Chance = Change

This , to the left, is a photo of the gorgeous and impressive stupa built on the grounds of the KTC Monastery , near the Upstate House, in Wappingers Falls,NY...the reason I wanted to put it in the blog today is to remind myself of why I have taken these five days away from my City life....to meditate, contemplate (I have begun to understand the difference between the two) and let go of so much that has lately been driving me and my choices...so, naturally, as I struggle, the conflict is made even tougher by my thoughts about the students that need my help, (all of which I canceled to be up here for this time) and of course...of course...voice - over auditions that began pouring in the minute I made the decision to stay here all week...as one of my Access Talent agents Todd said (and we all know) "Isn't that how it always is?" They pour in when you are not available...and when you are available, it's a desert. And that is always frustrating...but this time 'round, it feels even more upsetting because I have been so conflicted about my place in this business of ours....and the very thing I came away to think about just kept knocking on my door and even though I know I want to be up here, facing my worst thoughts and meditating on my real relationship to them, the conflicts over the past few days have felt so sharp....should I hurriedly train back into the city and rush to all these things or not? Well, of course not...my determination to sit and write about it all is more important for my deeper self...and so I am here, and will stay.....time with Paul and Steve is very valuable, and Peter will come up from the City soon...he is in the midst of dealing with job offers and trying to sort out what he wants....so we are a busy, figuring-it-all household right now....the dogs of course are very happy.....they adore life up here in the country...we went for a long walk this morning,and the world is their personal private hunting preserve.....too bad i had them on leashes....otherwise I'd never see them again! At the sign of the first squirrel, OFF they'd run...my brave hunters....little furry critters..

So, poetry has begun to pour out of someplace in me again as I unwind and allow myself to get in touch with a deeper quieter place in me...most of it is pretty awful and I do mean awful, but at least it's coming...and ideas crowd the mind about stuff to write about....so, I will be patient and bide my time and somewhere along the way, I will know what to do next.

(Oh - before I forget - If Kerry is reading this entry: an answer to your question: (sorry I've not gotten back to you....too self-involved...I apologize): yes, by all means, even if you do get a job offer (and I hope you do), audition for all that is before you anyway because you need the experience of doing so and something wonderful may come of it...you never know...good luck and keep me posted!)

So - I am off to the cushion...the Upstairs Studio makes the most wonderful meditation place...then I think we shall drive over tot he KTC Monastery and see our mentors and perhaps meditate with them...we almost drove over to the monastery that Thich Nat Han has established on the other side of the Hudson, but they are closed while the monks are on retreat...
I look forward to visitng there soon.

More soon.

Watcher’s Rock

A good man’s love,
I remember,
Is a stiff, brisk breeze off the ocean:
Bracing but gentle,
Insistent and kind,
Total, inclusive, searching and wild.
Free, trustworthy and
Solid,
Heavy with unexpected gifts.

It’s out there.
Every morning that I look,
Every hour of the day,
It always fools me.
I think it’s a person.
But it’s a rock
Shaped like a person.
It watchers forever
The horizon
For whatever may come.
It always fools me.

Is it a woman?
Is it a man?
Wrapped in a blanket,
Perched on the edge
Of the rocky cay;
Even when I remind myself
That it’s a rock,
I still see it as waiting, watching,
A breathing thing
There to remind me
To be patient,
And watchful,
And just
To wait.

I remember.
Yes,
Now:
I remember.

I wrote that many a year ago, about one of the spectacular rocks sitting outside the windows of the Old Lyme house we used to rent....these weird and wonderful sea birds (cormorants, I think) would sit on this rock and dry their oily wings, and when they stuck their wings way out to the sides of their bodies, they have the look of some sort of weird drawing by Gorey or someone like that....i used to sit and watch these patient resting fliers sit for hours and let the winds blow through soggy wings...beautiful...i was so intrigued by what they looked like I read up on them in my Birds of the Eastern Shore book and found out that part of their nature was to be laden with all sorts of protective oils that kept them warm and tender, and that after a certain length of time, so much water would get trapped in the oily layers that they could not get air-born, so it became routine and necessary to dry out! And i was catching them at one of their favoirte drying out places on that lovely rock near our house.

(In the above photo, that is no bird...it's the wonderful Paul D....and that is the glorious Pacific Ocean....near San Francisco).

I have absolutely no idea what is going on in my life right now....except for the ever-faithful pillars of Peter, Paul, Steve, meditation and home, nothing is as it used to be....and i like it. It sort of freaks me out now and then...my image of my self is shifting daily....but poems are beginning to flow out of me again. And i begin a poetry writing class at The New School soon....now that excites me....oddly...a class....in which i will NOT be the teacher, but the willing and open student...it's been a while since i did that...and , you know what? It's about time!
It's about time.....

.....BUT, so what? Here's a poem for you all to read:


Little Girl Outside the Window

A beautiful small face,
Wide, bright, delicate,
Floated like a balloon just now,
Past my early evening window.
I believe she was walking on air,
Tiny tennis shows dangling
A few inches off the sidewalk.
Only the father’s hand, warmly
Holding, kept her from
Floating dangerously
Away.

I remember, I was sitting in a coffee house downtown on Christopher Street in the Village one Fall evening, and , in the waning light,a little child did indeed pass by....she was so beautiful, I had to write...I was in an extremely fertile poetry period then (about a decade ago) and the words flowed easily.

These days, as I am busily involved in gathering all the poems I have done, and as I re-open my heart to poetry, reading volumes that have been gathering dust on my shelves for years and loving every word I read....as i discover all the newest poetry sites online (and there is so much good poetry there...so many wonderful writers whose experiences i am enjoying)...as I get back into the understanding of poetry as a way into my own life at this point, I am grateful for the sheer time to do so....as well as the space that i have been able to create within myself to let a poetic mind return.....Meditation has had no small part in this, of course. But words are not flowing yet. I am jotting down topics that come to me...potential poems...but no languge is coming for them yet. It will. It always does.

This is the first weekend in a while that Peter and I have allowed ourselves to stay in town....we've been going up to the House, and loving it...and it feels nice to be here in the Summer-slow hot hot Upper West Side....everyone else seems to have gone somewhere, so it is relatively empty...this makes it more bearable. And I notice that Columbia students are beginning to return...the area up around 110-116th Streets is beginning to look young again.And I hear snatches of conversation about this class or that....this professor said this, and what do you think about the price of text books for that class,etc.....ah! Education! College and the road that lies ahead....the idea that knowledge is a key to some magical door......it's not quite the time of crisp-apple days and freshly purchased paper products, but it's not far away now....and soon, we'll be able to hear the sound of young minds cracking open after silly slow summers of sun-soaked sloth.....yikes....small bursts of poetic sibilance , anyone?

Watch out! The doors of Poetry may burst open at any time!!!!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Our friend Will Bigham - a colleague with whom we performed so many many shows at Barter Theatre - he won first place in THE LOT tonight, and in so winning, received a million dollar contract with Dreamworks Pictures to start making movies!!!! There he was: hugging Steven Spielberg!!!! and being hugged back by the most wonderful filmmaker of our era! I am tickled with delight! YAY WILL...and his beautiful wife Catherine , who made me laugh so many times in thre women's dressing room! Lordy Lordy: he won!!!! YAY!

As bewildering as life can be, sometimes, it's just plain FUN! And this is one of those times....

CONGRATULATIONS DEAR WILL!

So many good movies to make, and you will be making some of them, no doubt...while being able to care for your children (2 gorgeous daughters) and a stunning and gifted wife....a dream come true.

Whew! What a thing!

We do have that early film we made all of us together at Barter: BEHIND THE MUSIC:EARTH ,WIND, AND POLKA! And it is great fun! And now, rather a collector's item of sorts, I would guess....well...maybe not quite yet....but who knows....? Life is so filled with surprises: who the hell knows!?

Watching Will recive the prize tonight made me hunger for all tings Barter, so I went to the Tri-Cities web site and read some Bristol herald-Courier articles on what's going on around there....and it does not surprise me to see (though it does deeply dismay me) that the same old reactionary critics, the local small town gossips and their even smaller minds, are still at work on the theater and Rick R....that theater and Rick Rose are the best things to have ever happened to that small charming town, and for 75 years, Abingdon has thriven because of that unique artistic place...but still people feel compelled to criticize it and all of its activities...belittle its efforts to make the community a stronger and more interesting place...a competitor in the world's markets...I am always amazed at the depths to which small-minded people will reach to dredge up nonsense to hurt others....I don't know how Rick bears it...and I consistently admire him for not only doing so, but doing so with grace and generosity of heart. I so loved being there for the few years that peter and I were part of the company....but reading about the petty people again makes me miss it less.

But I seem to be having a hard time with peoples' stupidity lately, including my very own.

BUT WILL BIGHAM TOOK FIRST PLACE ON THE LOT!!!! And that is not stupid.

YAY!

...and it feels so good,...as if we are being promised a fresh Autumn, but we know it's not quite yet....we somehow sense this is just a special treat, like ice cream on a hot summer night....we have been given rain and cold...and it feels good.It is quite a dismal day out there, actually, and so sloppy wet that even the intrepid Cyrano was hesitant to pee...Sally of course looked at me like I had gone insane and waited until she could get her delicate little furry bottom back inside to her familiar papers.....i have a doggie who goes to the bathroom where I do! Same room, different locale...if she had taller legs, she'd be right up there with me, I have no doubt.

ANYWAY: I have about decided today that i have nothing original to say or think...that anything that comes from my mouth or my pen (figuratively) is trite and used and all too human and familiar, which makes it not worth saying because everyone else, and I do mean everyone else, no matter their profession, everyone else has said it already before me anyway, so why bother....indeed? Why bother to say it? Sentimentality has never particularly bothered me before now...but now...maybe it's the clear-thinking rigor of the hours I have been spending on the meditation cushion...certain illusions have begun to give way...and I am no longer satisfied with the ways i have been used to negotiating the world...I think I no longer feel so sad about the world....no...rather....it fascinates me...and because I have given up the idea that we are victims of any particular enemy or fate...as I have given over the notion of "victory" over any sort of "defeat" (a notion so rife in the type of Buddhism i used to study), that we can "win"...(as if Life is a contest...and if it were a contest, isn't it clear there is no "winning" it?...but then again, it's not a game show....it's a long-running cartoon....)...ANYWAY: I do love language...and the way people use language continues to utterly engage me.......but everytime i go back to the world of poets and poetry, i veer wildly between adoration of a turn of phrase and utter nausea at the way we all twist words to suit our stories of ourselves....ANYWAY...am I rambling?

In my contemplations last night, on the subject of precious human existence that I am studying on this leg of the Dharma Path program I am in, I came across some interesting writing and want to quote one passage here: Let but this angry mind be overthrown, and every foe is then and there destroyed .....Shantideva in the Bodhicaryavitara....really giving urgent guidance and at the same time underscoring the responsiblity we each have in seeing the illusion we all create when we name things 'foe" or "enemy"....the only thing that needs overthrowing are our own pride and ego...our solid belief in a Self that simply is not there...maybe that is why we work so hard to make sure it seems to be....there, I mean. We create a "them" who gives us grief so that we feel more solidly existent....We fight wars because we actually think what we are requires defending...what we believe requires killing others to maintain...stunning , isn't it? As if being and believing are real things.....as if shutting out others is way of keeping ourselves and our thought systems safe......that is simply insane thinking......

It's all so perfectly illusory. So silly. Like New Yorkers who get slightly crazier than usual when it rains...the City gets all tied up in knots...people fight each other for shelter from the drops that might make them wet...wars over cabs! As if, like the Western Wicked Witch, they might melt....what is that? Fear of water? The discomfort of moisture?

Truly...this meditation thing is powerful. Powerful and good. A new way of seeing.....a new form of playing in life....mindfulness.....yes.

Well, for someone with nothing new to say i certainly do go on, don't I? please forgive.....
Off to throw away more stuff...we seem to be in a rigorous cleansing mode lately...all I can say to that is "YAY!" I am again stunned by how much stuff there not only IS, but that I have felt the need to own....YIKES!

...for it to be this late in August already? the old maxim is true: the one about time flying when fun is being had....this has been a most unusual summer time...I would almost call it a coming-of-age summer for me...things have occurred to me, realizations dawned,...new territories discovered within....wow....soon it will be September.

Two students today, then Peter and I will drive Upstate....supposed to be a gorgeous weekend of weather...much gardening to get done,weeds to pull, things to prune and cut back....

POPULAR POTS (written in Old Lyme,Ct. 1993)
Everywhere this Fall
Roadsides will be littered
With chrysan-
the mums.
A birthday party
After all the gifts are opened.

The colors set for season:
Always orange, yet again yellow,
Willing white, purposeful purple,
Serviceable sepia.
My eyes look for a difference
In a shade,
As though I will discover America
In a single pot.

I insist, like a mother with her kids,
that mine will be different.

Silly. The utter joy is in the numbers
And the populated space.
I learn humility.

I cannot seem to stop poring over old poems lately....and jotting down ideas for new ones...as if something has lain dormant for years since my last spate of writing and is dying to get out...i love some of what i re-read, and revise, even so...and hate other stuff i re-discover...but i keep it all...re-read it all...chart the course of where I used to feel and think by re-reading and re-vising and re-membering...I even possess enough arrogance and ego to think someone would want to read some of it...what is that? the belief that we have something others may want to read or hear? No matter: I keep reading and revising and mentally fingering the lines like they are precious stuff.....fabric between my fingers. The cloth of me.

Bear with me,readers.

...both because of all the poetry I am reviewing, and for other reasons too....had a delightful breakfast with Marla Schaffel yesterday - talented, beautiful and smart as hell Marla, who I first met when she had just graduated Julliard and had come into Les Mis as a new Cossette...gorgeous talent...years pass, and we end up in the same rehearsal room for I MARRIED WYATT EARP, with her playing "Kate" and playing it marvelously, I might add....what a rich gift she has...ANYWAY:so we discover she is a neighbor here in our 'hood...has been for years! And we meet for tea....we talk and talk, as if it were meant to be..ends up: one of her constant employers over the past years has been the amazing Christopher Manos, Producer of Theater of the Stars (when I first worked for Chris it was Theater UNDER the Stars) Atlanta ...my home town...Marla and i share wonderful experiences of this astonishing, and long-lived (thank God!) theater person! She emails him, I email him (after she gives me his address) and poof! he calls! And later today i will return that call.....amazing.

I received my Actors Equity card from Chris Manos when he cast me in MAME with Anne Miller! How many years ago , already? But first, before that, I had served as a summer apprentice backstage at Theater Under the Stars when it was resident in Chastain Memorial Amphitheater in Atlanta....I scrubbed flats in the summer sun (when we used to re-use flats for production after production...we would scrub the used ones of all old paint and put a new show right on top of the old.....do they still do that anymore?) In any event, Chris was always there for me when I needed the next step up....I owe him a lot.

Small world...karma..fate...my meditations are leading me to take layer of perception off of layer after layer, and i keep seeing deeper in to so much...fascinated. Continually fascinated by what i am learning from the Dharma Path...hour after hour on the cushion, with me and my mind as the only company....Ego constantly badgering me to move on to the next subject, think of the next distraction....dwell on each story my nimble mind feels it necessary to tell...and there I sit, watching the story teller behind the story teller behind the story teller,etc.... I am enthralled....we are so clever, we humans.

Anyway: poetry is flooding me lately...old and new....gotta keep writing...most of it awful, some of it not so awful....one or two points of true inspiration and clarity. Here and there.But it is good to listen to that voice again, after so long. It seems fitting...feels like the glue in the cracks of my life story....the mortar...the running voice. Running.... never quiet......like the brook upstate at the house...trickling down no matter how little rain there has been...making noise over the stones and boulders, the tiniest of rocks...it's the friction witht the stone I hear, not the pure water itself...meditation allows me to hear the water itself....."lead me beside the still waters"...yikes.....does it all begin...has it all always begun...with Spirit? Which inevitably leads me to the subject of:

.......my old folks at 46-10 Village who did amazingly wonderful work yesterday, so that i rode home in the cab thinking about how I could write their story...the story of this very special Drama Club...i have decided it is best to work with them in the 3rd Floor Rec Room so i can form a large sitting circle, where they can all be comfortable before i make them actually rise up and walk to the center and work like real physical actors...they seem to love it...i use their physical disabilities to emphasize the characters they play in SPOON RIVER and it is amazing what shows up when they are awakened (often by my little "sermons" ) and let their inner selves overcome their perceived (outer physical) ideas of themselves....Life enters the room and everyone feels it...the room is always brighter and happier at the end of the two hours than it is at the beginning....Peggy K., a vibrant and full-voiced woman, crippled and permanently on a walker, using that walker to underscore her delicious work on "Mrs.Purkapile"...I mean, stuff like that...even the ones who can't walk at all well seem to walk better when playing another character.....now, that's miraculous to me....I guess the only way to write about them is to...well...write about them...just let it flow out of me as I remember it ....so much happens in each two-hour session...so many awakenings and moments that are in and of themselves discoveries of the moment....true creativity, in other words......I am fortunate to be there with them.

OH! Our pal Will Bigham is one of the three finalists on ON THE LOT....Fox Network..he may win! Woldn't that be wonderful? GO TEAM WILL!!!!

...and here's my fresh young thing (I wrote it in 1989 , for cryin' out loud! my first Old Lyme Summer- yet I remember the morning as if it was yesterday)

Dawn.
Connecticut shoreline.
Transparent pale delicate
Pink
Softly merging with
Egg blue
Of clearest hue. Skyful of light,
Opalescence and promise.

Music of full wash water flirting with shore
Tide, arisen, kissing the sand
Wanting more.

Foghorn and birdsong
Chorus at dawn
Anything but poetry
Impossible.
Geese vee the sky, cold air underwing
Rushing off to a birdland brunch.
(This is late for them:
The early bird gets the fish.)

Silver sliver, as in song, the Moon
Greeting his neon Sister Sun
With open crescent.
She, all satin and silk,
Her gorgeous peignoir of morning,
And he, retiring aflourish, hat jaunty,
Reminds us : the night was made for love

Pastry thin layers of sound:
Millions of small voices,
Squawks, chirps, and rushes.
Musical ablution.


I was sitting on the back porch of the big old white house right on the shore....the one Gary T. first took me to, and that I was renting for the summer (I was in Les Mis at the time) and I had a large mug of freshly brewed coffee in my hands, pad of paper and pen on my lap....very very early...dawn, in fact...and i knew at that moment that journal writing would not suffice. I had to actually write some verse to satisfy my ecstatic soul....and so I wrote what i saw and heard. To me, it was exactly what I saw and heard...and the thing that colored all I saw and heard was my sheer joy at being alive in that moment. In that moment, all of it, all the struggle and doubts of a young(er) actress' life seemed to make sense, simple and true.

So unlike now, a time of such utter and deep change in me. But going back over old poems and in fact spending time, through the dozens of poems I have written, spending time with the woman who wrote them.... is helping me see....helping me have perspective....how my soul and mind have had lessons to learn but that basically both soul and mind have served me well on the road to growth and deepening....i tend to forget I am a creature capable of learning and tend to think the moments of bewilderment will last forever....but remembering the geese vee-ing over the landscape returns some height of vision to me as well....the largeness of it all...the miles traveled.

In sharing with you poems like the one below by Gabriel Garcia Lorca, I run the risk of exposing just how measly are my poems that i want to also share with you, and I run the even greater risk of seeming arrogant and egomaniacal by daring to put my poems side by side with the worlds' greats. So consider this a...what...? a disclaimer: I know my poetry toddles along, while the major artists are in full stride and sprint...but, that being said: I must share all....I want to....

This one of Lorca's really got to me this morning..It's called DAWN (from a collection of all poets' writing about NYC):

Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.
Those who go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.
The light is buried under chains and noises
in an impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
As if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.

That's pretty much been my experience of this city lately. Glad to be going Upstate after my 11:00 student.....Also, I had just finished typing into a computer file my poem about a Connecticut dawn, at Old Lyme, so my mind was on the subject of dawns....maybe I'll share that one with you too....tomorrow...right now, here comes my 11:00......

......in his poem THE HOUSE-TOP : A NIGHT PIECE (subtitled July, 1863 - The Draft Riots):

No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And binds the brain - a dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.

That's how it's been here in the NYC for the past few days: heat and humidity enough to make us all "apt for ravage"...tv news stories report of peoples' lack of civility to each other....women, exhausted from the grey drudge of their work-a-day city lives, calling each other "fat cows' and "bitches " , on the subway...a place of pure hell, for sure....etc....charming....another reason to love this place....the Big Apple rots easily in weather such as we have been having. I do not fare well in it....but i have have decided, rather than tell you of the myriad ways i have been experiencing the dis-ease of my existence...I have decided to share with you a poem I wrote some years ago, called Anger In The Garden:

Worms and loam:
One turns the other over,
Til both are bright and glistening
With moist life and odorous promise.
We tend to judge these things,
These lifeforms, this mud,
Somehow lower,
Somehow slimier than
Our noble, upright selves,
We think that decay and odor
Are things to avoid
For ever
And ever.

Cellophane and zip-lock bags
Air-tight containers
And snap-top bowls:
These are a few of our favorite things.

But all things worth the nourishment
Are worth the decay.

Come to my heat,
You beautiful. slithery eels of memory:
Let me grow fat on you.
Bring the sea into my gardens.
I will add my salt to your water
And buds will open,
I promise.

The more I meditate, the deeper I go into the illusions of ego and past escapades so centered around my own, the more I've been getting piles and piles of poems out of their hiding places, where I've stowed them for at least a decade....there are so many. Words have always seemed so important to me. Language. This is such a strange time.

Sometimes I think my Momma really is living right inside this amazing little dog....
and I wish I could talk to who lives inside those eyes....it's been a rough couple of days, these ones just passed....terribly hot and disturbingly humid...not my best weather conditions...I tend to short-circuit and lose perspective on pretty much everything...but look at those eyes...

...resting after a strenuous game of "tossie" with his Dad....a boy dog can only run on little short legs for a certain amount of time before having to plop down in the soft cool grass for a little rest....look at that adorable long tongue!

Anyway, another great weekend at the House...extremely relaxing and yet we seem to get so much done...Saturday evening we spent with Cousin Nancy...we ate a meal in Mt.Kisco and saw BECOMING JANE in Pleasantville..a relaxed family evening...the wonderful discovery is that Anne Hathaway, "Jane Austen", is a terrific film actress... who knew?? I now like her even more than I did before...Sunday was spent in the meditation studio,and, of course, in the gardens....wonderful.

Little notes of delight: friends are having such good successes...our darling Kate Guyton just got cast in CYRANO de BERGERAC with Kevin Kline on Broadway....don't know what role...and our amazing Will Bigham is one of the three finalists on television's THE LOT, so by all means vote for him! His movies have been popular with not only the judges, but with the American viewing public as well, so his vote count has been high enough to get him this far...
I have had a feeling all along that he might actually win this thing and that means an entire world will open up for him and his beautiful wife Cat and their two baby girls...it seems like truly yesterday we all were slaving away at The Barter Theatre together.....and, as it happens, making movies together! When we formed the EARTH WIND AND POLKA Band for the summer cabaret, Will made a BEHIND THE MUSIC: EARTH WIND AND POLKA film and we all had such enormous fun making it....Peter appears as the bassist (EARTH) and I make a cameo as one of DESTINY's LEIDERHOSEN, the back-up girl singers....(I can't remember if I am Bitsy,Titsy or one of the other "itsy's"...we own a copy and one day it may be sort of a collectors item....i mean great successful adverntures lie ahead for Will, even if he doesn't win THE LOT...he has already had amazing exposure and support from that enormously influential industry.....it's so much fun...we have such wonderful and talented friends...so proud of Kate...so proud of Will....life can be so amazing sometimes.

Saw ALIVE AT TEN downtown last Friday...dinner beforehand with our pals Mike Schaib and Brent Lord, (talk about talent! what amazing musical writers they are)...my student Ryan Speakman was wonderful....as usual....the show itself was lively and spirited...wonderfully directed...(sorry , can't remember by whom..but true gift there) ..choreography fun...and the cast was terrific...a rousing evening....the striving was palpable in the room...I remember that feeling of dire importance....when everything seemed so deeply important, with futures seeming to hang in the balance...funny...after getting deeply into meditation practise, (and of course it doesn't hurt that I have lived through decades ), I see it all rather differently now....of course I do....what is life for, except to grow and change? Deepen one's understanding of all one thought solid before? Things do change....vision shifts...as it well should. It must.

A cloudy and warm, rain-imminent day here in NYC....i have the luxury of a day to myself...I feel this urgent need to throw things away! Cleanse....lighten...and so I will.

So...the two readings of I MARRIED WYATT EARP went well yesterday....the first at noon was "spot on" as the British say - and the packed to the walls audience responded enthusiastically to everything comic and dramatic...the story of the piece came together in a powerful way for the first time and it had that first time exciting feel to it.....terrific reception ...the 2nd showing was good too, but by 3:00 the smallish theater space , cool earlier, was heated up by all the humans in the space and the lights, so the space was much warmer, slower and lulled by humidity...so ,whereas the response was not as loud, the arc of the piece still worked well....and I'd say it was a story well told in both showings. I just had more fun in the 1st one, and sweated less. Quite tired when they were both done. I tend to follow the reading like an audience and so i get moved emotionally as if I were watching it fresh....and with actresses like Tovah interpreting, how could one n0t get involved...I have done a thousand readings....I have still not yet learned the art of sitting like a stone and not getting involved in what's going on....if they want me not reacting, they'd better seat me off stage.....i listen and can't help it: if it moves me.,....well.....there I am: moved! Tovah really found a few places in the script that were so personal, she made the story so alive and meaningful, I wept. And I never thought I would react that way to this story...but together, she and Cass Morgan made us all care about why this story was being told. ...the healing of two women's lives through secrets revealed ....hate transformed to affection and respect....no small thing.

So, we all worked hard yesterday. My little "Pauline Rackham" made her contributions...some good laughs here and there...easier to do in the earlier cool house...but a nice group to work with , no matter the weather. Then I went off to work for two hours with the 46-10 Group!
Whew ! Long day! Some wonderful work is being done by them on the SPOON RIVER material, and I am proud of them. I came right home and fell into bed.

Peter managed to meet me at a little Thai place on 10th Avenue for a quick supper before I went to 4610...that was nice.

I wonder what the future of the work we did yesterday will be?