Offering gentle, meditative Kripalu yoga classes for Every body beginning on Sunday, woohoo!

So, it's official, I am teaching yoga now as a KYT & RYT 200 certified teacher! Started out small in August, and the classes are continuing now that I am back in New York after another great writing retreat in Westray, Scotland. I may teach more but for now it's Sundays at 1pm at Inwood Movement, which is a lovely intimate studio.

The flyer I designed (!) is below. And if you want to know more about Kripalu yoga, scroll down a couple posts to where I describe why I think Kripalu yoga is special and you can read more. And of course you can get in touch with any questions if you are interested. I am happy to bring this type of yoga to other spaces and workshops, so if you have a studio or a space or a group of people who might be interested or want a private session, get in touch.

This along with my writing workshops is my joy. The photo was taken by my dear friend and excellent photographer Jill Nierman when we were in Stromness in the Orkney Isles together before the writing retreat in Westray in September. She captured how I feel about yoga and writing and the Orkney Isles all in one...as I have said many times, I am rich in friends. Who also happen to be wildly talented. A plus.

Moonshots, yoga, and writing retreat on Westray

I woke up to see a post of the broadcast from the Apollo 11 flight to the moon fifty years ago. Watching bits of it made me cry. I remember watching it with my mother back in 1969, tired because I was 6 years old, she was waking me up to see Neil Armstrong step on the moon. They looked so fragile, black and white snowmen ghostly, bouncing lightly on the surface like they might fly away, but there they were on the moon, and the adults were excited. I think to me at that age it seemed like a dream. But I knew it was important.

This time, seeing the image of the earth from their tiny little return rocket, all of the fragility, all of the beauty flooding into me.

And I am here in Westray, Scotland (part of Orkney Isles), my spiritual home, writing and writing and writing, about my yoga journey mostly, which was and is rocky, not at all a happy, clappy ride into bliss or whatever. But working with the Yoga Sutras and seeing their depth, so grateful for the transformation I experienced during the yoga teacher training at Kripalu, which feels more real the further away from it I am, because it was not a rosy time. It was a really challenging time, with some amazing moments, but through that rough road I transformed.

The Yoga Sutras embody an experience I had many years ago, a sudden illumination early in my sobriety, but one that I did not have a strong enough container to launch me into transformation. Instead it was there to save my sorry ass through many years of hurling myself into what Rumi would refer to as "mean-spirited road houses."

But it did save me, because I did not drink again. I am alive, and now, only now, do I feel I have any of the tools I need to begin to embody the reality that was shown to me so clearly and yet so shockingly in 1987 at a bus-stop in San Francisco of all places. Not the primary location one would choose for a life-altering spiritual experience, but there you go. My life is nothing if not filled with the spiritual smashed up against the quotidian—to be perfectly honest I would not have it any other way.

So what does the moon landing have to do with any of this? Moonshots I suppose, those moments you shoot ourself out there wondering where it will lead but knowing you literally have nothing left to lose other than either a sense of being stuck or some other prison cell you are finally ready to leave.

And now, because one of those moonshots for me was starting this writing retreat in Westray, I am reaping the benefits of one such leap of faith. Here now writing with other women who are also writing, for many hours a day, in a house that is silent from 9am to 5pm, a luxury all of us love, the luxury to Not socialize or respond, but instead to be absorbed in one's own thoughts and writing. For women especially, socialized since the gate to respond, listen, receive, mirror, etc., this is a gift. We need to allow ourselves time to sink into our selves and Selves, our voices, our own ideas, listen to the subtle shifts, Not perform, Not make someone else feel better and etc.

Everyone seems to be having breakthroughs with large projects—the kind you cannot wrap your mind around without large chunks of time and space. My breakthrough is simple: I am writing. After months of grief-induced silence, since November, I can write again. This alone feels like a huge gift. It's a bit creaky, of course, but it's happening and ideas are flowing out of me. Of course it's just a draft and will need lots of rewriting, that's a given, but that is also totally OK.

I also did the final edits on White shoe lady for Nomadic Press, so that will be coming out as a chapbook in the near future. Not sure of the timeline, but you will of course hear of it. I don't think I wrote a blog post when won the Bindle Prize (their chapbook contest) because it came as such a shock. This was a story I wrote here in Westray last year and was rejected all over the place, though some were 'nice' rejections, from places like Granta, so I had some hope...but also felt despair because I had been submitting it for months. So, if anyone out there is a writer, please use this as inspiration and Keep Submitting your work.

Also, hot tip: yoga and meditation to start your day helps. A lot. So honored to lead that most days here, and some days on my own out behind the house, Orkney wind energizing me, breathing me alive...and sometimes Qigong as well, gathering the energies, bringing them back inside and writing all day long.

Today I have been editing an excerpt from the book project I am drafting in hopes can be legible for a reading tomorrow. We shall see.

And of course the beauty of this place cannot be overstated. Some photos below. All are from or near the house. I could not feel more grateful. This place is a gift. This place is my home. So is New York City. Go figure.

Maes Sand, the beach a few minutes walk away

Maes Sand

Puffins here and below! A cycle ride away.

The extraordinary water of the North Sea where it meets the Atlantic - crystal clear

The retreat house, overlooking all of the above

Sunset close to 11pm

View outside my window at 3am—in the summer it never gets truly dark

What makes Kripalu Yoga special?

Why, I'm glad you asked.

I had a lot of answers to this question before doing yoga teacher training at Kripalu, based on 18 years of practicing in this lineage. I would have told you about sensations of meditation in motion, the gentleness of the practice, how it asks you to tune into your own body, and the mysteriously wonderful feeling after a practice or during savasana when integrating the class.

But now that I have gone through the teaching training, I have a whole new appreciation of what goes into making a Kripalu yoga class what it is, and a real understanding of why the training is so challenging.

I could go into a lot of technical things, but that would be of little interest to many, so will focus instead on the crux of the matter: it is all about compassion, for the self and for each other. What this means is: to become a Kripalu yoga teacher, to practice and lead with this level of compassion, and inspire it in your students, you need to find it for yourself.

So, whatever residual bits or chunks or say, I dunno, reservoirs, of self-hatred you have in you have to be somehow exorcised, because it turns out that the only way to be compassionate to someone else truly is to have it for yourself. The Bible says "love your neighbor as yourself" but if you don't love yourself, how the hell are you going to treat your neighbor? Probably not so well.

Yeah, so, this is the crux of what was challenging for me, and the reason I am so proud that I made it through the process. Whether it was through self-laceration or self-judgment, or in the middle of the training, practicing poses that injured me so that I had to stay still for a few days, I had to face up to all the ways I hurt myself...and find a way to stop.

Some people told me this kindly, some in ways I could not or would not hear or somehow seemed to boomerang and make it worse, but the fact remained: they were all right, whether conveyed skillfully or not. I had to get the monkey off my back.

And there was only one way to do that, also made clear by yoga philosophy: let go of the stories. All the stories. The stories we tell ourselves (I tell myself) about what we/I can or cannot do. The stories others told us when we were growing up or in school about what we could or could not do. The stories literally and figuratively inflicted on us, either through overt or covert abuse. Traumas big and small, complex or straightforward...that all leave traces, scars, engravings on our souls AND on our bodies.

The biggest story I was told from the gate, verbally and nonverbally was: you are weak, there is something wrong with you physically, you are somehow awkward, your eyes are weird, you are uncoordinated, and etc. Add to this verbal, physical, and sexual abuse and you have someone who is no fan of being in her own body, and if reminded - horrors - in a mirror - will flee, fight or freeze - it is so terrifying.

So, what brought all this up were the practice teach sessions, when I needed to allow others to observe me. I wrote in an earlier post about one of the worst episodes with this, but the fact is this happened to varying degrees no matter how skillful the mentor or viewer. I had to ask one of the assistants at our lunch "study hall" to write stuff down while I taught someone so I could get used to this without freaking out.

Now, before this I had directed plays and taught university classes with people watching me. I had defended my PhD in front of others (obviously). I have had my theater work loved and loathed by critics, but it was practice teaching yoga that nearly broke me.

Why?

Because I was having to be Embodied in front of others, AND help them to do the same WITH others watching. Given my personal history this felt and - even now typing these words even after a successful final practice teach that gave me great joy and led to certification - still feels terrifying. The only difference is now I have found tools to help me deal with the terror.

I don't know if attempting to teach another kind of yoga would have made me feel this way or not, but I damn sure know that teaching Kripalu yoga did, because it requires a level of compassion that leads to empowerment of the students, through specific languaging yes but also something more subtle. So that trying to do this meant all the voices and abusers came crashing down to contraindicate that ability.

The ancient voices did not win (see above in re my final practice teach) but they were and are Loud and Scary. Which means of course, I will sure as shit continue to teach yoga, because whatever happened at Kripalu the 26 days I was there, everyone I see now notices it. People comment on how I look, my posture and my bearing. As one friend said, it's like a whole lot of something fell off your shoulders.

And I have a feeling that just like with recovery, I'm going to have to give it away to keep it.

I also want to honor the teachers we had this past month, Jurian Hughes and Rudy Peirce, who  have to give of their hearts and souls to share this teaching with us, the coordinator Sachi, and all the assistants, Deb, Kathy, Michael and Kristin...and the other guest teachers...it does take a village to make a Kripalu Yoga teacher.

Finally, in honor of this, I share with you some yoga selfies I took in my kitchen today - yep, kitchen warrior poses. Virabhadrasana 1 & 3. Because, it's me, and to show you that indeed any Body can do yoga. Taking selfies does not come naturally to me. This took a battle with the aforementioned voices. But here they are. When I teach, I will invite people into this gentle, compassionate practice, whether you think you are a "yoga person" or not. If I can do it, so can you.

P.S. I turned 56 in June...so, this is 56.

Another healing journey...

A lot has happened since my last blog post, all the events listed were performed, and had a wonderful retreat to Westray in Orkney Islands. In fact, so good, that I have booked three more - for April, July and September. So, if you want to spend some time in a beautiful place, getting a lot of writing done, surrounded by serious writers who are super supportive, then get in touch.

But what I want to write about now is my near-future plan for October of this year...which involves spending the month at Kripalu - a yoga center in the Berkshires that I love - for intensive yoga teacher training. I will be there for a month.

Aside from the fact that the training itself will be transformational, and I will be certified to teach after over 17 years of practicing Kripalu yoga, this is also happening precisely 17 years after I was meant to spend a month at Kripalu doing a seva program. I had just begun practicing yoga and wanted to immerse myself in it. I was excited and nervous about the prospect of spending a month someplace I had never been, but I had been assured it was a great place. I was ready for an adventure after what had been a challenging year getting over a difficult breakup of a 13 year relationship, which had the effect of making me question Everything. I was ready for this new life, this new world.

Then less than a month before I was meant to go up to Lenox, September 11, 2001 happened, in my city. I have written about this many times, and if you want my best description, you can read it here.

But what happened after is, I could not leave the city. I was afraid it would disappear. Many were fleeing, but I was holding on for dear life. NYC was my home, the only place on earth that I had ever felt at home, and now all I could smell was burning plastic, metal and bodies - even up in Yorkville where I lived at the time. The smell made it up the East River. The smoke was visible, even though I was miles north of the attack. I had many friends who had been closer, some who lost people, and all of us saw the missing signs everywhere. People had tacked up photocopies of smiling pictures of friends and relatives, every fire house had at least eight photos up it seemed. There were candles under some of the photos in little planters, near trees, on steps up to brownstones. None of them were missing. They were all dead, incinerated.

I could not move. Would not move. Was not afraid, as far as I could tell, but of course I was. In yoga class, I felt the terror, but mostly was in a dissociated fugue state, that I arguably lived in for years, and to some degree even exist in to this day.

I cancelled the trip to Kripalu. I ended up doing a lot of other things, including moving to the UK in 2003 for what I thought was temporary stay that ended up lasting 8 years. I left in August 2003, right after the blackout, which ended the morning I flew out, I remember seeing a guy - probably drunk - stagger in front of our Super Shuttle Van at 4 am in Times Square. The driver swerved to avoid him, but it was eerie. My cats had looked at me bereft when I walked out the door. Everything was deeply weird.

I won't go into those eight years, because that's a novel in its own right, but the fact is I missed all the 9/11 anniversaries after the first one in 2002. And because of the way it was being used politically, I refused to participate even then in any event that showed my grief publicly. I was enraged that our grief was being used as an excuse to ramp up a war. So, I shoved it down. Then I was in the UK where no one wanted to know and most were cynical about 9/11. Individually some people wanted to know my actual human scale story but most decided to launch into diatribes about how it was an inside job and/or how Americans now know how it feels, etc. So, I learned to shut the fuck about it.

Then I shut it down into a tiny, hidden part of myself. Hidden even to me.

This part would emerge when I visited NYC and sometimes was near downtown and would see building going on and feel nauseous or start shaking, and I would have to leave.

I shut. it. down.

So, when I was back here in September 2011, realizing I was going to move back to NYC, and the 10th anniversary rolled around, I was kind of shocked by how moving it was to me, how emotional I got. I was wary now of saying this to my New York friends, because they had now been through Years of this grieving or ignoring it, depending on their mood or capability. So, once again, I kept it to myself.

I have begun to realize over the years of being back in NYC that some part of me is still damaged from that day, some part of me I have not allowed out somehow, a wound I have protected.

One of the original ways of shielding that wound was to Not go to Kripalu in October 2001.

So, when I realized I could go up in October 2018 for teacher training if I received a scholarship (which happily I did), I decided it was time to finally do this thing. While this won't heal everything, it's a start. I will finally allow myself the immersion I so craved then, but then somehow feared.

I don't know if the buried emotions will come up or not. There has been a lot of trauma in my life since then, including difficult losses, and there is one right now on the horizon. I have no idea what will happen.

But I am dedicating the training and any yoga teaching I do to people who were like me when I started yoga in my late 30s: scared and kind of suspicious and sure I could not do it. I want to work with people who suffer from PTSD or just plain old bad body image or a sense of being "bad" at physical things. And maybe people like me, too, who just can't shake certain wounds.

I want to embrace vulnerability, my own and others'. I don't know if I can actually do this or am just talking trash. In reality I hate vulnerability. My own that is. Total loss of control. It sucks. But it's also the only place life can become, well, life. So there's that.

We shall see what happens.

But this is a baby step towards healing. I was torn asunder on 9/11/01. More than I knew. I don't think I will necessarily get put back together, because not sure that's possible, but maybe, if I'm lucky, I can at least find the bits and pieces that were lost, even if they are in shards and make into some kind of whack collage.

There are worse fates.

The war is over...and I don't know how to live outside a war zone

I have not written here in a while. But as I was walking along in Inwood Hill Park tonight where the Harlem and Hudson Rivers meet, and watching the reflection of the setting sun (the sun itself was behind the cliffs that rise up here on the top tip of Manhattan between the park and the Hudson where the old growth forest still grows), I could hear someone play an electric guitar...not particularly well, but enough to evoke the 1970s and evenings as a child, sometimes riding in people's vans or old cars, and the odd comfort of that, teenagers or young adults playing Led Zepplin and me in the back somewhere doing whatever, but not in charge and knowing somehow for that moment everything was OK.

I then remembered this realization I had the other day when I was meditating that yes indeed the war is over, but I have no idea how to live outside a war zone. I don't mean that literally in the sense of being in the middle of an actual shooting war (aside from the time we lived on 106th and Amsterdam back in the early 1990s when in fact there were many gun fights outside our window - some with automatic weapons - so bad the police would not show up because - and I quote - "we are outgunned")...but as a child, not guns, but other war zones - some violent physically, some mentally, some verbally, some emotionally, but it was always a crisis and starting as a very young child I had to have my shit together. For instance, my mother has told me, when I was a baby and she and my father would fight violently, so I would hold my breath until I turned blue, which would finally make them stop.

That kind of thing. Rinse. Repeat.

Shift characters, locations, details but the out of joint song in which I had to keep my shit together, be vigilant at all times, and therefore could rarely be a child remained the same.

So, yeah, no, I'm not what you would call laid back. All the yoga and meditation in the world can't undo that shit. It can Help. A lot. It can keep me from inflicting it on others, and at times if I'm lucky myself, but it's not precisely a good run up to peacetime living.

I'm not going to recite my childhood. Anyone who knows me or has read this blog or my plays can catch the gist, but the point remains: no tools to live in peacetime.

Which means all the time living on overdrive. Shocking that I became an alcoholic, I know (ha!). But what is a miracle is that I got sober at 23. And still am. At 54. That shit is weird. But even so, still, no windshield and not really, you know, laid back.

BUT the difference is - when I had this realization while meditating, this time I didn't think OH NO, I HAVE TO DOOOO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. I HAVE TO HAVE A 10-POINT ACTION PLAN TO DEFEAT MY CRAZINESS. No. I did not go through that. Instead, I just breathed and heard a gentle internal voice say: and that's all you need to know right now.

You don't have to DO anything about it.

Just let it settle in. And I am. And just this. The NOT doing, the letting it settle in, is changing my life. It's kind of a miracle. Not by trying to change my life. Instead by Not trying to change my life. The miracle of acceptance. You accept a thing, hold space for it, and voila, it changes. With no effort. If I resist it, it just gets bigger and more intractable.

And so now, somehow, when feelings I usually find excruciating come up - certain types of sadness or boredom or anxiety or whatever - instead of trying to run away, I just breathe them in. I hold space. I witness. I allow the feelings. I look and see what's there for me to see, feel, experience. And then, yes, it all changes. By not trying to change it.

It's bizarre.

Which is all by way of saying when I heard that guy playing the guitar, I let the pleasant kind of nostalgic memory of those peaceful moments in my childhood wash over me. I felt the nostalgia, the desire to be young again, to have life ahead of me instead of at least more than half in the rearview mirror, and also the knowledge that there were these moments of respite - for all the crazy and the crisis. And that while I might not know how to live outside a war zone, I can allow myself these moments and don't have to judge or overanalyze.

Of course it doesn't help these days how much actual crazy there is in the world and violence and rampant injustice and plain old meanness and cruelty. But the fact is in one form or other that's always been there. I can allow the feelings of powerlessness in and rage and all of it. I can act as I can act, which I do, politically. I can write sometimes, create theater, do my little part. I can spin out, I can step up, I can step aside, freak out, be calm, get angry, cry, wonder what the actual fuck, have a moment of calm, take a walk, stay under the covers, call someone, meditate, stay alone, go be with people, dance, do yoga, write, take a nap, watch stupid things on Netflix, write in this blog, submit work, get rejected, get accepted, feel accomplished, feel like a failure, feel loved, feel lonely, wonder again what the actual fuck, and then breathe and let it all in - when I remember to do so.

This is the gift of getting older, staying sober for a long time, meditating every day, doing yoga when I remember (not as much as I should in other words) and trying to be a decent person - I begin to be able to accept the whole package.

I was also thinking walking home: I want to live long, because I need to figure it out, and then I laughed when I heard an internal voice say: that'll only happen when you stop trying to figure it out. Which, like, of course. But what a seduction it is. For someone such as me anyway.

At night when lying down going to sleep with crystals on me (yes I've turned into That person - try not to hate me), and I sense, my God/dess, so much energy in my head, my mind churning and churning Trying to Figure It Out. And so little energy in the rest of my body. So then breathing into that mysterious rest of me - the part - pretty much all of it - that I routinely ignore. Letting the crystals bring me to those parts of my body. Wondering will I ever allow my body to be fully animated? I don't know. Part of the war zone thing, levels of dissociation I'm not sure will ever go away. It's waaaay better than it used to be. At least I know my body is here. I can even feel it sometimes. A number of years ago, I woke up more fully to my actual emotions (as opposed to the word facsimile cover story that masqueraded as such). But I have a feeling my physical body is the most resistant to my awareness and acceptance. I am only aware of Problems - either physical aches and pains or with How I Look (always wrong) etc. Not sure I will ever be able to embrace my corporeal self, but that's got to be Ok. I don't want to doom myself to this dissociation either. We'll see.

I can breathe now. I can at times be touched. Sometimes easier than others. But I have always been "touchy" - kind of prickly in a somewhat sneaky way. On the surface, I am warm, but it's a patina, something to a certain degree I taught myself how to do. But underneath there is the shrinking away scared little kid, never sure anyone or anything can be trusted and always ready to pick a fight. It's complex. I certainly don't think I'm alone in this.

I'm afraid to even write any of this and publish it in public. What will people THINK?! GASP! As if...but still.

So, here I am. This is me today. Tomorrow or the next day I will post a bunch of things with schedules of events, a staged reading and two readings, all in June. But this is a different post. So be it.

As the African prayer goes: It is. Thank you.

Even if that means I never do know how to live in peacetime. I am here. And there is beauty - and even moments of peace - in the midst of the ever whirring chaos in my brain and sometimes heart.

"You're on earth, there's no cure for that!"

Yes, the title of this long overdue blog post is from Beckett (Endgame to be precise). I have chosen it because I am considering the obsession we have for curing things. I have been reading an excellent book by Bessel van der Kolk entitled The Body Keeps the Score. It has given me great insight into and compassion for how trauma lodges in the body and can keep us trapped in certain cycles. As I read, I found myself hating myself (and other people) much less and understanding all of us who have been traumatized so much more.

Now, I am in the 'how to fix it' section. Some - many - of the ideas are excellent, and they are also clearly not meant as one-size-fits-all, for which I am grateful. He manages to speak of all of this without pathologizing people, and with great kindness in general. Some of this probably has to do with his awareness of his own traumas and the fact he, too, has worked with some of these therapies. He is a medical doctor, specializing in psychiatry, so the book is rigorous and not too New Age-y lost in the mystical sands of yore or whatever, but he is also somewhat skeptical of the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry and their offers of 'cures' that aren't cures but more like kind of awkward band-aids, that are very useful at times as that: band-aids, but not as cures.

I was cheering along, and happy to see some of the things I do are already patented healing technologies, such as: yoga (for safe embodiment and help with breathing), theater because it's theater and a safe way to work things out, 12-step meetings because people in community helping each other, and body work, etc. He also mentions EMDR (an eye-movement therapy - which he thought sounded hokey until he tried it and did lots of research and discovered it worked - for some - mostly people with adult onset trauma they could remember) and other things I haven't read about yet.

Again, yay, sounds great! (Haven't done EMDR and pretty sure I'd be one of those for whom it would only be of limited use, but may try it some day if/when can afford, etc...fun times in American medical world...blah blah blah...but this is relevant because a lot of these therapies costs a lot of money and are therefore inaccessible to most, whereas All insurance pays for the drugs these days - which makes me rather nauseous, but I digress...)

However, I did pause today, another day of crying over the memory of the miscarriage I had almost 10 years ago, and the way that all grieving makes you feel like a failure and how that probably taps into the April of 1966 when my mother and father split after a violent fight, and on and on and on...and I was thinking as I do every year: maybe This year, it'll be different. Maybe, This year I'll Turn it Around. AKA: maybe This Year I'll be Cured.

And I felt like crap.

Until I stopped thinking that way and stopped worrying about "being better" and just let myself feel how I felt: aka like crap, and teary and irrational and unable to focus and not knowing whether to take my laptop with me or not being enough to push me over the edge of more tears, and then just put the damn laptop in my bag in case I wanted it later and went out to where I was going - a place I can talk about stuff like this - and did.

In this place, you get a period of time to speak without anyone interrupting you. I asked while speaking that no one come up to me with advice afterwards, because I frankly would have lost it. A couple people came afterwards and hugged me and one person started talking to me in a way that seemed suspiciously like she might be about to give advice so I braced myself to flee, but no...that was not it - instead she asked if I could help her with something because she loved listening to me speak and thought I sounded like a healthy person.

In other words: by not trying to pretend to be 'cured' or whatever and in fact living in and expressing my confusion and lack of focus and teariness and rage at God or a Higher Power or WhatHaveYou, I helped someone else.

So, maybe this whole cure thing is oversold, is my point, and Beckett's line is a valuable reminder. Perhaps when we attempt to 'cure' we are instead masking a desire to control and harboring an illusion about immortality? Or some kind of semi-benign (probably semi-comatose) state in which we are 'serene' all the time. I put serene in quotation marks because I don't think that is what serene means. I think serene actually means the ability to be in hell, chaos, turmoil, joy, happiness, peace, craziness, aggravation or equanimity and simply witness it, be there and witness it. That to me is serenity. Or as I heard someone say today instead of "it's happening to me,"saying "it's happening." Not in a denial, pretend it doesn't hurt way - that's just fake Buddhism - but in a fully embodied, present yet holding oneself kind of way...or not. Just fucking freaking out maybe or sobbing or raging or whatever...but not trying to escape the pain.

And maybe - while of course there is some kind of traumatic response that needs to be addressed and I still hold out hope for relief of some of my symptoms and repetition compulsion - maybe...there is a need for a level of acceptance, too, of the messiness of life, of the fact that some losses are just too much to bear in whatever weird little narrow box we have of acceptable in our culture.

Maybe, as Leonard Cohen says, "there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." If everyone and everything was 'cured' where would we be? In the darkness?

This is not in any way to make light of anyone's suffering or the need to seek relief from it. I have no idea what your journey needs to be. Only you do.

However, my gift for the day because of rolling with my reality rather than trying to 'fix' it was to take two short walks in parks - in Central Park where I saw some trees in bloom like a purple azalea and some white maybe cherry? blossoms and saw about 12-15 tourists crowded around a small tree taking photos of an unfazed squirrel. A NYC squirrel. A show off. Behind them rose the bizarre Central Park South skyline that now looks more like a computer simulation than the Deco-inspired New York I pine for when large soulless skyscrapers tower over the few older buildings that remain. But I continued to walk and notice too the flowers and buds and remembered that no matter what - at least for now - spring keeps coming with its relentless life-force regardless of our architectural follies.

Then back uptown and walking in Inwood Hill Park and seeing the pink blossoming tree at the small inlet and watching the graceful white egret catch a fish after standing very, very still for a long time, and out at the point hearing the gentle tide of the Harlem and Hudson rivers lap up on the shore as the sun was setting and the daffodils and crocuses and buds ready to spring out given half a chance and a warm day and looking at the blue blue sky and remembering Cornwall in the UK in April 2007 where I lost my 12-week pregnancy on the first day of a honeymoon the day after the wedding (and also in NYC in September 2001) with the same blue blue sky and crying and crying and then seeing the little kids at the playground and crying some more and thinking thank God/dess, thank you, for the fact I feel sadness rather than anger at the kids or ignoring them or trying not to cry, so I can breathe and smell the soil that is damp and the grass as it is growing and hear and see everyone - and in Inwood I mean Everyone - playing some form of baseball - on a diamond or in a patch of grass or dirt and today - this day - see - for once - kids of every color playing together - and that doesn't always happen - so while I cried I was happy, too.

And the squirrels all running around like little lunatics trying to find the food they had buried in the fall. And all the life everywhere.

So I'm not cured...but I do hear the voices sometimes of the spirits of the two lives that began in me and did not ever make it out alive telling me they are OK, very OK, and that I will be, too, and I cry some more and see the white birds flying in front of the darkening wood, and it's like a painting and they are them and I know that and they are not them and I know that and I am not cured and I'm not sure I want to be.

30 years is a long time

Honestly, these days since January 20, which was the memorial for my stepfather and the beginning of our Brave New World in the US simultaneously, has rendered me for the most part speechless. I have responded to issues piecemeal on Facebook and such, but here, I cannot find anything to say.

I have had a lot of thoughts and feelings about everything, but because I am afraid that everyone is being so reactive and that is not helping, I don't want to just add to the cacophony.

However, yesterday I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my sobriety and feel I should mark this kind of astonishing milestone somehow. When I last had a drink or drug, Reagan was President, there was a Soviet Union and a Wall in Berlin, most people including me still wrote on typewriters and even if some did have personal computers, there was no public internet; we had no cell phones and used landlines with receivers that were connected to the phone by a cord, and I had a cheap rent in the Haight in San Francisco. I was 23 years old.

The journey from there to here has been a bumpy one - I don't think anyone can live thirty years without bumps. The thing is if you are sober for a long time the best description I've ever heard of that experience is: no windshield. Alcoholics are born without shock-absorbers. There is biochemistry to support this, but that is the effect. Add to that traumatic experiences in childhood on, and you kind of have an addict and/or alcoholic-in-waiting. Some people avoid this fate, but many don't.

I didn't.

However, my drinking story is not that interesting, nor is anyone else's drinking story that interesting - at least not to me anymore. What interests me is finding ways to live sober, without the windshield and without taking it out on everyone else.

This is what preoccupies me, and what I have succeeded at in the technical sense for 30 years (aka no alcohol or drugs) but in terms of living a serene life or whatever, not so much. I mean I have to some degree, and I have meditated for over 20 years, practiced yoga for 16 years, done years of therapy, etc., not to mention going to meetings with people who are struggling to do the same kind of thing. All of this helps. And without all of this I doubt I would still be sober or possess whatever shred of sanity that I do.

However, loss still tears me apart. Another reason I haven't written is the grief over losing David, and then compounded by losing my step-grandmother recently, plus the country arguably, or at least whatever I thought democracy was meant to be. I feel exposed in the rawest way. Sometimes I can cope and sometimes - usually when in yoga class - I can feel deep vital parts of me shifting. I am being shorn of any pretense of pride or whatever, of any sense of "knowing" things. Does this make you wise or just insecure? We will see.

I do feel underneath all of this something is emerging, and I am being forced to surrender to forces larger than me on a daily, sometimes minute by minute basis to move through. Sometimes this can even feel good. A lot of times I feel edgy, sometimes raw, sometimes like everything kind of just itches - not literally - but just - it's uncomfortable.

Sometimes I write about it, but recently I haven't been writing that much either. That field seems to need to lay fallow. It feels almost abusive to try to write now. I have been writing at an almost machine-like pace for years now, and I've hit the end of that line. The good news is I seem to want to be out in the world a bit more.

My fractured foot also has played a large part in my awkwardness this past year. I was unable to move for months without pain and now can move but still can't walk the endless way I used to walk, which was and is my favorite exercise. I feel I became almost agoraphobic, and am now peeking outside of that.

Meanwhile, through all of this, I am sober, and that is a miracle, because all of what I am describing would have been reason enough to drink - a lot. Though to be honest, breathing was enough of a reason to drink a lot most days I drank, so there's that. But the fact I can move through all this massive discomfort that feels like it's probably growth and who really wants that at 53 I ask you? Not me, I assure you, but I seem to have no choice. In fact this endless 'growing' bit appears to be the wages of sobriety. Apparently, if your tendency to mute the effect of all that wind hitting you in the face because of having no windshield is to drink and you stop drinking, or doing whatever else you used to get you through the night, then you are doomed to constant 'growth.'

Growth.

Sounds so lovely, so healthy, so fabulous, right?

Hahahahahahaha.

Think about it. Look at toddlers falling over when they try to walk. It's cool, because they are little and people are encouraging them all the time. But imagine doing this - on an emotional level - at 53. You kind of feel - well - stupid. My experience of long-term sobriety is like being a toddler over and over and over and over again - or like a snake shedding its skin, except when the old one goes there isn't a new one underneath right away. That kinda thing.

I'm not complaining - though goddess knows this sounds like complaining - just kind of trying to give you the felt sense of it. Because if you know any clean and sober people, you probably think they are batshit crazy, and you are probably right. Just remember, if we were drinking, game over. We may even on the surface have seemed a little more normal when we were drinking - until a certain point, but then...disaster, not only for ourselves but anyone around us.

For the vast majority of you lucky enough to not be alcoholics or addicts, just remember when dealing with your sober friends that we are wandering around with literally thin skins and everything is hitting us at 11. In my case that includes sounds, smells, visuals, emotions, tastes. It's like living in a hyper-reality.

There are some benefits to this of course, especially if you happen to write, make theater or art or music of any kind. You can be available on levels that are amplified. On the other hand, it can be hard - if not impossible - to turn down this level of sensitivity. I imagine therefore most of us seem hopelessly self-absorbed, and sometimes, yeah, we are. but sometimes, we just Can't Turn Down the Volume on life while it's hitting us like a motherfucker.

At those moments, I tend to retreat. But then can feel isolated and want to come out, but then feel agoraphobic because have retreated, etc. Weird cycles like that.

But I am also exquisitely attuned to the people to whom I am listening, whether in meetings or classes or with friends. I have learned tools over the years that I think makes me a good friend, especially not giving out advice unsolicited and even being cautious when it's solicited. I find most people - including me - don't want to be fixed, but rather want a sympathetic ear.

I do my best to help others who are trying to live without drugs or alcohol. I also do my best to put voices and work out into the world that might not be heard or seen otherwise.

I am not mentioning politics, because honestly, what's the point? Everyone is talking about it all the time, and I have nothing great to add. I only hope we keep trying to listen to one another and don't block off avenues of communication. The rest is too scary for me to even attempt to write about right now. All I know to do is what I have done with the seemingly impossible foe of addiction: surrender to what I am powerless to change and to work my ass off to change the things I can. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the surrender has to come first, because if I'm putting energy into trying to change what I can't, I have zero energy to change what I can.

Right now, I am glad I live a life based on the concept of living one day at a time, because I could not cope with any of this otherwise without recourse to better living through chemistry.

I miss David so much it hurts. I miss in some ways my youth and ability to believe my own bullshit or was that confidence? In any case, right now I am tired. It is 4:12am. I don't know what else to say, and not sure anything I have said is worth a damn, but here it is. March 4, 2017. 30 years sober and with a car alarm whining outside my window as cars drive by. The car alarm has finally stopped, and so shall I.

Oops, no, forgot the most important part of all: gratitude. Grateful for all the folks who have helped me along the way. Those in and outside of meetings, who have listened when I was freaking and when I was celebrating, when I was angry and sad, when I was triumphant and when I fell on my face, who attended my weddings - yes that's plural - and helped me through divorces (also plural) - who have been there for me no matter what. Whether for a brief time or a long time. Without all of you and all your love, I would be sunk. Also to my higher power that I choose to call whatever - it changes all the time - and sounds so ridiculous in words and yet is there for me whenever I ask and no I can't explain it and yes it sounds absurd, but there it is and part of it is all of you. So, thank you. You all know who you are.

Reading book draft, Yoga & Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Since my last post, I have continued taking the wonderful Sunday night Kripalu yoga class for which I remain extraordinarily grateful.

Today, during a restorative fish pose (blocks holding up chest and head), I felt the weight of the world fall off of me and a sense of instead being buoyed up by the earth. Hard to describe what created that sensation, but it involved - oddly enough - the fleeting thought that at 51 years old, there are now many more people younger than me than are older than me on this earth. I felt an accompanying lightness, realizing that I've done my bit to try to change things, etc. and now there are all these younger people who have their chance to make their mark. I'm free now to write and do what I want to do. That might sound selfish, I don't know, but to me - who's spent so much time trying to hold up the world (not that anyone asked me to do so, mind you, but nonetheless I heeded some kind of sense of call...), this is a huge relief.

At another point during relaxation, I felt another weight being taken off of me - that of shame and the fear that shame engenders - the fear of being seen, of being violated, or violence being done to me - physical mostly. There are more prosaic fears of being embarrassed and such, but the haunting quote from Margaret Atwood comes to mind whenever I am writing about certain subjects. "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them."

If you happen to have the fun role of being a female writer and are writing about certain issues that are close to home, these fears can gain purchase on your soul. But underneath those fears, far more corrosive, is the shame - especially if you grow up in the largest special interest group in the world: women. Does it start with Genesis if you grow up Judeo-Christian? The rap of being the one who started the fall? Patriarchal laws/culture, etc.? I don't know. I know there's a lot of personal crap that plays into this for me, too - along with an intergenerational shame wave - for lack of a better way of putting it.

Nonetheless, while reading the draft of the book (which task I have now completed), waves of this shame and fear were palpable and close to silencing. Fears of retaliation, of people being hurt, of anger at what I am revealing, etc. can be so intense I just want to throw in the proverbial towel. But instead, I kept reading, and talking about this issue with a few trusted friends, who have assured me it's normal and to keep going.

So, when in yoga there was this sensation of that shame and fear being lifted off of me, I felt like I could breathe free for the first time maybe like ever...I feel it again now writing about it (the shame/fear nexus) but I have made a decision - that has been supported by yoga and meditation - to allow for this discomfort and not act on it.

Today, the shame trigger was reposting something on Facebook about a woman who realized she had been in an abusive relationship. Just reposting That put me in a shame-fear spiral. (Facebook is deeply weird when it comes to attempting to share anything real, but that's another post - and should show you how deeply out of kilter I am with the world of having A Brand - as in I'd rather kill myself than do that - or should I say, if I did that, I'd already be dead even if there was a body walking around - is this why there is an obsession with zombies these days? but I digress.)

Which leads me - believe it or don't - to Tina Fey's new television series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. What? you say, why would a comedy about a woman who is saved from having been kept captive underground by a cult leader who convinced his captives the world had ended be something that would matter to me? Bwahahahaha.

Well, anyone who saw or knows the subject matter for My First Autograce Homeography (1973-74) may be able to answer that trick question. Even though I was not - thank goodness - held hostage for any huge amount of time, I was for somewhere between 24-48 hrs (I was 10 and the whole last couple crazy days were - crazy - and included a psycho caretaker - I've written about this before so won't repeat - but that also involved a 4 month run-up of brainwashing etc.).

When I was living with my psycho babysitter, she convinced people I was evil and that I had done things I knew I had not done. I also challenged her when she convinced people to play boardgames wrong, etc. As in this comedy, I was not looked upon kindly and was chided or punished. But when I was saved in the end, I was - while battered - not broken. A therapist I worked with found this incredible. I find it incredible.

The reason I love the TV show is that the main character is portrayed as having resisted the cult leader and her main emotion - upon being rescued is: hooray the world is still here! And she makes the very sensible decision of not going back to Indiana after they have been interviewed in NYC and instead goes AWOL to live in New York.

How could I Not Love This Show?!!

Even though it's a sit-com and obviously not an in-depth look at the whole situation, watching this woman navigate life afterwards, including what amounts to PTSD, etc. is extraordinarily funny (because Tina Fey is a genius and the casting is brilliant) and ALSO healing.

Happily, for me, I was watching this show on Netflix while reading the draft of the book about my grandmothers. This buoyed my spirits and made it possible to move through.

Well, that and the yoga, meditation and some great friends and John, my beloved Canadian.

So, that's been my last coupla weeks...Tomorrow: Rewrites. (Besides emotional stuff, reading draft also showed massive redundancy, some gaping holes and lots of stuff that needs to be written - you know - better. However, on the positive side of the ledger - some pages were good here and there - and there is a there there. A book exists. However imperfect and in need of help. It's there. Hooray.)

Oh, should mention, when I finished reading the book draft, I bowed to my Ganesha statuettes, a Buddha tapestry, my ancestors (grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers', mother) and then to me when I was young. At which pointed I cried and cried and cried, because I had survived. These were good, healing tears.

No matter what else happens with this book, it's brought me to this place. And for that I am profoundly grateful.

Yoga, High Line & Invitation

Last night did some yoga - not in class but at home with guidance via the miracle of modern technology, this new fangled internet thing.  That just undercut all the gremlins that were snapping like little rat-tail vipers in my head...ok so that's a weird image but you get the point.

Today I got up feeling surprisingly chipper and decided the best use of the afternoon with my friend Christian would be to walk the Highline - which if you haven't done it yet is kind of great.  It's old above ground train tracks that had lay abandoned above the meat-packing district on the far West side of NYC.  They were renovated to include park-ish space, including a mixture of plants natural to the old track area and some new growth, a walkway, benches and public art that gives public art a good name - not always easy - and is inspiring lots of interesting architecture in its wake.  Some of it is just self-conscious but some is actually quite beautiful.  One of the best views was down into a structure that looked like a giant white gauze geodesic dome/airplane hangar that was functioning as a trapeze artist's practice facility - seeing people - from our perch view above the structure hopping up and down on trapeze devices, falling on nets and hurling themselves around in the twilight was quite spectacular.

I don't have a photo of that, but got an OK photo with my phone-camera of the walk as twilight began:

this gives you some idea but building at end was pink from sun

you can see track and how plant life is both 'native' and sculptured - building is seminary

I also watched the clouds, which were broken into little diamond-like pieces move in perfect formation slowly across the sky.  Nice.

The last few days I have been engaged in and tonight (while eating my single person's idea of health food, what I have dubbed this evening Kalfredo - which is actually quite good, namely gluten-free pasta with Newman's own Alfredo sauce mixed together with steamed kale) just finished Mary Karr's Lit.  This line, near the end of the book gives an example of why I think her writing is so fine, both in terms of form and content. "When you've been hurt enough as a kid (maybe at any age), it's like you have a trick knee.  Most of your life, you can function like an adult, but add in the right portions of sleeplessness and stress and grief, and the hurt, defeated self can bloom in place."

Yeah, it can and does.  Her ability to track her descent into alcoholism, recovery and extraordinary spiritual journey but also remain grounded in the muckier details of life instead of the we all lived happier ever after version is lovely.  She is clearly someone with sober time under her belt.  Also, and this is the most astonishing feat of all, she explain with crystal clarity how she went from being an atheist to being a Catholic.  She is as surprised as anyone else by this conversion and her description of the experiences, thoughts and discussions that led to this - mostly instigated by her young son's spiritual curiosity but then confirmed by running into a series of well-spoken, devout religious people, some of whom she already knew, is done so well that I didn't feel like I had to spit while reading it.

Her experiences with some of her mentors reminded me of the Catholic hospital where my father died two years ago, how amazing the nurses - who may have been nuns and/or brothers I don't know but for whatever reason they all seemed to have some kind of numinous aura grounded in the very real, human muck of an ICU - how they fought the evil Kaiser Permanente insurers to keep him there rather than moving him to Kaiser's crappy hospital, which was an insane request for the last day of a man's life - especially as he was there because Kaiser sent him home after his first heart attack with some Tylenol so he had to get in an ambulance to bring him to this onc, which was closer to his house - how these nurses were so kind to me who was sitting there alone - staring at a shell of a person being kept alive by various tubes and breathing machines - not so much human as like a floppy toy in pain.  The Scottish nurse brought me coffee, the South African nurse helped me understand the direness of the situation, so that through my jet lagged eyes I could see what needed to happen.  But also, astonishingly, just sit there for hours and hours watching him, watching all my anger and resentment lift, watch myself have patience and not have to rush, be able to cope with his partner when she did show up many hours later in her grief and confusion struggling as she does with her own issues, which are many - to let him ago.  Again.  The details they thought through: the aromatherapy cream - lavender, the hand made pillow cases for his head as he was passing when the machines were taken off - the plaster cast of his hand - the soothing voices.  The fact that as she did all this, the South African nurse was softlyy crying.  And I thought - oh my God, does she cry all day?  But it wasn't intrusive, it was compassionate.  And the crucifixes everywhere were not grossing me out.  The way this same nurse came up to me when we were leaving and said: you handled this so well.  It made me cry.  If I hadn't been sober for 23 years, meditated every day for 15 and prayed almost continually (silently) like all day, that would not have been the case.

No, I'm not Catholic and doubt I ever will be what the Pope issue and all, but the fact is I saw something I'd never seen before: the good side of Catholicism in action - devout people acting as they believed.  I'm also not saying secular people can't do that, of course they can - it was just this extra that was there at that time.

Karr's book brought that back.  Something about the humanity of it all - weirdly enough.  There is something blood and guts about Catholicism, it's true, that the various varieties of Protestantism I was haphazardly exposed to can sometimes skirt around.

I wrote Karr an abject fan letter earlier this evening - for so many reasons.  I imagine it will end up on a heap many feet tall and that's just fine.  She deserves it.  Do I envy her a little bit for nailing it so beautifully and so well, oh you bet I do, but begrudge her one tiny bit of the praise and support she has received, not a bit of it.  She's showing me how it's done.  I hope I can take the lessons, they are profound and it's not just about the writing.

So my gratitude today goes to the city of NYC for showing me its beauty tonight from the Highline, to my friend Christian for being a rock solid friend for so many years - since before I ever started the recovery process - and who has seen me now through two marriages - God help him - and our various spiritual and artistic quests, to Mary Karr who I've never met but has given me profound hope and even joy and to all of the (presumably) crazy ascetics who invented yoga, my deepest thanks.

I have had over the past few days begun missing aspects of the UK, which does not surprise me - what originally surprised me was the fact I wasn't missing them at first.  One of those things - which I was reminded of watching Downton Abbey (we just started watching series 2 over here British friends - and I wish you all in the UK could see how we lap it up over here - it's hilarious) - namely, the lack of desire to spew out everything about everything all the time and the ability for people to get things with a raise of the eyebrow.  Now, the fact I am writing this blog, which is so exposing and writing that I miss that level of reticence at the same time is truly absurd, but it's also true, so go figure.  Lord knows, I can't.  This same show, which kind of creeped me out when I was in the UK, I find charming when here.  Joseph Albers was right about more than just color.  You put the same thing in a different context and it changes - just like that.

I've also been overwhelmed recently by the provincialism of the US and even NYC - especially its triumphalism and the constant we are the greatest drum beat.  It is kind of embarrassing.  I think the fact the Republican primaries are now in full gear doesn't help.  But also, and this is what I remember being guilty of myself, the voices of the left/dissent that speaks in a way that implies the US is the Worst place in the world.  In other words, whatever it is, it has to be the -est of it...Worst-est, Best, Biggest, Stupidest, Smartest...whatever.  It's like a whole country built on the piece of shit the world revolves around complex of the average alcoholic.

It's still home, though, for better or for worse...but, as I suspected I would discover when I came back, I've been in the UK for eight years, too, and I'm not just an American anymore either.  I did write about this earlier in October, I'm now remembering...it's funny writing a daily blog, because I'll write about something like it's an original thought (of mine I mean - not original in the World) and then remember mid-typing - oh no, I already said that last month.

I'm keeping this in though, for a couple reasons - so I can see my repetitions but also because I know folks keep picking up this blog midstream.

Speaking of which: thanks again to all of you who read from all the many, many countries where you live.  I wish I knew who you were.  I can see from the statistics your numbers are growing, which is heartening.  I know sometimes the comments section doesn't work properly but then it rights itself - so please feel free to comment and let me know who you are, what you think of this crazy thing and all like that...

Oh and I should mention for anyone in NYC, there will be a staged reading of We live in financial times at The Brecht Forum in the West Village at 7:30pm on January 20 & 21.  Below is the official invite.  I am not on Facebook, so if you are interested in helping me publicize this event, please feel free to lift the invite off of this post and paste it on your Facebook page.  It should be an interesting two evenings, especially as it will feature a talk back with people from Occupy Wall Street and people from the banking industry.  Should be quite a conversation.

Invite starts here:

We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve 

by Julia Lee Barclay

director: Rik Walter

performers:

Marietta Hedges*

Matt Higgins

Terry Runnels

Kevin Scott

Alyssa Simon*

at 

The Brecht Forum

451 West Street (Bank & Bethune)

January 20 & 21

7:30pm

(includes talk-back with speakers from OWS and banking industry - should be a rollicking good time!)

Who's laughing now? 

We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve is a darkly funny theatrical shell game wherein the conventions of character and story (in the form of Mike and James, investment bankers alone with an angry female voice they do not understand) collapse and attempt to frantically reassemble.  Global capitalism as tragic farce.

Want reservations?  Sure you do!  

You can reserve directly through Brecht Forum at: 

https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12129&reset=1 (for Friday, January 20)

https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12130&reset=1 (for Saturday, January 21)

If you can pay something, we are grateful, as it benefits The Brecht Forum and Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, who have donated space and time, and the artists, all of whom are volunteering their time. 

If, however, you are in the industry or need a comp for any reason, please RSVP at ftreservations@gmail.com with your name and affiliation (union, theater, freelance, whatever...).  Your reservation is confirmed unless you hear back from us.  If you cannot make it, please do get in touch, as we have limited seating each night.

The Brecht Forum, founded in 1975, is an independent educational and cultural institution serving New York's broad left and progressive communities. Throughout the year, the Brecht Forum offers a wide-ranging program of classes, public lectures and seminars, art exhibitions, performances, popular education workshops, and language classes. Some affiliated projects include the Institute for Popular Education, founded in 1990 in collaboration with the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory; and Arts at the Brecht, which includes ongoing arts programming in collaboration with such projects as Neues Kabarett, an experimental jazz series initiated in 1998, Strike Anywhere Theater Ensemble, and Red Channels, a radical media collective.


The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) was founded in 1990 and is the oldest group in the United States offering facilitation training in the techniques of Theater of the Oppressed, a methodology created in the 1960s and 1970s by Brazilian director Augusto Boal, with whom TOPLAB facilitators enjoyed a close collaboration and working relationship until his death in 2009.

*appearing courtesy AEA

and the reviews are finally done!

So, you can find my reviews for Facebook Me and The Town of No One now on nytheatre.com.  I am so relieved to be done with all the reviewing for now.  It has been quite an experience, and right now I feel completely saturated with theater, like a sponge that can no longer absorb another drop of liquid.  If this changes, I may go see more before FringeNYC ends, but if not, I will let it hold.

I just finished doing an hour of yoga in the living room and what a relief that was.  I also updated my photo for whatever reason one does such a thing.

I'm listening to Jonathan Schafer's New Sounds series on WNYC of Eastern European music and it's all good right now.  Nothing like a little breathing with movement to make me feel better.

Oh and speaking of Eastern Europe, I should mention I heard back from Peca Stefan, the writer of Nils' Fucked Up Day and he said they made the show for 500 euros (his own money), because it was banned in Romania, so basically a typical fringe budget.  They did get help for travel costs and such, but the original show was created the way we all create ours.  Just thought you'd like to know that!

So onward and upward indie theater folks.  See you on the flipside of the festival and all like that.

Oh and a couple days ago, I had one of those breathtaking NYC moments that makes me want to move back here.  I came up from the subway onto Delancey Street and there was the Williamsburg Bridge and the light in the sky was pre-post thunderstorm/twilight grey/blue and the lights were orange in that just so way and it was just spectacular in only the way NYC can be.   It literally takes my breath away.  And then there is of course the New York drip, the random drips from wherever, whenever above and below ground, that provide the comic relief.

But it feels so good to be here, so good.