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, October 4, 2012

Writing = blog silence but Debate response = blog rant

OK, I'm sorry, but what the fuck is it with the so called 'pundits' on TV who grade debates?  I watched the whole horror show and basically I saw: Romney looking like a scared, whiney, semi-defensive rabbit that sneered and Obama who was basically an adult, answering the questions and not being a total asshole.

The pundits said: Romney won.  What?  So, basically lying - which he did a lot while bopping up and down and interrupting petulantly is considered winning a debate?  Really?

I am exhausted so this is basically just a rant but I checked with a number of different people and no one and I mean No One thought Romney won the debate.  As in: what debate were they watching?

I really don't get it.  Other than to think 'pundits' expected Romney to come on stage, do a pratfall and insult the other 53% of the voters he's forgotten to dismiss earlier and when he could string a few sentences together they decided he won.

We really are in a fact-free zone.  I felt my heart beating so quickly while watching the debate that I was kind of worried.  I don't get why certain candidates are allowed to out and out lie and not get called out on it.  Why so called fairness dictates the wimpitude of all 'moderators' etc...

None of this is brilliant insight, I get that, but still it pisses me off.

In other news, I've been working on my book and so have not been writing on the blog as much.  No matter how long or short a time I spent working on it, it wipes me the fuck out.  And I have very little energy to report out.

It's a long, long slog and that's all I know.  I did have a moment the other day when I saw it could be done.  A moment of a glint of light, some intuitive grasp of the whole.  Just a moment.  But I'll take it.  The rest of the time is like having a boulder on my chest and/or drowning in quicksand.  But I'm committed and proud of that even if it is making me demented.

Wish me luck and may all the 'pundits' please God be proved wrong.  I really hope enough actual human beings were watching the debate to have seen what I saw and won't be fooled again...she said wishful thinkingly...

And don't even get me Started on all the stuff they weren't even asked about...but that would be another rant and I gotta go to sleep...

Over and out...way out.

2 comments:

  1. Lots of people expected Romney to come on TV and make a complete arse of himself. Because he failed to entirely live up to those expectations, it's being chalked up as a victory. It's a mad world, etc.

    As for "fairness", how can it be fair to let someone seeking high office lie blatantly to the electorate on prime TV and to say nothing? I have a word for that and it's "cowardice", not "fairness." Umm.

    I hope you're well, Julia. The big project on your grandmother sounds, well, big. Important. A marathon, like you say. Remember to do trivial stuff too, in between!

    Panther

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  2. Thanks Panther, nice to hear from you again! Yes, yes about debates. Still believe many people watched and felt as I did. A friend watched interviews with people afterwards and said many women and more mild-mannered men thought Obama did well. In other words, the people who don't yell and jump up and down. And without us, the world would have blown up long ago...

    As to the book, yes, will attempt triviality, but find it hard. Best I can do is focus on my apartment from time to time - put up more shelves, etc. and walks in Inwood, which do my soul good...

    I hope you're well, too! Send an email back-channel sometime and tell me what's going on.

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