors show meanings that the playwright hasn't thought of. Fun.

Saint Francis Visionary

2009-04-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

The courage and vision of Saint Francis to bring the earth into the spiritual realm of the church. To do this in the Twelfth/Thirteenth Centuries is absolutely astonishing to me. We're even now as a culture still not much beyond the egg stage of valuing and nourishing this planet we live on and it's 700 years after Saint Francis. The force of the man.

Saint Francis bio

2009-04-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

Saint Francis was born around 1181 in Assisi to a wealthy cloth merchant and a very religious French mother who originally named him after John the Baptist. She prayed he’d become a religious leader like John. His father having just returned from France renamed him Francis. Francis spent his youth fashioning himself after the troubadours. He sang, drank, and courted women. In his passion to be a knight he joined a group of knights and rode off to fight a neighboring city of Perugia. He was captured and spent a year in a wet dark dungeon where many died.He may have contracted tuberculosis of the bone at this time. He was freed, arrived home, and almost died. Instead he had visions of God. He returned to being a troubadour but began giving more and more money away to beggars culminating in giving away a great deal of money and cloth that his father had given him for a business transaction to a priest to help rebuild a church. His irate father dragged him to the local priest and the priest exhorted him to obey his father. Which prompted Francis to take off all his clothes to give back to his father saying that his only Father was in heaven. The priest accepted Francis’ proclamation and clothed him.

Francis lived the life of a beggar and received more and more visions. His spiritual journey led him to wed himself to Lady Poverty and he began to eat only that which he had been given. He wore a simple brown robe and if given a coat would wear it until he found someone in need. He would find caves to pray in and go on prolonged fasts.

Saint Francis began to see Christ in every thing and felt kinship with everything in the world even Sister Death. Everything was of Christ. Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wolf, Sister Water, Brother Fire. As a child he was terrified of leprosy and in his visions of Christ he actually kissed a leper on the mouth. He would administer to lepers and it is thought he contracted leprosy later in life.

His life began to be one of going from village to village preaching. He felt everyone received Christ’s love and began the practice of greeting people with “good day.” He wrote songs in the native Italian dialect and wanted songs that were for the people and began singing songs and exhorted people to come to Christ and be redeemed. He called himself the Clown of God or a Troubadour of God. He practiced abject humility and would ask his followers to walk on top of him for his sins. He did not acknowledge class. He’s considered the first Italian poet since he felt songs should be written in the language of the people. Francis began attracting followers who lived the extreme life of poverty that he laid out. Nothing could be owned. Food had to come from begging. Reading was suspect. He was proclaiming a vital relationship to Christ.

He went to Rome to ask permission to organize a lay order. He was given one after the numbers of his followers grew. He met a young woman Clare who believed in his teaching so strongly she begged to become one of his followers. He helped her set up an order of nuns. Their order was cloistered. It was said that Clair hardly ever left the main room which housed the nuns. They would write letters to each other for the rest of Francis’ life seeing each other only a small number of times by Francis’ decision. Clare also fasted a great deal, but later in life she began to see it as destructive in the extreme and worked to limit the fasting of her followers.

Francis attempted two trips to the Middle East to convert the heathen. On one his boat was unseaworthy and he had to go back. On the second trip he was appalled at how the Christian soldiers behaved. He was able to work his way into the enemy Sutltan’s palace and engage him in intense discussions about God. He said he’d be willing to undergo a test of fire to show the Sultan the fierceness of his belief in the Christian God. The sultan liked him so much and was so impressed that he wouldn’t let Francis go through the ordeal. Francis left with the sultan’s good wishes and asked that Francis would pray for spiritual guidance for him. Francis left the Middle East disheartened with the behavior of the Christians, an admiration for the Sultan, and probably picked up malaria at this time.

He returned to find that his order had been taken over and modified. It was a dark time for him in which he had to write and modify some of his wishes for his Order. The Pope and others felt he had been too strict. At this time he picked up an eye disease. He was ordered by the Pope to have a treatment for the disease which did no good and then ordered by the new the head of his order who Francis had promised to obey to undergo another treatment.. The treatment proscribed by the latter was to have hot pokers placed on both temples. This treatment combined with all of his fasting and illness led to his early death in his mid forties.

Today many may think Francis’ practices were extreme, but they have to be seen in the context of his age. The Church at that time was bloated with wealth and greed. So Francis saw poverty as the antidote to get back to the spiritual life. Because Francis both so loved the world and so valued everything in it yet had taken the vow of poverty he helped create a shift in the Catholic Church. Before his life the church was fixated on the spiritual life which came after death while many in the Church lived a life of extreme wealth. Because of Francis the Catholic religion began to open the door to the natural world and more value came for the living of the life in this world and supporting the life in this world.

Seeing in the Dark

2009-03-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Well I've just had a very interesting experience. I've had this small growth in my eye called a pterygium for a number of years. It was slowly getting bigger and bigger and my eye comfort and vanity were getting tweaked so I went to an opthamologist. He recommended surgery. He said it was easy to do that I'd have three days of intense pain and that I could expect all redness to be gone within 3 weeks.

As I walked out of the doctor's appointment I remembered that Emily Dickinson and St. Francis both had extreme difficulty with their eyes. Emily was taken to Boston to see an eye specialist and was ordered to remain in a dark room for months. When she came home she was only able to do housework. And, in secret, this was one of the most prolific, creative periods of her life. Afterwards these bouts of eye trouble would come again and again. On and off for over ten years she would have to remain in dark rooms. Her upstairs bedroom became her sole haven in her later years. Towards the end she became totally blind.

St. Francis also had reocurring problems with his eyes. Some may have started as early as his twenties when he was a soldier for Assisi against Perugia. He was captured and placed in a prison in a dark damp basement where he may have contracted malaria and or bone tuberculosis. He was released after a year and almost died. Instead he had a revelation about his God. The combination of malaria and later conjunctivitis plagued his eyes throughout his life. His followers begged him repeatedly to do something about it. In his own way he probably did. Often wherever he traveled he'd search for dark caves for prayer and contemplation - particularly if he was struggling. The caves were probably also a refuge for his eyes. He would emerge refreshed and with new clarity and directives about his path. In his final years the pain in his eyes was so intense that his followers fashioned a hood for him which kept his face in shadows. Finally under spiritual orders from Brother Elias, now his Superior, Francis submitted to a treatment which was so brutal it probably hastened his death. Towards the end he became totally blind.

Both Emily Dickinson and St. Francis spent big portions of their lives in darkness, semi-blindness, and blindness.

Well I went in for the surgery. My husband drove me home, led me up our steps (I had been told to keep the other eye shut since this would help me not blink which would reduce the pain). So I had a patch on one eye and the other eye shut and as I was about to cross the threshold the sunlight hit the doorknob and bounced into my eyes. Blinding. I almost fell to my knees. I covered my closed eye with my hand. It did not help. I spent the next three days in the darkest corner of every room I could find with the blinds shut. The light was finding me wherever I went and it stunned me every time it found me. It felt like a blow. One night I lay on the floor with dark glasses on since my family was in a lit adjoining room. Good God this was a taste of what Emily and Francis had gone through.

Three days in the dark with no reading, my god I never realized I read so much, playing every conceivable bit of music I could lay my hands on. I thought this was a chance to go to a different place in myself to "be more still" inside which was my New Year's Resolution. I started pulling out all the music CD's that were highly recommended to me, but that I didn't really like like John Adam's version of Emily Dickinson's "Wild Nights", Buddhist monks from the Sera Je Monastery singing from such a deep place it sounded like Lucinda William's gravel road and I mean THE road. All of a sudden I was "getting" this music. I wasn't trying to get it. I just was. I was enthralled. I could hear what the sound was creating in terms of emotional places or physical locations in the body. I was in the world of sound. I was listening from inside of my body. I started hearing the whirling of the wind as it circled around the house (I do have to say at this point that I was able to do all of this with such equinamity because contra the surgeons's warning I had almost no pain--I'd gone to my acupuncturist and gotten some herbs and took homeopathic arnica--and it worked! God's green earth. It worked.) I could hear the wind echoing, bouncing off the trees near our home. I started hearing all of the clicks and thumps and whirrings and shudderings in our home. I had heard them all before, but now it was not heard one at a time , but more like a a concert. The sound was connected. This was even more so when I went outside (in the shade with dark glasses) and heard all the different bird calls, and tree stirrings from the wind, and the cows mooing - it was a symphony. One bird's full throated call evoked a yearning - I started to cry. I started living in rhythms and feeling rhythms inside of me. I started living in a different part of my brain.

Then, I started opening my eyes for little moments as the healing took place and the colors were leaping into my eyes: the translucent shimmering yellow of the daffodils, the deeply saturated lime intensity of the green slope in our meadow whose force of color was so wild that it seemed to shoot up into the air, the deep bluish-grey gravel of our driveway that pulled me in so deeply I could not look at anything else. Gravel for god's sake.

And then it hit me that those intense periods of blindness and seeing that Emily and Francis went through again and again throughout their lives contributed to their intense mystical and poetical brilliance. Sound is poetry. Inner hearing is poetry. Color is very close to sound. I believe mystical experiences blur the boundaries of the senses, blur the boundaries between people, between physical objects to create a unified experience, a feeling of unity. From my tiny experience I postulate that their life time relationship with eye difficulties and the necessity to retreat into the dark altered them both, intensified their experiences so greatly that it supported mystical experiences and their ability to hear these sounds and brilliant colors to write words that ignited the world. These physical experiences gave them a physical base for their own inner prayerful natures. The dark isolation supported them to write and preach/sing from their very souls.

"I taste a liquor never brewed
From Tankards scooped in Pearl.
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol.

"Inebriate of air am I
Debauchee of Dew--
Reeling--through endless summer days--
From inns of Molten Blue." --Emily Dickinson

(Emily Dickinson's poetry was so far ahead of her time that it is still ground breaking today.)

"Canticle of Brother Sun"
...
"Praised be You, my Lord, with your your creatures,
Especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day and through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor;
And bears a likeness of You, Most High One.
Praised by You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.
...
Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth.
Who sustains and governs us,
And who produces varied fruits with colored flowers, and herbs."

--St. Francis

(St. Francis has been called the first Italian poet and the first to bring the world and it's beauty into the Medieval Christian Church where before there was only room for heaven.)

choreography

2009-03-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

well i'm starting to work on the choreography for the opening scene. found out in the beginning i wasn't "still" enough. A "still" place gives room for different creative impulses to emerge. i'm also giving myself the same rule that i made for choregraphic work in SKELETON WOMAN: the movement has to feel good. exercises can stretch range of motion, but i don't want anyone doing anything that hurts the body.

music and reporting in

2009-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

Just met with Devi Mathieu and she loaded me up with songs from Saint Francis' time - some probably written by St. Francis or at least influenced by him. So exciting. She said these songs are written with definite rhythmic structure. She said the troubadour songs which influenced St. Francis were word poetry driven and not based in set rhythmic patterns. So I get to dive into this and start getting a sense of what kind of sound/music do I want to permeate the piece. I love these dichotomies. And then throw in sound/music spinning off from words and rhythms of my play. And remember Emily Dickison based her meter on hymns of her day. Lots of sound ideas here.

ANY MUSICIANS/ SOUND PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WOULD LIKE TO COLLABORATE?

Tomorrow I get to hear a private reading of my piece by a poet and an actor friend. This will help me externalize it a bit more when looking to see where gaps might be.

I realize I'm in a bit of a quandary about what to call this work. If I call it a play, then people's expectations are a more word driven piece. I saw an amazing "play" called ARABIAN NIGHTS by Mary Zimmerman and realize that my piece is between this and dance. So I end up calling it a "piece" most of the time. Have to get my brains around a better word.

Doing Everything in Nothing

2008-11-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

I've been kicking my self lately since I have been doing nothing on my play. Other things have been taking up my time: a wedding, working for Obama. I'm not a great multi-tasker. And on my list of important things the previous two items easily came first. Then one day I read a story of a taxi cab driver helping a dying woman. Normally i'd feel wellings in my upper chest - sensations almost outside my body. But that day I was feeling heart tugs and tears coming from the very center of me. After that when I'd be hearing the stories of my daughters, my husband or simply feeling my love for them, I could feel my heart. I could feel motion and movement and upwhellings and spirals of sensation emanating from my heart. Some days it would be the same old sensations of before and then some days it would feel like an explosion. A profound change.

A profound change out of nowhere? Realization. For months I've been repeating Emily Dickinson's "A Single Screw of Flesh" to myself under my breath, out loud, before I fall asleep, choreographing it with my hands, saying just the vowels in it then the more muscular consonants- even sending it out from on "stage" in an ancient Greek theater. Just simply saying this poem over and over in different ways in small little snatches of time. Feeling the impact of words on me. Feeling the sounds and rhythms. Catching the feelings and sending them out into the world. It was just one poem. Small actions of inconsequence. I was doing "nothing". Not really a work at all. And then, amazing grace. In working on something small I was doing everything.

A Thought on the Aftemath of the Election

2008-11-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

Emily Dickinson wanted to be a politician.

The Beginnings of Theater

2008-10-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Greece and had some heart throbbing experiences in theater. First of all my husband and I went to Delphi the home of one of the ancient oracles. There, there was a Greek theater nestled into the side of a mountain. It seated an audience of 5,000 which looked down on the orchestra where the chorus took place and looked out on a breath stopping view of the valley below. The Greeks liked to have the audience look down on the actors like the gods look on us and have the audience realize the foibles of mankind. It's kind of like the Buddhist blue skying technique where when you are mired in troubles you are supposed to spend time looking at the sky. Perspective. Perspective. What we loose so often. So I walked out onto the central spot of the orchestra and started doing one of my monologues from my play, a bit under my breath since I didn't want to impinge on other people who were there. I felt something I haven't felt in a theater before. I felt held, taken care of. The curve of the audience as it was placed in the hill was the perfect curve for the "stage". The proportions were perfect. I felt like I could do no wrong on that "stage". I made "mistakes", but they were ok and I took my time. My words came from myself from my being present in the moment. Now that's good acting, but here I didn't have to do any preparation to get there. The space did it for me. I didn't have to "do" anything.

The second theater I went to was in Epidaurus and that theater's capacity was 15,000 people though I heard that when Maria Callus sang there they squeezed in 17,000. There the ethos was for people to stand in the center spot of the orchestra and speak, sing, do whatever you wanted. I stood there and spoke with a sending out voice. Not pushing, or speaking loudly. Just sending my voice out to the audience. I spoke three monologues out loud and the acoustics were such that my voice both echoed back to myself and soared to the uppermost reaches of the audience. I was pulled into a heightened sense of theater that you can get from performing from a great play. The enormity of the theater plus it's astounding acoustics plus it's perfect shape created the physical container for drama. It's a place where every word is literally heard and literally supported. I sent my words out and they came back to me and fed me. Thrilling.

Later a guide came and struck a match on the center stone. It rang throughout. Imagine Maria Callas singing there.

The Greeks: no microphones no acting techniques. They used location and use of space in location to create the effects they wanted. Feng Shui experts.

Clown of God

2008-09-25T21:16:00.000-07:00

I just figured out that I'd love for the Saint Francis actor to have a strong clowning background (comedia dell'arte, buffoon). St. Francis in his humility thought of himself that way. I kept getting stuck with how am I going to find a male actor with a movement background who loves poetry. There aren't that many out there, so this is perfect. Everything I know about St. Francis was that he was a physical physical man who threw himself into everything he came across- sometimes literally. I even had a children’s book about St. Francis called “The Clown of God.” DO YOU KNOW ANY CLOWNS?

vowels and consonants

2008-09-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Well my eldest was reading about Daniel Radcliffe (you know, the actor who played Harry Potter) and his preparation for the main role in EQUUS. He did some intense training since it's quite a jump from film to stage. One of the exercises he loved was reading the text through by just pronouncing the vowels and then reading it through by just reading the consonants and then reading the complete text. I tried it with my play and the results in one pass through was astonishing. The unconscious comes through with much stronger articulation and rhythmic sense. It made the poetic sections stronger and more differentiated from the prose pieces. My voice became stronger with no physical effort. I got to know my work directly on a whole different level. It felt like diving into the ocean.

In the Telling

2008-08-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

I’m learning so much by memorizing Emily Dickinson's poems and saying them out loud. Yesterday saying the words “inebriate” I could feel a propulsion of breath bursting out of my mouth to be sucked in by the words “of air”. Leaning into the words and letting them create sensations and then feelings in the body. (Check the August 1 post for the poem: "I taste a liquor never brewed.")

I'm beginning to read a book by Cicely Barry called "From Word to Play: A Handbook for Directors." In the beginning she says there is no difference between words to action and action to words. Now I'm beginning to feel it. The body speaking is a moving instrument. Barry says we must bring sound back into theater. It reminds me of what I learned from studying with Shakespeare and Company in the Berkshires. They pointed out that before written language the sounds in the oral traditions were so graphic that the TELLING evoked intense feelings. That's why Shakespeare's language is so visceral and compelling. When really spoken the consonants clang, burst, throb, ssssss's slither and lisp; lll's be liquid lilting waves. Sounds go straight to the "body" of the audience.

Makes me understand why theater is so wonderful. To hear a live actor reverberating on stage with all the nuances and minute tellings...

This is Hard to Write,

2008-08-09T01:38:00.000-07:00

but I said I'd report on the progress of my play. So here it goes: I've read the play with my husband, read it with an actor Douglas Kenning, and now have gotten it critiqued by my assistant, and they all confirmed this tiny but insistent voice inside of me about certain parts of my play. It needs to be rewritten. I didn't want to cop to it. I wanted to cut to the chase, get it up... But I noticed that all these different points of view often corollated with a slightly nauseous pulling sensation I'd feel inside when I'd read certain sections. So tag I'm it and I have to rewrite. I also realize that part of my reluctance was my nervousness about whether or not I could do it. The play came through me in two weeks. It was a gift. How could I go back and find the inner threads to reweave places where the fabric was stretched too thin? How could I cut some of the imagery without destroying the integrity? Now I know I can do it. I was writing so fast that I skipped stuff. And my listening wasn't quite as acute on some days.

One of the scary parts of being an artist is sometimes you've got to break some eggs and the risk is sometimes you can't put it back together if you don't like it. It's scary, but as the egg breaks I'm going to try and let in the excitement too.

So my plan is to spend the next while listening to my play in as many different ways as I can so I can feel the core and let the core tell me what to write. I find myself taking a deep breath.

A Definition of Emily Dickinson

2008-08-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

I know this sounds like an oxymoron. I didn't know you could define a person, particularly Miss Emily, but this one fell into my lap while I was reading a review of "A Summer of Hummingbirds": "Emily Dickinson was fierce and enigmatic, an exotic genius disguised as a New England spinster."

This epiphany came from a fairly damning review of the book by Laura Miller in the "New York Times." I could agree with her if the book was supposed to be the type she was reviewing. But as you can read in my last post, the book offers something else and I think more important. I'm so glad I stumbled upon it in a bookstore and didn't listen to the review.

hummingbirds

2008-07-11T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well I've been on a long sabbatical. I was helping put up a wedding. And thank you. It was magical.

Working my way back into the play, I found a wonderful book: A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, And Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade" by Christopher Benfey. (Now I will NEVER think the subtitle for my current play is too long.) This book doesn't have a clear through line which is the typical structure of most books. But how could you expect that of a hummingbird? What you get is a structure like that of a hallogram: bits and pieces adding on to several themes and from the different points of view - different people, different art forms. What I walked away with was this inner colorful experience of that era mapping the shift of the United States from right before the civil war to right after. It's a seminal period. And timely, considering the developing crises facing the U.S. and the world.

And for dessert: a couple poems by Emily Dickinson

A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel--
A Resonance of Emerald--
A Rush of Cochineal,
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts its tumbled Head--
The Mail from Tunis probably,
An easy Morning's Ride--

And,

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to window run,
To see the lttle tippler
Leaning against the sun.

A single screw of Flesh

2008-05-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on this poem written out in the April 22 post. It has so much mortality in it. I confront it again and again. Finally realized besides my creative nervousness and tension, the poem is creating tension in me. I have to give in to it. She does offer a beautiful bouquet in it. Perhaps what is single most important about being human. She will not relent. She will not let the gods talk her out of the gift and out of the Peril of being human. To know this poem is one thing, but it does navigate you to fundamental experiences if you let it.

I read recently that a poet's breath is in her poems. Of course. What an amazing experience. So today I'm going back and trying to drop into the poem. Let the rhythms take me and the raw words evoke me. I'm paying particular attention to the dashes, the punctuation, and the capitol letters.

Anyone with any thoughts or experiences on this poem, PLEASE post. The poem keeps unraveling and unraveling for me. And every time I think I've got it, something else emerges. My husband pointed out that "new-mailed" probably means armoring with metal, i.e., "nerves of steel". That's probably correct. Or, she might have been playing with multiple meanings/puns: new-mailed (as in mailed a letter) playing off of "Just granted."

Just for the record, I don't think interpretations are essential, but are tools for diving back into the poem and opening up more treasure boxes.

- Christina

SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING

2008-04-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

I feel so stupid. I haven’t been able to reconcile why Emily Dickinson wrote poetry and didn’t want to have it published. I’d gotten it was a spiritual discipline. It helped her focus and listen to her inner spiritual yearnings. But why the paradoxical structures: the starting of a poem in one direction and ending on it’s opposite or the absolute trailing off at the end of a poem. Or then there is the constant opaqueness. These devices capture people and bring them into a poem. Why do this if you aren’t going to publish? I know. I know. She could have done this just for herself. (She may have been conflicted about publishing/not publishing her entire life—I want to do a check on her later poems and see if this is still an issue). But what I realized today is so obvious it made me almost fall down.

I’d been memorizing and playing with some minimal choreography of Emily Dickinson’s poem #293. (Franklin edition). I’d only gotten up to the third verse and I was straining to hear what she was saying when I suddenly realized that she’s building these structures for her to catch god, for her to catch a piece of divinity. They are structures with roots and boots and sides, but always with something left out - almost like triangulation. The something left out is almost palpable and is often pointed to. She’d create the structures where she’d stand securely and then strain for the ephemeral nature of divinity. The straining for something unknown makes her drop what she knows, drop ordinary personal constructs. In this winnowing process the structures kept her rooted and not flying off into the ozone. If she stood there long enough and listened long enough, sometimes something would appear: Something magical something divine something which because of her structures and her emphatic presence in her poems connected with the magical parts of herself. Her poems were devices that helped her capture pieces of her own divinity: her transcendental mission.

And the poem:

A single Screw of Flesh
Is all that pins the Soul
That stand for Deity, to mine,
Opon my side of the Vail –

Once witnessed of the Gauze –
It’s name is put away
As far from mine, as if no plight
Had printed yesterday,

In tender – solemn Alphabet,
My eyes just turned to see –
When it was smuggled by my sight
Into Eternity –

More Hands – to hold –These are but Two –
One more new-mailed Nerve
Just granted for the Peril’s sake –
Some striding –Giant – Love –

So greater than the Gods can show,
They slink before the Clay,
That not for all their Heaven can boast
Will let it’s Keepsake – go

SECOND QUESTION?

Yesterday as I looked at a meaning I had discovered in the poem, I thought this is obvious. Why had I had such a struggle? Once the cocoon falls off it seems silly the amount of strain I had to go through to get there. Then I realized that one reason I had such a hard time understanding the poems was they were written in a 6 -beat, 8- beat line rhythms scheme which echoed hymns of Emily Dickinson’s times, and the rhythms were contraindicated for the words she used. She was using her more modern and personal syntax and lexicon in an old fashioned structure which created enormous tension and fracturing. I settle into the rhythms, but unlike the hymns they don’t take me home. They throw me out on the sand in bewilderment and I have to dive back in for another take. Going back and back a layering happens which finally gets dense enough so that I can “understand” it. But, this understanding is not a simple linear understanding, intellectual understanding. My psyche has made these trips and each trip has added a more “fullness” to my feeling of the destination land. Emily Dickinson: How you build something out of nothing.

-Christina

Play Reading #2

2008-04-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Play Reading # 2 on March 29 with Douglas Kenning. Patti Trimble and Tim O'Reilly present.

Reading the play with Douglas Kenning a fine Sicilian/San Franciscan actor was a hoot. There was so much interactive fun. I had been working the play entirely by myself and had gotten into some dead ponderous patterns. I had gotten caught in some of society's views of this "serious spiritual " poet and got caught in trying to hold onto what I'd discovered. Working with Douglas certainly blasted that out. Also I’ve played and sat with the play long enough that my nerves were secondary to the fun. When I’ve acted in the past I'd never gotten beyond the shear fear of being on the spot to experience the joy. I’ve had the adrenaline rushes (but unfortunately I’m not an adrenaline junky), the immersion into another character and achingly taking time to come back to myself, but was never able to shake that feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. That was my goal. I shook it. So I’m elated.

Besides spending time with the script, I finally got hard core with techniques I learned from my work with Lennie Dean (Eric Morris) and The Loading Zone: I guess it all boiled down to I love this work and character. I want to do it. I’ll do it as honestly as I can and stay in the moment and bring my feelings of the moment into the character and accept everything that happens. With a dash of Martha Graham’s exhortation to Agnes de Mille where she said it’s not her job to judge her work. Her job is to be open to her own unique creative spirit. Otherwise I realize I'm cutting my feet out underneath myself. It’s so much more fun this way.

I got some really good feed back and when I’ve absorbed it more I’ll post SOME of it. I’ve got to retain some for mystery. But if anyone thinks I’m off in this, let’s have a discussion. It will be a constant tension as I write this blog.

A big THANKS TO Douglas, Patti, and Tim

christina

St. Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

2008-03-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within of self blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and
blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Video of "Our Life in Poetry: Emily Dickinson"

2008-01-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

Awhile back my daughter sent me a link to the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination based in New York (www.philoctetes.org). For everyone's good fortune, they have begun posting their discussions on the web. January 8th there was a course on Emily Dickinson curated by Michael Braziller, publisher of Persea Books, and Alice Quin, the executive director of the poetry society of America and a professor at Columbia University. I was so excited to see this video, but had a little trepidation. Would this be one of those dissecting discussions where the real agenda was just to prove the owner's intellectual skill? NO! Two people deeply involved in enjoying and sleuthing the poems to release more overtones for enjoyment. And, they offered suggestions for further fun. Alice Quin was particularly a delight in her sensuous appreciation of the poems. There were some interesting comments from people in the audience. The first 50 minutes or so is the most absorbing. To find it click on "Past Programs" and look for the title. And yes i will learn how to send links :-).

Bio of Emily Dickinson

2008-01-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

Emily Dickinson rejected the facile Christian revivals of her time and put herself on a path of deep renunciation to help her focus on an inner intuitive sense of the divine. She rejected all religious forms of the divine that abounded in her time and spent her life facing the infinite and eternal with her feet planted in the mortal. Instead she looked unflinchingly at death against the backdrop of the divine. She had many opportunities to do so between the high number of consumption victims in Amherst and the carnage of the Civil War. Her poetry became both her prayer and her path in life. It was a stark path lit by the ecstasy of experiences summed by deep penetration into the mysteries of death and existence. Often with a backdrop or moment of whimsy and humor. "I heard a fly buzz when I died." She said the only commandment she ever followed was "Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not. Neither do they spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

At twenty she began withdrawing from the world. She stayed away from public functions. Then stayed just to her garden. Then to her house, and finally just to her room. Her father was very controlling and very afraid for her health. She had many illnesses. Went blind or nearly blind for years and went blind the last two years of her life. She probably had consumption and is believed to have died of Bright's disease, but underneath these physical and psychological reasons for withdrawal was a conscious choice to choose the life of renunciation and spiritual commitment. For most of her life she simply wore white though she often had many pockets sewn in which to keep a pencil and scraps of paper to write down her poems. She never published her poems since publishing was not the point of the writing and she rejected material success. She also was a great cultivator of flowers and spent hours in her conservatory. She sent countless letters to friends, people in need, often refurbished with her poems and flowers. She had a number of passionate loves and friendships, primarily on paper. For children, she would often lower a basket of gingerbread by a rope out her upstairs window. It was said that the death of her nephew eight year old Gilbert sent her into full retreat. In her later years she saw almost nobody. Letters were her primary contact.

Mentors and inspirational sources were Charles Wadsworth (a well known reverend and fiery thinker of the time), Emerson, Shakespeare, Jonathan Edwards (a Calvinist--but she rejected the outer forms as it was manifest in the churches and by her family and went on her own inner search), the Bible and the Dictionary.

She had little comfort in religious forms but the ecstatic was a balm. And on one level she made no distinction between terror and the joyful. All of it was connected to living. She felt intimately connected with all life. Many poems were written about flowers, flies, a snake, the woods, mountains, sunsets, the sea --all against the backdrop of the eternal. Her last written words were, "Called back." When she died her sister found a box under her bed with over a thousand poems in it. No one had known.

About her poetry, people have spent decades studying it. She left almost 2,000 poems. The scope and body of work is so vast it can be likened to the story of the blind men touching different parts of an elephant and describing what they touch as what an elephant is. Like Shakespeare, Dickinson is revisioned and reframed with each successive modern construct and trend, from psychoanalysis to purported lesbian relationships. Like Shakespeare her work is bigger than anything that can be pinned down. Two cogent analyses come from “My Emily Dickinson” by Susan Howe. According to Howe, Dickinson was inspired by Jonathan Edwards and believed that words were annexed to reality by sensation. (p. 49). In poem after poem it is the sensation which leads you in. And, “Edwards and Dickinson forced people through shock and through subtraction of the ordinary, to a new way of perceiving. Subject and object were fused at that moment, into the immediate ‘feeling’ of understanding. This re-ordering of the forward process of reading is what makes her poetry and the prose of her letters among the most original writing of her century.” (p.51)I believe that the vitality and multi-dimensionality of her poetry is rarely met in modern poetry today. Like a contemplative, her retreats gave her room to hear the non-ordinary. She used the cold steel of her life, her passion for nature, and her constant awareness that there was never any separation from the Immortal as the forge to create her work.

To me one of the last poems she wrote says it all:

The Ecstasy to guess,
Were a receipted Bliss
If Grace could talk.

I believe Grace talked to her and she listened.

And yes, I am yet another person touching the elephant.

Emily Emily Emily

2008-01-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

I have been reading my way through Dickinson's poems and have only reached the quarter mark at #450. First I have to say I had an amazing experience. To understand some of her poems I have to stretch and listen and remain open at a level that recreates the creative experience for me. After reading a number of her poems I've literally felt that I've written a poem myself. I've read and experienced that Dickinson tried to fashion her poems to throw the reader into the event that she was talking about. Devices she uses are paradoxes, eliptical sentences, NOT summing up a poem at the end, not giving you mental hand holds to take you through the poem. Sometimes she uses structures which literally scramble your brain such as beginning a poem with the end of a sentence and ending at the beginning. You follow her inner steps when you read her work. You have to since there is nothing else to hold onto. But what I am talking about carries this one step deeper. She gives you materials to go play in literally extraordinairy experiences. How does she do this? I don't know yet. I've just had the experience. I've ideas, but don't want to come up with a facile answer. I figure with 3/4 more poems to go it will sing to me. Or maybe not. I've learned that there are scholars who have spent over 30 years studying her work. Her scope is beyond breath.

By the way i'm reading her poems from: "The Poems of Emily Dickinson," (the reading edition) edited by R.W. Franklin of The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998,1999. This edition is supposed to be the most complete and most accurate respresentation of the poems as they were written by Dickinson. Earlier editions changed her spelling, changed her punctuation to be "correct". Emily Dickinson had such a strong ear that she would change spellings, and had a whole system of dashes (rising up, down, long, short to indicate how to read the poem). She also had revisions and revisions and revisions making it very difficult to discover which was her favorite. Maybe the last one was. Maybe not. Maybe she was like Bob Dylan who is always changing how his songs are sung. As you can see, her kind of poetry writing is a publishers nightmare. Unfortunately, current printing practices being what they are the dashes cannot be duplicated. Franklin has painstakingly prepared these poems for publication always with respect and an ear on the poet. He's published another edition with all the versions, but this edition is pared down to one version per poem.

Notes from fall: Search for the right director

2007-12-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

September 4.

If I’m going to be in this play I’m going to have to find a director. It would be too splintering for me to have three different points of view: playwright, actor, and director. . (I’ve already run into arguments between the playwright and actor. The playwright finally had to say in a firm voice, “Trust the words and if after you’ve memorized the section and worked it and it still sounds off to you, get back to me.” So far there has been no discussion :)

So if you know a director who loves poetry, music, and movement/dance, give me a post. I’d love some suggestions.

--christina

Notes from summer: playing a part

2007-12-17T01:11:00.000-08:00

August 2. I’ve decided that I’m going to play the part of Emily Dickinson at least in the staged readings so I’ve been working on imbuing myself even more with Emily Dickinson’s life. Have recently read “The Passion of Emily Dickinson” by Judith Farr and “The Gardens of Emily Dickinson” by the same author. Also I’m reading all of Dickinson’s poems (almost 2.0000) and picking ones to read out loud. The variety and complexity and subtlety and wisdom and strength of music is so dense and rich it’s like running into a wall.

I’ve read almost 400 poems so far and I’m starting to feel a thread of Emily Dickinson’s inner life. Nothing to be put into words, but to be felt. I need to add that part of the fun is I’m consulting the 1828 Dictionary first put out by Noah Webster which was almost Dickinson’s Bible. She loved this book and read it incessantly. It’s so much fun to have some of the poems get revealed by finding the definition of a word which has a slightly different meaning back in her day. I’ve also read that often she would take one of the more archaic meanings of the word and so I get to be a bit of a word sleuth.

In preparation for the reading and eventually doing a full production of the play I’m beginning to memorize the script and choreograph it. It’s helping me get into the nuances of the piece. In the beginning it was quite daunting, but I’m now reaching the stage of it being an exciting challenge and a joy. I’m sure this will continue to spiral around which is where the juice comes from, right?? There’s a deep familiarity in the rhythms and the sounds.

--christina

Notes from summer: a reading

2007-12-11T00:43:00.000-08:00

We're catching up on old posts this week...

July, 2007 1. The play has been read off the page with two actors (myself being one) and to our ears it worked. What a joy and a relief. Though I have been excited about this work, to hear it off the page is the first major test. Plays can live well on a page, but just don’t morph well into live action and sound.

And being written in lyric poetry – no surprise to people who know my work - it’s crucial that it have an internal through line and glad to say both actors felt it. I know. I know. I was one of the actors, but often I’m my severest critic.

Now there needs to be more private readings to kick the tires of the words and meanings.

—christina

WE SEA-CREATURE FOLKS

2007-11-25T23:50:00.000-08:00

August 18, 2006

What is the thin stuff of us,
the elemental wisp
breathing us together
making us visible
distinguishable from air-
not merely flesh
encapsulating bone
restraining sinew
tempering the thrash of spirit-
not seam of bone
or bend of joint
not even, even, even beat of heart—

Stamina has a hand
in the mix of motile thrust;
patience lays her comforts down;
vision draws all in
and into the forward glide and lurch,
and beyond the ribonucleic miracle of mind.

what is the driver
the thin stuff of us
most substantial, transubstantial, and
unseen—
so modest a word
to be so overused
so limitless in power
to be so overused,
permitted a shy corner here
a podium there
a poem, song, or Valentine,
and in our embraces,
the celebration of us all.

Jennifer Weil
Opening Night
Skeleton Woman
A gift to the cast.

Skeleton Woman: a note from Ava Roy

2007-11-25T23:48:00.000-08:00

July 20, 2006
A report from Ava Roy, the director who first used the prow of the ship: Oh, i'm so glad to hear of the prow's continuing performance journey! The base of the prow was hauled by a team of people from the farthest other end of the bulb and brought to the beach, where our crew installed it and built on it... Thank you for giving the prow another life in performance.

Note from Christina O'Reilly: Ava's theater group is We Players and can be reached through www.weplayers.org They used the prow for their production of The Tempest and had it right out on the beach in Emeryville. I met some of her actors and they were filled with such joy and enthusiasm I wish i could have seen the performance.

Skeleton Woman: midnight writing

2007-11-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

July 20, 2006
Bob Engel:/What actors write at midnight when they come from rehearsal and can't sleep:/ I've been trying to understand for myself as an actor what is so moving and compelling about making theater. When it is good, it goes very deep. The heart must be open, but unattached. The mind must be attentive. You do not know, as you create a character and place that character in a scene, you do not know what you will find. You cannot know what you will find. A wondrous tension comes from being open to the creative while minding the details. Your preconceptions, even your intuitions, might prevent the entrance of the surprising gift of a constructed, artificial, and yet fully real reality. The witnessing of the creative moment is itself compelling and even spiritual. Every religion tells a creation story. Actors, like other artists, get to be present at the creation, but we have the special joy of having a creative moment which comes in a form very much like experience: characters and a story.

Skeleton Woman: learning

2007-11-25T23:45:00.000-08:00

July 11, 2006
Jennifer Weil: I am woman, hear my restlessness. Haunted on vacation by Skeleton Woman's unshakable presence, realizing she is within me; there is no point in running or trying to shut her out by singing "Found a Peanut" and "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall."

In sun and in shadow, attempting to learn her, absorb and be absorbed by her while engaging in the rest of my life. She requires too much, she doesn't pack or travel well. She is a high-maintenance gal. More thinking required.

Skeleton Woman: where she lives

2007-11-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

July 10, 2006
Christina O'Reilly: Well there we are back again on a beach, my husband and I, looking for “gifts from the sea” for Skeleton Woman’s world. This time a different beach: Salmon Creek out Bodega way. We hit the beach an hour before sunset and with the light fog, pale silvery water, and an ineffable silence I felt we had found a spot where Skeleton Woman lives. We headed north. Me looking at the waves hearing their roar, my husband hot on the search. He found a gnarly water soaked stump tumbled in from the surf.We both thought of another peril that surfers watch for. The stump was magnificent: thick, gleaming. The kind a troll would live in. Walked further and saw three drift-wood huts on the sand. One was complete with a flag of corrugated cardboard and a streamer of seawood. So many gorgeous bone white logs. We found one I won’t tell you about, but after dragging it across the sand, up a steep slope, we reached the bottom of a set of stairs. I couldn’t do it. You guessed it. More strangers pitched in and helped us the rest of the way. Sunset at Bodega Beach is a miracle. Tens of people including us stop to watch the quiet sun drop below the sea. I could feel Skeleton Woman’s breath on the beach in the soft breezes, her feet on the soft sands and and I walked away with the wash of peace inside me.

Skeleton Woman: first post

2007-11-25T16:38:00.000-08:00

June 24, 2006
Christina O'Reilly: And there we were on the dog beach in Emeryville looking at a director's lust: part of an old ship washed up on shore. Perfect. I'd known about it, stumbled on it two weeks before. Turned to my daughter with glee and she said, "It was found by a theater company that's putting up 'The Tempest 'on the beach. My face fell, but then she said, "I know the director... " So here my husband and i are on a foggy, windy Sunday. I run over and start to lift it. Did you know that there's often a big gap between the first euphoric moments of discovery and the actual moment of implementation? There was no way he and I could budge this old weathered relic. It had taken us over an hour to get there and even longer to find the time. I looked up and saw an interested man with grey hair and a yellow lab puppy. He sees our plight. I called out to him to see if he could help. Then I see a young couple with 2 more yellow lab dogs...interesting. Soon 5 of us are lifting this boat, carrying it across the sand through the woods, and hoisting it up on top of the portage bars of our truck. The gift and grace of strangers.