Saturday, July 12, 2008
Gorgeous SUmmer Day
...and the garden in the backyard of this lovely house we are renting is so restful,, green and lush...there is never a time when something surprising and lovely has not been in bloom...today, I noticed a startling new pure white gladiola that had burst forth right by the back door...amazing...this garden is constantly surprising! And the front yard is now laced with a jubilant chorus of orange-red gladiolas that look elegant and healthy, tall and slender. When the current rains have battered a few of them down, I simply cut them and pout them in vases...they are great and cheerful flowers.
I've a matinee of THE CURE FOR LOVE today and Peter has the evening Main Stage slot with EVITA....his "Che" is getting a lot of audience praise...and he is truly so good in this production. I am deeply grateful that he has had the chance to do this role that he has so long wanted to do, and that I was able to direct him in it....
The fresh strong coffee I am drinking is reviving my spirits.
I look forward to the day when I won't need coffee to make that happen.
There is a short and intense list of things I know I need to do that are good for me, and I am stubbornly avoiding doing any of them....this is occasionally typical of me: I will only do things that are bad for me, and I can only surmise from this puzzling behavior that I need to do these things in order to survive in some way (or at least I think I need to)....
The story of any one life is complex and to even pretend to understand it is arrogant.
Even one's own. Especially one's own.
While industries are built around the arrogance of pretending to understand and interpret others' lives: the media, the publishing industry, the celebrity industry, most of popular television, and the ages-old industry of backyard gossip!
As I get older, I actually understand that I know less and less. As the end draws nearer, the mysteries are the only things that seem clearer.
I imagine that leaving NYC has made a deep impression on my life, but I don't think I have even begun to come close to letting that information in...I've been too busy here to let this major life decision really do the things I know it will do to my emotions once I let it happen for real....because I have decided - i really have actually decided- not to return to that city...that city that I have lived in for 40 years! Probably the best indication of that was the decision to move our grand piano down here when we came.
I bought that gorgeous Yamaha shiny black baby grand for Paul and me when we bought the 890 co-op, many years ago, and it never occurred to me that it might actually leave there. But it has, and now it sits in the corner of our elegant living room here. Peter enjoys it. Playing it seems to relax him. It was worth moving it here for that alone.
But when we leave here, I will sell it before we ever have to put it on another truck.
A true cutting of one of the Past's ribbons.....one less tie to who I once was.
These are the sorts of things that are on my mind these days.
...on this gorgeous summer day.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Hello Again!
Well, to all who care or read this ever, at any time: I AM BACK!! And I am back because I missed it...i missed the arena of expression....I missed the sheer act of it: writing...and I missed you all, whoever you may be, who would write, every so often, to tell me you're out there.
How any of you will ever get to know that I have resumed writing mystifies me, but I hope you do learn of it, and even if you don't know, for a while, i need to write anyway, so, hello if you're here, and let my "hello" drop into the Internet void of silent darkness if you are not. At least I will have written it. And there is something in that.
I have a friend who doesn't understand why people need to publicly blog, and god knows , there has been a lot of noise in the media about the power, the glory , the pains and the pleasures of private blogging....about how instant media stars are created with the quick whip of a key or two, and how public blogging leads to public flogging....that which can explode the writer's life either into the Heavens of cheerful popularity can fling same writer into the Hell of public censure and debate. Public bloggers have become the people other people love to hate!
The reading audience of a public blog seems to behave like a passionate opera fan-base: they scream with delight and approbation at the sexy cleverness of the writer, (the climatic sfortzandos and agile scales of the expressive one) or they are flung into the depths of hatred and anger, required by their passions to scream out loud the vilest things at the very writer (singer) they were just "bravo-ing" shortly before! And they love and hate the same thing: that which is unique and utterly individual about the writer (or singer)...they love or hate the most private of gifts: the artist's point of view on the world, and that most intimate connection the artist has to the world : they way they express them selves.
So, given all of that, this friend I mentioned above simply sees no reason for anyone to ever write one's thoughts out so that everyone else can see them, and considers it an act of selfish Ego and useless striving....this friend, a talented artist by any standards, expresses the important, the vital, in a certain way, and if put to it, would say it is a necessity to do so in public, for all to see...but public blogging? Can't understand it...and after that discussion, I stopped blogging. I felt, somehow , shamed and selfish...and sort of, I dunno,,,,chastened!
Now I simply feel absurdly stupid that I let such a narrow viewpoint influence me unduly...and bursting with things that are happening in my life I need to examine by writing about them, I rushed to this computer like I was on fire to do so....so : hello again.
I need to write. I will write. I may be hampered by my desire to consider others' feelings and opinions, but at least I can write about that and examine the particular nature of that very personal form of censorship. Because, truly, what one can write in a private diary, one cannot and should not write in a public one. In that consideration i can , finally see wisdom and a certain sort of grace.
Maybe the solution is simply to make my blog a private one, available only to those with password and like-mindedness in hand....but all walls have holes, all barriers, their breaking points, and all safe-houses have of daylight windows as well as locked darkened doors...so, a pass-word only blog? Doesn't seem even a little safe....so...
How can I write and hurt no one...how can i write and specify nothing? If I mention no names or places, then my writing will never show up on anyone's search engine and I will be free, as I wander under the laser beams that surround and cut across public esteem's "town square". I will hurt nothing, offend no one....because, with all due respect, hurting and offending are not my game....only noting and stating my needs: to communicate the snapshots of my experience, as I age, as I change, as i travel this part of the bumpy road....because, (surprise?) It IS bumpy.
When has it ever been otherwise, truly? And how else can we possibly get through the journey without sharing experience to aid others'? And being given aid in return from the experiences of others as well? THIS is the one thing my dear beloved friend does not understand: we communicate because we all need to, well.....communicate!
And whatever brings us around the campfire of common experience, no matter what the venue...what ever brings us to the fire, no matter the form, no matter the content, is worthy of understanding and hearing,reading, tasting or smelling....how else, why else, are we here? Gotta write....will do so.
For now, I rest my case.
