Welcome to my blog..


"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty

When I started this blog in 2011, I was in a time of transition in my life between many identities - that of Artistic Director of a company (Apocryphal Theatre) to independent writer/director/artist/teacher and also between family identity, as I discover a new family that my grandfather's name change at the request of his boss in WWII hid from view - a huge Hungarian-Slovak contingent I met in 2011. Please note in light of this the irony of the name of my recently-disbanded theatre company. This particular transition probably began in the one month period (Dec. 9, 2009-Jan. 7, 2010) in which I received a PhD, my 20 year old cat died on my father's birthday and then my father, who I barely knew, died too. I was with him when he died and nothing has been the same since. This blog is tracing the more conscious elements of this journey and attempt to fill in the blanks. I'm also writing a book about my grandmothers that features too. I'd be delighted if you joined me. (Please note if you are joining mid-route, that I assume knowledge of earlier posts in later posts, so it may be better to start at the beginning for the all singing, all dancing fun-fair ride.) In October 2011, I moved back NYC after living in London for 8 years and separated from my now ex-husband, which means unless you want your life upended entirely don't start a blog called Somewhere in Transition. In November 2011, I adopted a rescue cat named Ugo. He is lovely. As of January 2012, I began teaching an acting class at Hunter College, which is where one of my grandmothers received a scholarship to study acting, but her parents would not let her go. All things come round…I began to think it may be time to stop thinking of my life in transition when in June 2012 my stepfather Tom suddenly died. Now back in the U.S. for a bit, I notice, too, my writing is more overtly political, no longer concerned about being an expat opining about a country not my own. I moved to my own apartment in August 2012 and am a very happy resident of Inwood on the top tip of Manhattan where the skunks and the egrets roam in the last old growth forest on the island.

I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.

As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.

I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.

I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.

Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.

For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani

In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.

In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!

And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...

Saturday, August 25, 2012

First night at new apartment

So I'm here and Ugo's here and we're surrounded by boxes and - well - chaos.  I am afraid my new duvet cover clashes with the sofa and then think: oh how silly to think you can have a separate office while combining and bedroom and living room and then think: you are not becoming Martha Stewart, you are Martha Stewart's idiot cousin.

This before I have unpacked mind you.

Meanwhile, Ikea seems willing to make good for some of their errant ways.  We'll see.  If they do, I will tell you, because it's only fair to tell the good stories as well as the bad.  And the fact is the furniture, now that it is assembled, is working beautifully and I could not have afforded it otherwise.  The bed seems comfy.  Will know more after sleeping on it.

What I have done that makes me feel more at home is: put away some pots and pans, made tea in my new kettle (on the stove kind - Brits: it's hard to find the electric kettles you have when in NYC, alas) and am playing with my cat.  At first he just hid behind the boxes, a sentiment to which I could relate.  I just felt I was supposed to be more 'adult.'  Now he's following me around.  He's only lived in a studio so the amount of rooms confuses him.

My desk is covered in stuff so I'm typing on the dining room table.  My study, the much vaunted study, is now a mound of boxes awaiting organization.  As of now, the most organiz-y thing I've done is put my underwear in the dresser drawer and made my bed (with clashing duvet cover - horrors).

I also realize I don't have any music source.  Not really sure what to do about that anymore because music seems to come from mysterious sources and I don't own an iPod.  I do have my trusty transistor radio so can listen to WNYC, and my computer can play music but somehow the speakers I bought for it back in London got lost in the shuffle.

So much more stuff I need to find/acquire.

But now, really...to sleep.  But first a shout out to my friend Nathan who hauled the last boxes of my stuff up the (4 flights of) stairs with me.  Not bad for two people breathing down the gun of 50.

OK, but now, yes, to bed...where I will probably just cry.  I did that earlier today when packing my old place.  This feeling everything business is kind of crazy.  I sometimes am nostalgic for the dissociating days when I could just go numb and then act like a lunatic weeks later to some innocent someone or find a way to implode.  Ah the good old days....

Sleep....

2 comments:

  1. Enjoy! It sounds great, hope Ugo settles xx

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  2. Thanks Lesley, it's getting there and so is Ugo. We're both kinda jumpy and the study is still a pile o boxes but have some lamps finally....so at least not like living in East Germany...when there was an East Germany that is...

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