But last night, after raging on and on about the past and issues of ownership thereof, etc., I was putting away a duvet and discovered in the way back of a cupboard I have not looked into for a long time because it's too high for me to use without a ladder, a quilt that my mother hand made for me in 2002. She makes beautiful quilts, and this was primarily made in my favorite color: green. She had carefully hand sewn my initials into it and written me a lovely note in the corner. This made me cry. I felt, for the first time in a long time, how much love she had put into this and into so much she has done for me over the years since she was able to do so.
I also cried because that year, 2002, was the year that Bill and I got together and were very, very happy.
Next to the quilt was a gorgeous tapestry that my step-father Tom had brought back for me from Bangladesh, I believe it was a gift for my university graduation in 1986.
So, there you have it, love received as well as all the anger, hurt and sorrow.
And for some reason it seems the only way to find these buried treasures is from where I am in the moment, even if it is, at that moment, darkness.
Today I am quite sad again. I imagine this must be tedious to hear day in and day out, but there it is. I continue my relentless quest to make this as accurate a record as possible of life, which today still includes grieving.
It also includes three of my plays being published again soon, too, though, so don't want to make it sound worse than it is. The link to find those and other excellent Off-Off-Broadway plays is Indie Theater Now .
***
After a conversation with a friend and in the heat, will post this soon. Need to go and get my eyes examined (!) and then off to meet some friends at another sanctuary of sanity.
I wish I could focus more on my 'proper' writing but between my emotional state and the heat, I am in a haze. Am hoping NYC will have the usual salutary effect and kick my butt into action. However, if heat makes me hazy then...my decision making process to go to NYC in mid-August leaves something to be desired.
Hey I know, I'll live off past achievements...below is an excerpt from Word To Your Mama, my first ever play, that after I wrote it in 1999 stayed in a file tray for over a year because I didn't know what it was. The young woman who ended up with my first husband was the one to assure me it was a play and gave it to her friends at Screaming Venus who then produced it with me as the director. I was lucky in that it got an excellent review from nytheatre.com and they decided to publish it the next year. Had that not happened, I don't know if I would still be writing plays. I remember a great line from a movie I saw years ago, wherein this shy man asks out a woman he likes, and adds quickly after "I'm the kind of guy who takes no for an answer." Unfortunately, I can be like that, too, with my own work. I wish I were not so easily discouraged, but I can be. Luckily, I've gotten enough encouragement at crucial stages to keep motoring through. Apparently this is the trouble with women writers, though - we accept rejection more readily than men, and do not resubmit work again and again, which is of course what it takes. This gap in persistence mirrors the gap in published texts apparently....sad but interesting...
So, now that I can feel self-righteous about it, here I am now female and self-promotional - a small step for woman-kind, etc...an excerpt (and you can read the whole thing on the site listed earlier in the post if you're interested):
WORD TO YOUR MAMA (excerpt - copyright 1999)
In the dream, we were in a space ship. In Zero Gravity. I saw pictures from my past on video cameras - a blurry step-father on one screen. A small child on another - me, probably - very colorful but hazy.
And outside?
Outside the window, the planets were exploding, yellow, pink, orange, purple, red gasses forming a new universe. Right before our eyes.
She said to me: anything is possible.
She said: let’s go there....instead.
She asked me: Are you ready?
In the Movie a man sits in a wheelchair. He has had a stroke and can barely speak, but is watching coal miners being rescued from a collapsed tunnel. As they emerge from the mine alive, he whispers to his son, the deconstructionist, God is here.
God is here.
Again with nothing.
I saw-
Don’t say it! Don’t say it!
I saw God while I was waiting at a bus stop.
For a moment.
Blasted out of the universe, like in the last scene of 2001 - faster than the speed of anything, I was shot up off the planet, saw the stars and the rest of the universe disappear rapidly behind me - then I was outside of everything - for a moment - and I was shot back as quickly as I left. My body never left the ground.
At the bus stop, a Mother was yelling at her Son - a scene that usually disturbs me, but didn’t. It all had to happen that way. I could see that. Even as my thoughts said otherwise.
I don’t like this part of the story.
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