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...
Showing posts with label exhaustion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exhaustion. Show all posts

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Dear God I'm Tired

I am tired from lack of sleep because of fear.  I'm tired tonight because I finally took a nap today.  I'm exhausted from grieving and fear and being angry at politicians like Cameron in UK for being pinheads and refering to all the rioting as 'mindless' in order to demonize them and I'm tired of politicians like Mitt Romney in the US defending corporations as people.

I don't even have the energy to give you the links to this stuff.

I'm tired of poor people constantly getting the short end of it.  I'm sickened that a teenager has received a 4-month jail sentence here in UK for 'swearing and ranting' at police during riots in Manchester.

I'm tired of writing about this and I'm tired of crying when I'm not angry or scared.

I'm tired of trying to think of 'more positive things' and having to believe that 'this too shall pass' and believing that 'good things will come of this.'

That may all be true but I'm tired, too damn tired to think that way.

So, I will stop writing this tonight and go to sleep soon.

Oh, but before that a few good things:

Started reading Carson McCullers' 'Reflection in a Golden Eye,' which is spectacular.  Her writing is the most lucid I have read in many years.

I had a good talk with my friend Emily who assured me attempting to make myself work when I'm crying out of grief is like yelling at a baby who is crying, as the grief I am working through is that ancient.  Yes, there are immediate adult circumstances, but it reaches back, way back to ancient loss.

I am tired of doing all this emotional work as well, I might add.  I continue to pine for the dissociative days of my life when I could produce in spite of pain.  Damn this integration, damn it I say...

Yes, that was a repeat, I know.  Too tired to edit it out.

And another good thing was listening to a fellow who has been down a similar path and getting assurances that this is my path...this longer, slower, tortoise thing...

And the fact, even as fucking exhausted as I am, that I do not know what I'm here for really, and in the end my life is none of my business.

That's the cliff notes version of Bhagavad Gita....Super abridged.

Next right thing: more sleep.

I imagine we can all be spared more political analysis from the uneasy calm-ish-ness of London.  Just please, as the song says: don't believe the hype.

Corporations aren't people.  We are.  Including the 'mindless thugs.'  Remember that the prime minister of Norway after the gunman killed all those people appealed for peace and a continuation of a free and open society.  There are other responses to violence than demonization.

Please practice non-violence however you can, even when tired, even when afraid, even when angry.  As John Lennon said, he aspired to non-violence because he was the most violent person he knew.

Peace out.  [she falls asleep in chair somehow miraculously typing...]

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