Everyone's settling in

So, today, well this week in general with my second group I'm teaching has been going a lot smoother and I'm actually enjoying it.  Just assigned them the 'go down to Zuccotti Park assignment,' after having a really good discussion about what 'intercultural' meant, different co-cultures and how cultures are created by perception and definition - by people.  We talked about the Arab Spring and what's happening here and how if people created 'it', people can change 'it' - and they seemed to get it, the students.

These are the moments you live for if you're a teacher.  And so I felt cheerful after even if tired.  Walked back across the bridge and marvelled again at the color of the woods I could see as I walked, happy to be doing what I'm doing and feeling proud to teach at BCC.

Came back home and Ugo the Rescue Cat was wandering between the cat litter box and the window sill. Tonight we had a lovely time with me petting him for a long time and earlier we played.  He's eating and now wandering around the living room and exploring more.  It's little steps day by day, but each day he seems more present and a little less scared, which is great.  I've had him since Sunday night, so this is night 4.

I spent my fun and exciting Thursday evening walking past the salt marsh, and saw what was either a loon or a heron, not sure which - then to the Cafe I like and marking papers.  From my first class.

Did as much as I could then came back here and listened to a lovely NPR radio series hosted by Tina Fey called "The Hidden Life of Girls," before devolving totally into TV watching - a real rarity.  But needed.  Just good old fashioned crap TV, including one show with an actor I used to work with on experimental theater and another one, which is attempting to Americanize Prime Suspect.  Needless to say, no one can replace Helen Mirren.  It's just not possible.  But it works as crap television.

In the midst of that I had the nice cat petting session with Ugo - whose name I just discovered today - originated from another cat who had the same name, looked just like him (my Ugo) but had died the year before.  The first Ugo was much loved, so much so that the woman who had owned him could not bring herself to adopt my Ugo because they looked too much alike.

I found this out talking to the original person, Ellen, who was feeding my Ugo, because I found out through my yoga teacher cat rescuer that she - Ellen - was a massage therapist (who was voted best massage therapist in the world by British Vogue don't you know), and I needed a massage.  Tragically, her room was too crowded with stuff from her apartment being re-done so through other connections have another massage set up tomorrow.  Somehow my shoulders need to be unfused from my ears.  This would be helpful.

As should be obvious by now, the world is very, very small...at least up here in Inwood-world.

I made a big decision today to Not direct the reading of my play We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve and instead hand it over to Rik Walter, who I know is an excellent actor and have a good feeling about as a director.  This feels So right.  I so loved watching the reading last September and getting to be a 'real' writer not a one woman band.

So, January 20 and 21st at The Brecht Forum kids, be there or be ...well..somewhere else...

Feeling more and more each day: just let it be - do the next right thing - follow what's in front of me - all that seemingly bogus 'now' talk - but it seems to be real at this stage.

Finding myself forcing stuff less and less and breathing more and more...and the salt marsh (that I've been calling a tidal basin) just makes me so happy, smells like real tidal water, and all the ducks, geese, seagulls and this loon or heron and the egret...I love it so much.  It feeds my soul that has felt parched of beauty - for a long time now - lots of other stuff was available but not all this natural and urban and urban-natural beauty.  London is a lot of things, beautiful is not one of them, not in the areas I lived anyway - there are little pockets but it never sang for me, as much as I tried to hear the tune, it just didn't.

Inwood feels like a little piece of heaven handed to me for no reason at all.  Just like the little pieces of hell that preceded it.  You just never know what's coming.  That's all I know at this stage.

Oh and my final image of the day I will leave you with - walking in the park, a few strong gusts of wind and leaves falling everywhere like snow, but they were colorful leaves, a blizzard of leaves - and little kids screaming, but in a happy way, a delighted scream - scared-happy-delighted-amazed and the rest of us so-called adults smiling.

Nice.

Ugo says good night, too.  He's begun meowing - but it's not a meow, it's hard to describe.  But he's making his little noises.

Hooray.

teaching tired and also freaked out new cat owner syndrome

Was delighted tonight to return home and see Ugo on the window sill instead of where he spent most of the day: in his cat litter box.  I ran around frantically this morning thinking he had been spirited away by gremlins only to find him placidly sitting in his box.  I then was afraid maybe he was sick, but called Sherri Cat Rescue Queen who assured me he had done the same at her place and that he just felt more comfortable there sometimes.  I was relieved but already close to late to teach and exhausted from another half-asleep night wondering where the cat was, if he was OK, etc...

Fortunately, he is now walking in the living room.  He seems, like his new owner, to feel more comfortable at night.  Unfortunately, his new owner has a morning job now.  Sigh.  If not, I'm sure he and I would be up all hours with the cat dancer.

It's so funny though how he hides during the day, but at night when I'm here typing away he seems most comfortable.  Also, like his new owner, kind of autistic and likes the same thing to happen in certain ways.  It is evening, she is typing in that corner, good.  She is going out the door, I don't know where, bad.  Etc.

So, there you have it, Julia's dime store projecting and anthropomorphizing cat psychology.

Alright so I'll stop.

I was lucky today to speak with two old friends in person, my lovely gorgeous wonderful smart great I couldn't love her more friend Nicole, who wandered about autumnal Inwood with me and had lunch at the cafe I can't live without and we talked and talked and talked and connected on the many levels we connect - head and heart, art and politics, life and the ways in which we both understand better than either of us would prefer trauma and therefore empathizing with Ugo too much and all like that.

Then spent the evening after getting my hair done and going to a writer's meeting with my friend Nathan who I've known since college.  There is something extraordinary about talking with someone you've known since you were 20 when you're both breathing down 50 - seeing we do look the same, but also seeing as we talked for longer the years - which have manifest in many ways including, thank all the gods and goddeses, in some level of wisdom and compassion.

We caught up on the death of parents, mutual friends who have walked similar paths to ours, and all the funnysadwonderfulheartbreakingstupidamazing shit we've done since we last saw each other.  None of which, I may add, had anything to do with Jobs or Careers...instead blood and guts life stuff...I love that.

Writer's meeting did its magic as it usually does, reconnecting me to my writer self without imposing a diagram on me as to what that's supposed to look like and before that - hurrah - found a woman named Chloe who can make my hair turn the same color Mark did in London.  It's the little things.

I even bought - gasp - some cosmetics.  Will she wear them?  Hmmmm.  I did for a while, then kind of gave up, now let's see what happens...

On the way back to my place, turned around on subway platform to see the outline of Bronx Community College on the hill, which includes some gorgeous architecture and thought: damn, that's a fine looking school.

I find it amazing how many things I think will be awful or just be sub-OK are turning out to be kind of secretly astonishing.  There are many hidden gifts when you stop trying to run the show.

How many years has it taken me to learn this?  A lot.  Will I forget?  You bet.  Am I glad I feel it now.  Yes.

And now, to bed, for my weary teacher bones...a blessed necessary early night.

Ugo update plus more beauty

OK, so since I started blogging about Ugo the Rescue Cat I have seen a huge uptick in my readership.

So, what you want to know first:

He (Ugo) is playing with toys I bought him and a scratching post as we speak, right behind me.  When I came back in this evening, thinking he had decided to go live behind the sofa again, he was on window sill.  Last night he ate a lot of food and - well - made use of the litter box.

He's now thumping around and making a racket with things that have bells and cardboard.

I tried to take a photo but flash did something weird and it won't transfer.  He is camera shy!

However, having taken a long walk again today after teaching, I'll let Inwood after that speak for itself...

While sitting and looking at the water below I realized it's time for soul diving.  Time to give up whatever ideas for good or ill I've had about how my life Should look and simply make sure I am feeding my soul and let the gods and goddesses sort out all the achievement-recognition stuff.  I\ve been obsessed with that in one way or the other since dirt, and it's time to end the: when I've acheived x and y, I'll be worth z routine.  Yes, it's taken many tricky turns over the years and covered itself over in much more righteous clothing, but it amounts to the same thing: this or that external thing (usually recognition) will make me feel better and/or a relationship or whatever.  And it won't and it never has and never will.

I do know this: I love where I live more than I can ever remember loving where I live and I want to remember this and say a momentary prayer of gratitude for all this beauty, the great cafe where I can chill out and work and the general population up here, which includes everything from the hippest street kids to a couple teenage hippies playing guitar on the rocks, including - and I shit you not - Norwegian Wood.  2011...and Crosby and Nash were downtown playing at Occupy Wall Street.

What next?  The Beatles reunite after George and John come back from the dead???

Ugo is just playing and playing now...which makes me very happy.

To sleep....

Ugo the Rescue Cat real time update

OK, so the cat is still behind the sofa, but he's obviously eaten something of his dry food and came out all regal to prance to his litter box in the bathroom then ran back underneath the sofa.  He deigned to play with one of the little cat dancer things (from behind the sofa), turned his nose up at tuna fish and is hilarious in his mixture of being shit scared and haughty at the same time.

Hmmmm, sounds familiar...hmmmm.  Could it be that he takes after his new owner???

The tale continues....

I am on way to bed to be ready to teach tomorrow.  So far round 2 is easier than round 1 but it was only the first class.  So, we'll see.  But today felt more like teaching than wrestling, which was a profound relief.

Oooh and after coming back from making tea a new development.  Ugo (aka Silly Beast aka Lancelot) is sitting on the window ledge looking out at the universe of Payson Street and the park across the way.  Which means he is sitting right behind me as I'm typing.  He'll sniff my finger but is not wanting to be pet yet.  But I'm amazed he's stayed on the windowsill while I'm typing.

Big excitement up here in Inwood.

Also another blazingly gorgeous day, sunny, mild and yelloworangered leaves everywhere, the kind that are so colorful when you close your eyes you can still see them.

Nice.

Sweet dreams...keep up the prayers for rescue cat, they are obviously bearing fruit!

Gorgeous Inwood and Rescue Kitty

Some photos below of walk I took today in Inwood Park before being gifted with a rescue cat whose name is still up for grabs.  He's as camera shy as I am, so of course my camera folded when he was out from behind the chair and my trying to take the photo sent him back behind the chair.

I've never had a scaredy cat before, but he was clearly traumatized by whatever jerk-off owned him before he ended up on the street - and let me take a moment to say that anyone low enough to be mean to a cat is obviously sub-human and deserves a certain kind of torment I hope is reserved for them here and/or hereafter...

But I digress.  I now am a cat owner again.  My oldest and last remaining cat died on my father's birthday in December 2009 and in honor of her and my inability to figure out my life I did not get a new cat until today.  I was even a little hesitant, but felt clearly I should do it last night, after all the signs leading to my adoption of this cat, whose name has been variously: Hud, Ugo, Kittyhead, Buddy and from me now: Sweet Beast or Silly Beast.  He might end up with a really dumb proper name from me like Sir Lancelot, because he seems kind of knightly in his bearing.  And yes I know how lame that is but I always give my cats stupid names.  Don't ask me why.

When I can take a picture of him, after I finally get batteries for my camera that work, I may post a picture here and ask for suggestions.

But for now I have a cat behind a chair and a camera that doesn't work.  So, some photos of Inwood follow.  This will be a brief post because I need to prepare for the second five week intensive class I am teaching starting tomorrow.  Even though I am teaching similar stuff, it's still new to me so need to brush up on the class plan and get prepared.

Last night I stayed up late grading final exams, if you can believe it.  The wild and crazy life of an artist-teacher in NYC.  Woohoo.

Oh I should add that today along with some nice walks, I did get some writing off to places I wanted to send it and proposed some of my own projects today.  So it's been a good day on the whole....

And for you, my dear readers, check out the autmnal gorgeosity that is in Manhattan (!)...I would have more photos if my camera wasn't being so cranky...but at least there are some...

that's the Bronx on the other side...

 

just in case there's a fire, two trees to the right, there's a fire hydrant...

little building is a nature center (!) with info about the bald eagles and such...amazing.

Sweet dreams of yellow orange red...I feel so blessed to be living here.  And to have a silly beast behind me deciding whether or not it's OK to trust me.  I think he will soon, but God knows any of us who have been traumatized know, it takes time.  And so, he - Sir Lancelot the Silly Beast - has time.  Please send him lots of love and warmth.

Occupation politics and art

There I said it: politics and art.  The phrase alone can be enough to make you want to hide under a pillow.

In these days of Occupy Wall Street and all manner of in your face politics, what is the relevance of artistic experimentation?

I ask this as someone who has a history of political activism (and who has been at the sympathy OWS marches in NYC) and who also creates theater (primarily) that is on the experimental edge of experimental, what some would uncharitably refer to as 'elitist' or if particularly miffed 'pretentious.'

I see the connection, but I can also understand if it's not crystal clear.  And there's the rub: does everything have to be Crystal Clear?  Am I being somehow self-indulgent or whatever by working in associative meanings, formal experimentation that creates new ways of seeing/creating?  I'd like to say no, of course I would.  And I do, and have, worked very hard to make these forms as accessible as possible without diminishing the quality of the artistic experiment.

But, I'm also aware now that I am teaching students who are in college who have a hard time writing even the most basic sentence, that to do what I do means having had access to a very good education, sets of ideas that are not generally disseminated and the concurrent sense of entitlement that comes with that.  I can - and do - tell myself all manner of post-structuralist stuff about how cool this work is and how it can disentangle fascistic molar meaning with molecular constructions that are liberating, etc.  And I do even believe all that.

However, does it matter?  Like at all?

My feeling on this now is: yes and no.

Yes in that at the far end of how we conceive of the world involves language and ways of framing our reality and any kind of active investigation into that is important.  But no in that the actions of a handful of people who started sleeping in a public-private park downtown has had more impact on shifting the way we see thing politically not only in this country, but in the whole world, than any number of artistic experiments combined.

But, that is also comparing apples and oranges to a degree, because for people to have the imagination to begin the occupation, they too must have been exposed to ideas - political and artistic - that led them to that action.

My favorite origin story to what is shaping up to be a global revolution, is that many of the activists in Egypt and I think Tunisia as well were exposed to the work of a very old, but still alive, American academic, Gene Sharp who wrote a treatise on non-violence as a means to democratic change called from Dictatorship to Democracy.  I downloaded it from the NYTimes site when they posted it.  It's an excellent read.  And can you imagine that this fellow, 92 when Arab Spring began, could have imagined the impact his writing would have?

So I go back to my original hope that is: if experimenting with ideas and forms and if you have a political bent to begin with, which I do (as do many others), this can have some value.  The value is in opening up spaces for new possibilities, ways of conceiving other than what is given.  Everything happening now - that has been happening since the Arab Spring - is turning 'how it is' on its ear.  You have to know that's possible.  Certain kinds of artistic experiences can aid in that mind opening moment.

However, there are certain actions people can do in the world - sleeping in Zuccotti Park and not leaving - or setting oneself on fire in Tunisia - that - at the right moment (and timing is as key as action here) - can have a huge impact.  Action, bodies on the line, is what is most important.

And while it is not, nor meant to be 'theater' per se, these actions are highly theatrical (or in the academic parlance du jour - 'performative' - a parlance I use with somewhat gritted teeth having suffered enough getting a PhD and just wanting wanting wanting to go back to the old Strunk and White 2 cent words...)...And for all the social networking, which of course has had its place and been an incredibly valuable tool, without People on the Street, their Live Presence, Vulnerable Human Bodies on the Line, none of this would be happening.

This is the kind of action I dreamed of, this is the kind of action in my own little way I've tried to make openings for in my artistic work and of course all those seemingly futile political protest marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, articles, etc. I've engaged in, organized, written about...etc.

I am delighted that this generation of young people unlike my frankly sheep-like graze mindlessly to the slaughter generation (young in the 80s) is Awake and Fighting Back.  You guys Rock the House.  I would like to think/pray/hope those of us who kept the faith in the dark times kept open the stream for you, but no matter - you are doing it.  This is your time, and that's just great.

My little bit now is sending my kids from Bronx Community College downtown to check out Zuccotti Park, talk to people there and write about it.  They now see themselves as part of the 99% (not all of them but many - I'm not asking them to believe what I believe but simply to go see for themselves outside of the media filter what's up) and some are more engaged and enthused politically.

I also wrote a play in 2008 about the first financial collapse We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve that resonates now more than ever.  I'd like to think this was my way of throwing into the ring some ideas that are now out there and having an effect.  We will be doing a reading of this play at The Brecht Forum in January, so stay tuned for that if you're interested.

This play, perhaps relevant to the subject of this post, is way more 'normal' in terms of form than my other work.  I did not decided to do it that way, it's just how it turned out.  The form falls apart by the end of course, but initially it looks like a recognizable play and story.  I wonder now if this was partially a desire, unconscious, to reach out to more people?  I don't know, but it's an interesting proposition.

I am, as the title of this blog indicates, in transition, so I want to take this valuable time to interrogate all my assumptions, including about what makes artistic creations relevant, vital, etc. and how that may or may not impact what I create.  I say may or may not because it's not always clear what will impact what.  I cannot make 'ideologically pure' art nor would I want to do that.  So, it's this balancing act that in my experience is worked out in the doing rather than the thinking.

I start writing a stage text and it comes out whatever way it comes out.  I start working in a rehearsal room or a lab space and bring in ideas to try but then they change.

Without this vitality art dies.

And I think, back to the Occupy movement, that they have remained so vital because they are not afraid to be in process, to Not know, to Not have an agenda, but be there anyway, saying: you know what: this isn't right.  We are the 99% and we are being screwed.  That's enough.  Yes, there will be calls to do this and that, and everyone and God with a half-baked progressive agenda will try to attach themselves to this movement, but at the core it's this: here we are.  We aren't going away.  Shit has got to change.

And it already Is changing.  News stories are being written that would never have been written a month ago, like the NYTimes article about how none of the presidential candidates are part of the 99% (except maybe one and they are not sure even about that one when savings are included).  That article does not get written in mid-September.  Bank of America backed off its debit card fees and now OWS even has port-a-potties.  Miracles do happen.  But not miracles, no, human action made this happen - real concerted action.

Rock on, 99%.  It's our time now.

I'm too old to sleep in the park with you all (plus teaching in the Bronx) but I will keep making my work, cheering you on at marches and fighting the good fight with my 'pen' (i.e. computer, blog, plays, etc...)

Getting lost in a day and relearning to breathe

Today was one of those days where you resolve to do a lot of things that don't get done, but instead end up in a pile of old letters and photos of your grandparents or something like that.

I needed after this long week teaching to not be doing that but I also wanted to get out and walk in the amazingly gorgeous forest under the cloudless blue sky.  Instead I saw some of that from my window while rifling through genealogies - one of which finally answered a mystery about why I feel so at home in the Orkney Islands (I have relatives who settled up there circa 1600s - one of whom was the 'Bishop of Orkney' and left a bunch of land to his younger sons in Skaill, Breckness and Graamshall)  The mansion that was owned by these ancestors is now for sale I discovered as I tried to find where these folks had lived.  If I only had £250,000, I could buy back the 6 bedroom with many other rooms mansion.  Tragically, many people exist between me and those days and most of the family drank away whatever fortunes may have existed, then someone made another fortune, then it was drunk away...rinse repeat.  Etc.  By the time I was born it was a myth...but now here there is this mansion, that and another one which is a big tourist attraction, Skaill House, which I've never even looked through when I've visited, because it seemed too expensive (!)  Well a lot can go wrong in 400 years...

But it makes me understand why I had the astonishing, never-had-it-before-in-my-life feeling of having been in Stromness (the first town I saw from the ferry when traveling there in August 2003) the moment I saw it.  I suppose memory can be genetic among other things.  It also answers why, when I never felt at home in England, I always felt at home in Orkney.  So strange.

But what I was Supposed to be doing was taking a walk, reading some old writing to send off to someone else, sending off links and attachments to people with whom I interview 3 weeks ago, etc., etc.

Life is Always what's happening to me while I'm busy making other plans, to paraphrase John Lennon.  What I did finally manage to do that I had wanted to do since I last went to her class almost a month ago, is return to this lovely yoga teacher, Ola's restorative yoga class.  That happened.  I almost found an excuse but hurled myself out the door instead and re-learned again how to fucking breathe.  Jesus.  But like I always need to learn and learn and learn again...

Then it turns out she's another one of the Washington Heights Cat rescue women who knows the other person with whom I have been talking about adopting this certain cat - Hud.  Hud was rescued this winter and when I saw a picture of him I knew he was meant to be mine...and I think he is.  I also met the woman who rescued him in a totally different context at a meeting of friends of BW.  So, I don't know what is up with this cat, but I know he's supposed to be mine.  However, I'm waiting for them to make sure he's comfortable enough to be adopted.  And I'm not in a rush...

I also farted around on the internet in the endless ADD spiral that is now part of my life: email, twitter, blog, twitter, news, email...some random search...oh but what about...and then there's....oh, back to news, twitter, email, blog....etc.  And I'm not even on Facebook.

So, here I am blogging tonight as I signed up for a blog everyday thing on BlogHer - with which I have an ambivalent relationship as I don't think what I write about really chimes with any of their discernible focuses, but whatever.  I'm female.  I blog.  I guess that qualifies me.  The focus for the month I believe is blogging for blogging's sake, which is fairly broad and seems kind of self-evident...but it's obviously part of what I do, so here it is...my daily post.

But I'm getting screen fatigue now so will sign off as all the good yoga work on my shoulders is now being undone as I sit at the computer and type.

I am now off to read the writing I meant to read earlier in hopes I can send it off to someone I met earlier in the week with whom I may be collaborating soon.  She and I have many similarities, an eerie amount in fact, so much so that by the time we met, we felt we already had...so strange.  So hopeful.  There is a project I wanted to do very badly with my company in London, but then we disbanded.  That was the right decision but the project remains in my heart and I hope to share the idea with someone and get it moving ahead.  She may be that person.  We will see.

Enough for now...