We live in financial times in D.C., Writing, Old Friends, Autumn...

First, I want to announce a kind of cool event the day before the election in Washington, D.C., which is a staged reading of my play We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve at Busboys & Poets with a very special guest speaker for the talk-back afterwards: the economist Dean Baker.  He's the dude that predicted the 2008 financial crash/meltdown.  Of course everyone thought he was Chicken Little when of course he was Cassandra (the chick who was always predicting disasters no one believed, but then turned out to be true - typical Greek tragedy stuff...).

So, it should be a rolicking good time.  Busboys & Poets is a great series of cafes that host artistic, political and community events.  My good friend-colleague Marietta Hedges has set this up and she will be playing a key role in the performance.  I will be kind of parachuting in as director/writer working with people I've never met that Marietta has assembled (I trust her implicitly, so know that they will all be great but still it's gonna be a little like speed dating theater-style).

It is an exciting event and if you are in or around D.C. and don't want to spend the whole day before the election biting your nails or tearing your hair out or rending garments, this is another option...

I have been moving along down the road albeit slowly with the grandmothers.  Go in and out of my ability to be in that territory.  Just when I feel I may be trampled underfoot by depression, I have - thank God/dess - an acting class to go teach.  The students and the work we are doing combined never fails to drag me out of the funk.  It reminds me once again I most likely need to move between both these poles - the introspective, writing place and the play with others in a space place...

Meanwhile, went to a panel discussion last night at the Strand that including some very interesting authors, including Elizabeth Nunez (also a prof at Hunter) whose book Boundaries sounds fabulous (about the boundaries of expatriation/immigration, etc. - a subject close to my heart) and my old friend from high school, David Maine, whose book The Age of Madness I've written about here already.  What was great about this panel was the questions to the authors were about their process as writers and because they all have a lot of experience and all write incredibly well their answers were particularly enlightening, especially in that they all have different processes.  So instead of the weird sense you can get at these things that there is a consensus way to write, it became obvious that everyone has their own way, their own demons and their own ways to move through them.

Seeing Dave brought the usual strange nostalgia pull of The Past in all its weird semi-glorious semi-numinous sense of possibility and regret for paths not taken...and the simultaneous realization that those cannot have been taken because we are who we are, etc...(please see T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets for Far better description of this phenomenon than this hatchet job...)

Finally, it is autumn here in NYC finally.  Still pretty warm but every once in a while the crispness of the season.  I find it indescribably wonderful, to see leaves changing, smell that cool sharpness and see the colors against the blue blue sky.

I'm off to Kripalu this weekend to do a workshop with two meditation/yoga superheros of mine: Sharon Salzberg and Stephen Cope.  Every time I've gone to Kripalu it's been life-altering.  I doubt this time will be any different, even if it is only a weekend.  I will be sharing a room with my mother.  This was our alternative to go going to a spa in an attempt to heal from the trauma of losing my step-father/her husband, Tom.  No idea how that will be for either of us, but it's worth the attempt.

Back to preparing for acting class with my lovely students, who are working on showing their dreams through objects...and can I say, doing it incredibly well.