Chance = Change

SALLY (that face!!)








CYRANO AT EASE
Yes....I know....I'm pushing it....the proud Mom
thing with photos of the kids...I know.....

.....the sweetest little bundle of fur , snoozing peacefully, the essence of cuddling cuteness:
SALLY BARON YONKA!!!!! The spirit of a lioness, in the small, supple, warm body of the prettiest mini- dachshund ever born! Dewy emotional eyes, dark brown, begging for food, begging for love, begging for petting all over...she is a cuddle-bunny of desire...deeply jealous of Peter, and in fact, purloins my place by his side in bed all the time...as far as she's concerned, I'm the one who's intruding....she lays on her furry back, exposing her soft, pink tummy to the lips and finger tips of all who wish to adore her...she lays her soft throat down on Peter's mouth, in an act of total submission, and simply lays there, covering his lips with her throat...he hums into her and she loves it....she hates walking on concrete, and wet grass...in fact wet surfaces freak her out,and she picks up her delicate paws like she is being asked to walk on crushed glass...but once we take off her leash and halter and let her roam free Upstate, she turns into the wild and crazy forest monk whose soul she possesses, and nothing seems to bother her anymore....she crosses ledges of rock over streams...she pounces into deep dark woods in chase of a deer she spots...she skims over the meadows ,feet barely touching ground, as her ears fly behind her with free joy...she becomes fearless....another dog...a wild and crazy thing. I love her like that.

I named her Sally after my dear Momma, who had passed away shortly before we received the dogs as a gift from Paul....i wanted to name her Sally because I knew how much my mother loved our dogs we had before (Claudio and Isabelle), and I knew that if I named her Sally, I would say my mother's name many times throughout a day..and of course I do exactly that...we also share a fresh cup of coffee every morning, Sally and I, much the same way my mom and I would during our regular phone calls between Chicago and NYC...or wherever else I was...oddly, Sally the pup adores coffee...so did my Mom...so, I am reasonably convinced that my Momma's soul is somehow aware that she and I are communing through this adorable dog's love of caffeine...at least I hope so.....I miss Momma everyday...and I love Sally so much...somehow, these two facts work together well....So Sally and Cyrano: our two "kids"...

Doggies with souls as deep as love can go. Our family.

And THAT (to your left) is the darling Cyrano Yonka-Baron! Standing majestically, scoping out the rampant squirrel and white-tailed deer situation in the yard of the Upstate House! At any moment, poised on tip-paw, ready to chase...whoosh! Feet barely skimming the grass...that flying furry blur? Cyrano, the Deer Chaser! (One of our names for him is Daniel Day-Dachshund, since we think he looks like that particular British actor , only slightly furrier)... Cyrano is a dappled long-haired dochsie, with luxurious and soft fur, the most pettable of dogs...and a lover of all things human, especially the humans themselves...he is a cuddle bunny of a dog, dear, warm ,friendly and loving...and extremely protective...so much so, in fact, that he will produce the loudest and most unexpected bark whenever another dog of any (perceived) threatening proportions crosses his path on a walk...this ordinarily peaceful canine immediately transforms into Cyrano the Loudest Dog on the Planet, barking til you think his heart will break...we have had to continuously discipline him, and he will obey, finally, but his initial response to seeing another 4-legged critter is to bark furiously,until his little feet lift off the ground...he is small but mighty! And he barks like a crazy dog....then, as quickly as the storm arose, it peacefully disappears as if it never happened, and he licks your hand and proceeds to sniff his surroundings...walking as if nothing had ruffled his fur....calm, pacific and oblivious...who? Me??? Yep, that's our precious boy....Cyrano, the dearest dog ever. And , for his size, probably the loudest barker. He came to us with his pet-store sister Sally, when they were both about 12 weeks old. A gift from Paul D. Two tiny squirming worms, peeing everywhere, and falling asleep on any available warm human body part....it was love at first cuddle, even though, with me in rehearsal for THE JAZZ SINGER at Jewish Rep and Peter busy at work, we did almost give them away because of the inconvenience of caring for their needs...but that was 7 years ago, and here we are...a family. Sally, her photo and story come tomorrow...

Off to I MARRIED WYATT EARP rehearsals....a read-through today....then Peter, the pups and i go Upstate to spend the weekend at the House....much to do there. The pups will romp til they drop! They love the grassy meadows....and fly free there....even Sally the timid city dog becomes her true forest self there...she transforms into a mad forest refuge monk...intrepid, curious and wily....despite all behavioral evidence to the contrary, she is not a City dog....i love watching her morph into the true stout-hearted creature she truly is...but more on her tomorrow....

Expect me to become quite pesky about publishing photos...a new skill, I shall abuse it, I'm sure...

I DID IT!!!! ON MY VERY OWN!!!!
I HAVE BECOME MORE TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED IN THE WORLD OF BLOGGING!!!
I JUST DOWNLOADED MY VERY FIRST PHOTO ONTO A BLOG PAGE!!!! I am sooooooo smart....

A year ago, just about this time last year, infact, we were at Sea Ranch, in northern California, as part of Paul's Birthday Celebration, and what you see to the left is what we saw every single day outside the gorgeous windows of the house we lived in on the beach! And there were miles and miles of such glories....complete with all the charming and surprising wildlife that live there: pelicans, seals, terns, crabs, starfish, anemones, coral,etc etc etc.....Every day was a revelation and a miracle...I can hardly wait to go back there...as I wrote about it then: we all have a picture postcard in our minds of the perfect place, and Sea Ranch was my every dream come true, in every way.....so I could think of no more appropriate photo to learn how to download photos with than the one you can now see.....the next step is to get more pictures of things I want to share into the process....and soon, I will do that...there were, in fact, several photo ops at today's rehearsal of I MARRIED WYATT EARP....one in particular of Tovah and Cass Morgan, as the Older Allie and Older Josie, hunched collaboratively over a music stand as they were studying a scene together...it was theatrically a rare moment...and if I 'd had a camera, (and their permission , of course) you'd be seeing it now. Hmmmmm....am I going to be making a pest of myself soon? So...what's new?

.....actually, the above blog title is a bit of an exaggeration (Evalyn, do YOU ever exaggerate? no!)...I am not feeling nearly as bad as that long exclamation may indicate....I am not the least bit surprised that LANIE KAZAN finally booked the role in the Adam Sandler movie I have been on hold for for three , no FOUR MONTHS!!! I envisioned LANIE KAZAN in the role from the very day I first read the script, and it is a role she has already played dozens of times, in various incarnations in lots of other movies and i figured they would go with the known, and so they did...and that is fine with me...it was an honor to even be considered for this long, and according to my agent, it was (as they say) "down to the wire" between the estimable Lanie and the much less estimable me.....so..bless them all....if I were as established and known in the business as LK is, I would want to be loyally honored with a role that seemed written for me too...so I say: take it and enjoy! I have had fun even imagining what it would be like to be in a real movie...and maybe one day i will be. But if I live my entire life without being in a feature film, it still will have been a good and full life...I have so little to complain of...

Today was the first day of work on I MARRIED WYATT EARP, the reading I am doing of a truly nice new musical. Such terrific people involved: my dear old pal Tovah Feldshuh, Cass Morgan (who I so love) and Anne Crumb, a marvelous and gifted spirit...Marla Schaffel (who I've not worked with since Les Mis so many years ago) and the fine Henry Aaronson at the piano...so good to see all the writers again...such gifted people....lots of new young ones...at least new to me, and this is good, because I have been out of touch with the scene full of terrific new talent and this gives me a chance to catch up a bit....amazing singers, all. Should be fun. And my two parts are so different: Pauline , who runs the G and S Troupe that Josie joins in the Old West (Pauline is British) and then Josie's mother, who is German...so a nice exercise in character...as I said: fun...and a short commitment: the readings are being done in one week....for "the industry" mainly...I wish the project nothing but the best because the people who wrote it are the finest people.....wonderful spirits all. Kind and generous people.

I am impressed with Joe Barros, a young man with great energy who runs the NYTheatreBarn, producer of this reading....he and I will hopefully have tea and talk soon....I like him. And maybe I can be of some use to him. He has already offered to work with me on some project for my 46-10 Group....he is generous of spirit....(I keep mentioning spirit...it's all this meditation I am currently doing...something along the lines of something I recently read: things spiritual have to do with the here and now....so true).

Well, I had better get off and running to my 46-10'ers....I changed our session to tonight, since I rehearsed today during our regular time. So....off to my dear old folks and SPOON RIVER....
more soon.....

Again: CONGRATS LAINIE!

that was : mango ice cream, on the side of the dessert plate...only one of the marvelous treats we four shared last night at Paul and Steve's little birthday celebration at Indus Valley, our neighborhood Indian restaurant with the best food you can imagine! It was just core family: Peter, Paul, Steve and me...and it was so relaxed and nice...and, as above mentioned, the meal was truly wonderful....most importantly, it enabled us to share a warm and quiet time with those two before they fly off to San Francisco this morning...they will spend a month or so in their SF home....I hope Peter and I can join them out West later in August...we shall see if that is possible.

Peter found a very beautiful pecha (sp.?) cover for Paul in which he can store the Tibetan scriptures he is studying....beautiful red silk in a dark wood frame, with room for the writings, and pockets for the various visualization cards,etc...quite perfect ,really... Peter also found a fun and funny cartoon book about a cat named Dharma....Steve seemed to enjoy it...I hope so.
and the waiters all gathered around he table, served the delicious mango ice cream treats mentioned in the blog title and sang Happy Birthday to the guys..there were even candles stuck in the small mound of sweet fried cheese next to the ice cream...two plates of small sweet treats...also perfect. A fine family evening.

Raucous day of teaching yesterday....many hours....including a quick run down to Judy keller's for a national network voice over audition...and back in time for the wonderful Maria B. for her 4:00- lesson....I worked all the way until 8:00...so proud of all these students...these are serious ones, devoted to their own careers and artistic growth. A pleasure to be with each one.

Tonight, Janice G. and Susan D. are our dinner guests...Peter and I will cook a nice meal...tomorrow: our darling Kate G...have not seen her in too long a time...that will be fun too. What with Kevin K. 's visit starting out the week and dinner parties all the way through Friday, this has been an uncharacteristically social week for us....we have so many people we want to catch up with..and now is the time, since we have the time. God knows what the future holds, but it's good to have our lovely home, our privileged life, and each other , to enjoy it in and with. Every day, especially in meditation sessions, I feel the gratitude and good fortune.

Late yesterday afternoon, right at Grand Central Staton on the East Side, a 24" steam pipe underground blew up and created quite a horrific scene, as an enormous crater was created by the exploding steam, debris and water....NYC: The Big Apple, I fear, has more of this sort of infrastructural rot that we can possibly imagine....this city is not young, and its bones are wearing out.....there is no way that the wear and tear of Time has not weakened more of the many miles of piping and bridging that help this place run...so, who knows what will blow up or collapse beneath us? It's stunning, the possibilities....yet another reason why New Yorkers create a fog around themselves in order the survive on a daily basis: it's too scary to live in reality......who can blame them (us?).....

Life and, as it happens, New York streets, are so fragile.

So, a couple of weeks ago, we spent some joyous hours seeing RATATOUILLE, the new animated film by Pixar/Dreamworks....brilliant beyond good....fun, touching, hearty, funny, lyrical...about a rat with aspirations to be a great chef! Not content with stealing food from even the fine trash of the French countryside, he yearns to cook and cook well...so an accident propels propels him into the sewers and finally the kitchens of Paris, where he settles into a routine of benign deception with a lowly cleaning boy in one of the finest kitchens in that City of Light.....the rat relays instructions on how to cook delectable dishes to the boy who, with human dexterity, executes the rat's orders and exciting l'histoire gastronomique is made! The journey is a deeply humane and hysterical one, many laughs along the way...Peter O'Toole even voices the superb and catalytic character of the food critic "Anton Ego"...........we had such a good good time with this film. Peter bought me coffee mugs with characters from the film painted whimsically on them....and is playing the soundtrack aloud for me, even as I type....there is the most wonderful song emblematic of the film, and sung by the delicious Camille, called The Feast....the final verse:

La fete va enfin commencer
Et sortez les bouteilles, finis les ennuis
Je dresse la table, demanin nouvelle vie
Je suis heureux a l'idee de ce nouveau destin
Une vie a me cacher, et puis libre enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin
Une vie a me chacher et puis libre enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin....

and it translates:

The party will finally start
And take away the bottles, the troubles are over
I set the table; tomorrow is a new life
I am happy at the idea of this new destiny
A life spent in hiding, and now I am finally free
The feast is on my path
A life spent in hiding and now I am finally free
The feast is on my path....

gorgeous.....right?

This is how I feel after several weeks of pretty much unalloyed time spent up at the House Upstate. I arrived back here in NYC this morning, and will of course go back to the House over the weekend next, but that sense of long stretches is over, as I head into the brief rehearsal and performance time for that Wyatt Earp musical (see my website for further info on that) and then the more serious business of trying to figure out what comes next....I know it not...but with Peter by my side, I know what ever it is will be fun and good. I am feeling like performing again, and this comes as sort of a surprise...so we shall see what is up with that...still not a word about my involvement or non-involvement in the Adam Sandler film....my agent seems ot think that is good news...I think it is because they have cast someone else...Hollywood time is so unlike anyone else's , so it could mean anything, but I am certainly not counting on it....in fact, have let go of any real substantive thought about it, except that it was fun to be so considered for a while....and to work on that lovely character was fun too, even for the taping auditions....so..."the feast is on my path".....true for us all, but we always think it is the destination that is the real deal....and we hurry so to get there, wherever "there" is....

Our dear pal Kevin Kilner is here for a few days...actually, he has been here for a few days already, and leaves tomorrow...Peter was lucky enough to be able to spend some real time with him...we three shall go out for dinner tonight and i will get the news of his life with his daarling wife Jordan...he had to come here for some auditions...a TV thing or something....and will fly back West sometime early tomorrow....nice to see him. Glad he feels he can crash here whenever he needs to. He is friend of long standing, very like family. I have known him far longer than i have known Peter...and Peter likes him very much. So they have had some good visiting time.

Paul and Steve head out West to their San Francisco apartment Thursday....for a month. I will miss Paul.....as usual. But it feels good to be back in our Manhattan home with the dearest husband in the world: Peter.

More soon.

.....as I spend more and more time upstate, in these wonderful gardens, in this delightful house...tonight I am alone here, as Peter is back in the city for two days and Paul and Steve went back in for a late-night rendezvous with pals at Joe's Pub....the doggies are with me and are snuggled literally with their furry heads on my feet...I am content.

...of Summer....Hazy , for sure, and hot....crazy, when not? But hardly lazy....I had forgotten what actual hard work gardening is,and given how much i adore to wallow in the wet mud of it all, a little sweat never did bother me much....and these great gifted days we have to be up at the House...well...there is simply something about it all that is enchantingly exhausting...at this particular moment, I am back in NYC for a couple of days of private teaching, and will return to the gardens Wednesday night...and given how truly tiring my sort of gardening is, I have not even had the energy to blog, and I have fallen into bed at night, so tired from the hot work days in the dirt.

In fact, yesterday, Sunday, I slept much of the day away, excusing myself even from my morning walk, realizing how my body needed a break....I slept and slept...in bed, on the floor of the Studio above the garage, after meditating...I just kept falling asleep...a sure sign that my body needed it. But I have to say that The Sally Garden looks very pretty.....the garden I started after my Momma's death, filled with blue flowers and blue-blooming bushes...(to match her pretty deep blue eyes)...I have not been able to work in it this uninterruptedly in years...and it is showing the care and attention...it does look wonderful now...with more to do still.

That's the thing: there is always something to do in the garden. Since it is an alive thing...I would even call a garden a process , more than a thing...there is always more to weed, trim, plant, water, feed, combine, separate, seed, prune, add, take away...and one other thing I have been able to remind myself of: it is possible to easily enter a highly meditative state in the process of caring for a garden...since it is necessary to pay specific and focused attention to each task at hand, there is a true lesson in mindfulness and what Buddhist's call "bare attention" during the hours spent in the mud. Each task requires specific action. Each plant or root, or weed needs you 100% to pay attention to it and only it, yet holding it loosely, breathing with the plant, living its life as you work with it.

No wonder I love to garden. It takes my wandering mind, and engages it truly.
Plain, simple, useful, productive, yet utterly joyful investment. Nothing at stake that matters to anyone but me and the life of the garden. Nothing to prove. Only to live.

In meditation this morning, up in the Studio, I had such a clear sense of the "I" that rules me....i experienced a true separation between the "I" that was doing the thinking , the mind that was processing the instructions, and the rest of me that was doing as it was told! This meditation thing is amazing. It only gets richer , more interesting ....

And I want to acknowledge it out loud: this is a good time in life right now.....just enough work to keep me challenged and busy with students I admire, yet plenty of time to do the things I want to do and that are deeply good for me: walk and run every morning (we just finished the most beautiful walk down the road , midst the sweetly whispering trees and gurgling brook that laces through this part of the Upstate wetlands....Peter and I started out on our walk earlier than usual this morning, so the world had a fresher aspect, and somehow I felt worshipful of its newness.....reverent midst all the green beauty. The planet is so alive.....

Then there is this Buddgist path I' m studying...yesterday we joined Paul at the end of his 10-day Dharma Path retreat at the KTC Monatery (Kagyu Thubten Choling), and there was a large festive barbecue, wonderful foods, (I tried the Rimpoche's own TIbetan yams....odd, sweet, marvelous tiny tubers)...and I decided to formally enroll in the Dharma Path Program, substantially "upping" my hours of true meditation practise and substantially increasing my reading load...but I truly am ready for it. Again, this time is showing me what is important to me....

Speaking of which: my Adam Sandler film final callback taping/meeting could not have gone better...if I am what they want, I showed them the best of me, my humor, my character work, my subtlety, my intelligence...i could not have done better work in that room...so now, if it is meant to be , it will be...as I mentioned before, I thought it was a long-gone thing, and was surprised they were even still thinking of me...but, as someone wise once said to me: if the role is meant to be yours , it will be...otherwise, not...so I am glad in the knowledge that I did my best. This way I can let go and enjoy what else is going on in my life.....and if I book it, well, that will be a new adventure...I'd have to back out of the reading of the new I MARRIED WYATT EARP musical I promised I 'd do...and risk upsetting Graziela Danielle...but, I guess a movie role would be a legitimate "out".....

However, in light of the things I 'm learning this summer, spiritually, physically (this weight loss and fitness thing is continuing to feel terrific), even the darling Adam Sandler does not compare in importance...so, one thing I am strengthening this summer, is my sense of perspective: what truly does matter to the meaning of my on-going life?

The more I live, the more I see the personal obstacles that have been part of me all my life, and, like everyone else, I have let these obstacles stand between me and truly understanding others and the resulting compassion that could be mine if I woke up to it all...so: compassion...I guess you could say that is one of my goals this summer: understanding and developing true compassion for others....as i see it, how can there be peace on this planet - stopping people killing each other for no apparent reasons - if I can't even bring a little equanimity and peace into my own heart. So, that's the goal.

Yeah, sure...i've done my share of helping others...i've felt the pain of these "others" and given money to help alleviate it...and i have even cried for the condition of the world...but now I feel it 's time for me to do something in a truer way, and working on my selfish, ego-istic self is the way that seems to be coming up this summer....at the bottom of it all, we are in this world together, and hate just does not seem wise...nor does anger...nor does ignorance and pain and starving...so...why do so many smart people allow these things to persist? The only way I see to answer such insolubles is to go inward...examine my personal perspectives....survey and chart my Self...discover its true nature...dissolve boundaries.

Anyway: onward! More soon.