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...

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Nightmare that is Ikea & the Surprising Joy of some FringeNYC shows

So, remember my last post about going to Ikea back on - oh August 6?  Well, guess what.  I still haven't received all the items I bought.  It has been a logistical nightmare.  There is a lovely customer service woman named Michelle who is doing her best, but the fact remains: I still don't have all my stuff.  There's a bunch of un-assembled furniture in boxes in my new place and I regret very much having shopped there at the moment.  I have so far not freaked out on anyone, which is a miracle, especially since their contracted movers (Urban Express: BEWARE) forged my signature on a document saying everything had been delivered, which it had not.  Michelle, the customer service lady, checked the signature against one that was definitely mine and discovered the discrepancy.  But that whole episode was just the beginning.

I am very glad I have a month to move in because I am needing it.  Also, my Verizon router went back to the warehouse because they had the address wrong.  I'm hoping it returns in time for my install date.

Sigh.

On the other hand, I went to see six FringeNYC shows in order to review them for nytheatre.com.  You can find the reviews there, but if you're still deciding what to see: go see Wake Up! - an amazing show created by a multiracial cast of young men about race now - as funny as it is sad, dangerous, uncomfortable and kind of brilliant and Flipside - a devised piece about the drug war now and in the past - incredible, mature piece using lots of Boal and Brechtian theater techniques - well.  A good but imperfect show is Bumbershoot.  If you go to nytheatre.com and enter those titles, you will see my reviews.  The others I reviewed are Girl's Liberation Front (good show for young people, especially girls - imperfect but a couple stand-out performances and new female writers), We've Been Here Before (dance which made me feel we had indeed been here before) and Pare, which weirdly romanticizes domestic violence and made me feel like I'd been transported to the bad old days of the 1950s or was stuck talking to a friend for an hour about her physically abusive boyfriend that she just can't leave because she loves him so much and he doesn't mean it, he's just had a rough childhood.  Yikes.

On a happy note, I left my wallet in the restroom at Bus Stop Cafe in the West Village before the aforementioned show, realized it was missing only a couple hours later consequently, ran back close to hysterical to see the waitress waving at me and smiling saying "We wondered where you were and hoped you'd come back to get your wallet!"  I tried to give her money as thanks, but she refused it.  So, please, if you are in the West Village, go eat at Bus Stop Cafe.  The food's good, too!  And they've got the most honest staff around.

I am now taking the night off from moving stuff.  And everything else.

Here's some photos that show some of what I love about this city (Ikea not included and in fact the Ikea I have been dealing with is in New Jersey, so we can't hate NYC for that...).

What I love below is the light and the multiple ages and layers of architecture...in the middle is Inwood: black-eyed Susans...


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