Sad day made lovely by Eva, Oliver and Promenade

Woke up feeling depressed and whenever I take a moment, I cry.  But I made the wise decision to spend the bulk of the day with my friend Eva, her young baby Oliver and taking a walk from her place in Carroll Gardens to the Promenade (in Brooklyn Heights).

I will let the photos tell the story...and all I can say about the pictures of NYC (from the tip of Brooklyn to the bottom tip of Manhattan) is: how can you not love this place?  And as for the pictures of Oliver and Eva, well...I don't think they need any commentary at all...

Oliver and I got along famously, btw, and I was able to stop him crying by playing invisible sock puppet muppet - by making my hands in the shape of talking sock puppet (with no sock) and singing these immortal lyrics: lalala la la la lalala la la...and repeat...

I'm so grateful to live here - and if you look near the the Statue of Liberty, you will see Ellis Island, where some of my relatives passed through on their way here.  When I'm in NYC I feel I am in the right place.  When I am anywhere else, I kind of feel homesick.  I just love this place unconditionally, which is probably kind of weird and perhaps even disturbed, but it's true.

There is sadness and loss to walk through yes but every day a new kind of beauty, a new excitement, a reminder that I am now in my own life.  Nothing better than that...plus a freedom at this age that most people do not have - to move in whatever way I need to, to explore new avenues and ways of creating and that is lovely.  Invaluable.  Great.

Letting Go

I sent the letter tonight letting go of my husband.  It was painful and it was the right thing to do.  I sobbed throughout writing the letter, because I told him all the gifts he gave me, which were many.  He is not a jerk and no one did anything wrong.  I'm not sure if this makes it harder but it certainly makes it raw painful, because there's no bad guy to point to.

Because I know he reads this blog and some of you know him, I'm not going to say much more than that except to say it's very hard.  However, dragging it out would not have been any better.

My cat is fortunately being very affectionate and I was able to get to a meeting of friends of my friend BW, which was necessary, and also talk to some good friends before and after that.

I've never done this before.  I've never let go of someone and taken responsibility for that decision in the way I just did now.  It's because it's so painful and you don't get to place the blame on anyone.

Before that I had some good conversations with my students who are doing oral presentations next week, and some of the subjects include (chosen by them): Occupy Wall Street, discrimination against women (by a straight guy!), unfairness of taxation system, gentrification, high-school drop out rates, why gangs exist, the obesity epidemic, the Wounded Warrior Project, the Dream Act...among others.  This is a very politicized group of young people I am proud to say.

There is another story I cannot tell the details of right now because it involves a current situation, but I can say this: alcoholism kills people, for real and in many nasty, horrendous ways - ways that would be hard to imagine if you didn't know about them and leaves victims like children in its wake.   There are people in hospitals now in comas, with burns, kidney failure, brain damage, liver malfunctions, all with families, all about to die and no one can stop it from happening.  These people may have reeked havoc in their lives but no one deserves these grizzly deaths or to be on the receiving end of these peoples' chaos.  It is a whirlwind with no conscience whose major food group is self-hatred, which it generates and spreads like a fucking metastasizing cancer, clinging to every surface it can find, internal and external.

I am very lucky to be alive as are a lot of people I know.  I pray for those who are not as fortunate and kind of beg you all to do the same.  You cannot imagine, unless you have seen it, the horror wrought by the disease of alcoholism.   And even then sometimes you can forget if you haven't been caught in the cyclone recently.

Gratitude tonight for being alive, being present, my lovely cat, amazing friends and those with whom I meet to stay present and accounted for in this life.  Food, shelter, clothing, a meaningful occupation and Inwood Park. Thank you.

Winter reveals more than it conceals

I realized this walking through Inwood Park today.  As the leaves fall more becomes visible - the structures that underlie what is clothed in warmer times.  Those are the rocks and there is the contour of the hill, now you can see the water from further away.

The cold ground and all the loss brings clarity.  Isn't it true...of grieving and so much more.  Or as Rumi says:

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off.
That undressing,
and the beautiful
naked body
                     underneath,
                                  is the sweetness
                                                that comes
                                                        after grief.


Here, now, there are still small riots of color here and there, little drops and bursts, all the more beautiful for the grey or darkness surrounding them.  Then there is the ground of leaves.

I found bits of this in Maine, too, even though it had already snowed - bright red apples clinging to trees, the slant of afternoon light on the pond just so - crimson orange if there is such a thing.

It's all about the colors today, so will give more space to photos than words.  One note though, when I stopped to take the photo below with a bird next to the pink roses, two birds flew in to be in the picture.  Only in NYC, I thought, will you find birds trying to upstage another bird in a photo.

But here, too, the people on the benches just looking out at the water, or walking through the darkening woods, happy just to be alive, smiling as we do at each other, nodding, an acknowledgement - yes, here we are, yes it is beautiful even if it's no longer redorangegold.  It's something else beautiful.  Nodding again to one another as if to say: yes, I see that, too.  I am also glad to be alive, grateful to have found time during a day to walk in this end of fall into winter day.  To see the last colors, to acknowledge what is passing away.  To simply breathe.  To know we are always already passing away.  Yes.  But we are also here now.  Yes.  Where yoga meets Derrida.  Yes.

scene stealing birds below the one on top - or perhaps they are spear carriers

Maine - near my parents' place - yes the red things are apples in tree

pond outside their house

Interesting Generational Karma

OK, so like my grandmother Jani, as anyone who has been religiously reading this blog may know, got a scholarship to Hunter College in the 1930s to study acting, which her parents would not allow her to take.  (And I must interject here that having read some of her letters in her later years in which she made stuff up about her life whole cloth, this story about the scholarship may not be true, but because she told me this in a private moment the summer she was dying of cancer and we were alone in the cottage in Maine -  I will go with it is true...or even if it isn't fact ... when she told it to me it was true)

Well today I was given the job of teaching acting (one class only, so still adjunct) at Hunter College.  I find this to be not only great news in general but kind of moving because of the personal history here.  I did tell the woman who runs the department about this when we spoke back in October.  This was the interview, as some readers of this blog may remember, in which I realized after the fact that I had a small bit of blue toothpaste on my forehead near my hairline.  So it is truly a miracle I was hired.

The even greater miracle is that the woman who runs the department, Barbara Bosch, was excited about the work I have created in NYC and in London in labs and saw, as I do, that this work can form the basis for acting classes.

So I'm quite excited about all this as it's a place I really want to teach, has an excellent program and is still part of CUNY, which means it is (relatively) affordable and therefore inclusive.  As much as I am getting out of teaching at BCC, I will be really happy to be teaching in my own specialist field again.  And in my beloved NYC and at a place with a distant family history (even if apocryphal...I'll never know...but as my theater company was called Apocryphal Theatre...do I need to know??)

I still feel a kind of dragging sadness about Vickie's death and an undertow of sadness in general.  However, my experience is mostly of happiness.  It is very hard to explain this so won't even try, but it's true.

Ugo continues to get happier and more affectionate.  My good friend Shawn, who I've known for 30 years from Wesleyan, was over here today and played with him.  We walked in drizzly rain (very London-like) to my favorite cafe and had lunch and talked for hours in the way you can only talk with someone you've known for 30 years and with whom you share some core values and experiences.

Taught early in the morning like usual so am crispy fried like usual while writing this...

But ending, as has become a recent habit, with a gratitude list: for the new job of course, great friends known for years and new friends, too, rooms to which I can go and heal for free with others who need to do the same, the ability to teach and give something back, my lovely cat, supportive parents and the guts I was graced with to make this leap to NYC...plus the basics: food, clothing, heat, shelter and good health (especially important when you don't have health insurance!)...and speaking of which: a city which does offer free and low cost health care if you hunt around for it...

Finally, a prayer for Vickie, that she is happy and peaceful wherever she is and in whatever form or formlessness she now inhabits.  And to her family and friends that everyone can console one another and give love and strength where needed and hold space for grieving.  I wish I could be there to join you at this time.

A day of service and sadness/happines

No day anymore seems to be entirely one thing or another and I suppose that means I'm growing up.

Today was my friend Vickie's funeral and I could not be there with her friends and family and that is sad. If anyone was there that is reading this, please know I am sending you all my love and Vickie, too.

What I did do after teaching, which does feel like service, which is a good thing in my world, btw.  I don't  say that to sound martyry or like I'm waiting for violins but as an indication that what I am doing is something - hopefully - that is more about the other people involved than it is about me.

The second act of service was meeting my friend Eva to help her with her baby while she had an appointment about her breast reconstruction surgery.  So I got to play kinda-mom, including one of those little pouch things.  It was an odd and interesting experience.  Her son Oliver is a joy, and just seems happy most of the time, so it wasn't hard.  The one moment of possible temper tantrum (he's only 4 1/2 months old) was averted deftly by a great man on the subway who started talking to Oliver in a way that made him laugh.  This guy said he had grand-kids and did the same with them.  It was kind of great to see the 'it takes a subway car to raise a child' thing kicking in, like I always assume it will in NYC, but then when it does, it's kind of great.

Eva is doing well considering all the things she's been through and Oliver is the cherry on top of the Sunday.  It was funny to be regarded as the mother of a baby.  Eva was there but Oliver was in the pouch on me so there was some confusion.

Here's what I noticed: you get a seat on the train, but the person with you, in this case Eva (the actual mother), does not necessarily get a seat.  Teenage girls find babies and mothers annoying and ignore you and your need for a seat.  Older people of all races love babies.  Babies are heavy.  I am way better with babies than I thought, though I still don't think of myself as having any natural maternal skills.

I went back to Eva's place in Brooklyn and watched her be a very good mother, then watched her husband Stu follow suit by being a loving father.  It's these simple things that astonish me.

I read The Liar's Club all the way home and it continues to rock the house.  No one should be allowed to write a memoir before reading it.  However, given the contents, I both love every minute and I find it dragging me into dark places...

I wish for Vickie safe passage on her journey.  I wish Eva long life.  And for the record I still hate cancer with a particular dislike reserved for breast cancer that has taken or affected way too many people I love.  Stop it.  Just stop it now.

This is causing a kind of depression-exhaustion in me, this grieving, these mortality fears and many other losses on the way or in mid-stream.

Gratitude today for my cat, Ugo, who is getting braver and more affectionate, my most excellent friends, a job that (hopefully) means something, good books to read, family members that love me enough to be honest on all levels, food, shelter, clothes and the fact I am back in NYC even after all that...and for the ability to have my own adventure, even if it has taken this long...a bed that I will be inhabiting soon...all of you friends of BW and LW out there - thanks for keeping me alive and some degree of sane.

Inwood's still here & Ugo the rescue cat is happy

Interesting to come back to a place, it makes it feel more like home.  Ugo the rescue cat was quite happy when I came back, purring and rubbing up against me, following me around the house and he gets along with Marietta as well.  This is wonderful.

Had a fairly unevent-filled plane ride, which is the kind you want - marked papers on the endless A train from Howard Beach to 207th and then went to a meeting about the play reading at the cafe we all love.

Marietta is still here so we're having a slumber party tonight, which is really the only way to describe it when you have a guest in a studio apartment.

Finished marking stuff and now need to go over lesson for tomorrow.  Marietta doing the same for her students.  Peaceful up here dotted every once in a while with loud Dominican music coming from a passing car.

Oh, the most notable thing about the day of possible use to you: I started reading The Liar's Club by Mary Karr.  It is extraordinary.  A memoir written by a poet.  She has raised the bar, well, I guess I should say she is holding up the bar along with Joan Didion, who originally raised the bar and now hurls it past us mere mortals.  Didion is in the stratosphere right now and can only be admired like a shooting star or a meteor shower.  Karr is about 7 years older than me but in my vicinity, so I can relate to her better and hope to learn from her more easily.  She also comes from chaos and has found her way through that,  personally and as an artist.  Another reason I can relate to her.

I read these women and hope to learn from them.  I need to learn from them to make anything worth reading out of the various writing projects I am attempting.

For now though back to the vagaries of non-verbal communication, the better to explain Chapter 6 in the text book to my students...verbally.

When is it time to let go?

This is a question that is big for me right now for lots of reasons.  It has to do with my husband of course and how long do we stay in the separated zone, when is it time to let go for real and what form does that take?  It also has to do with other things, old ideas, dreams, desires...what stays, what goes...

What is still about me and what is about some Idea of me I've lugged around for decades and may be ready for a renovation?

A lot of my Stuff will be arriving soon.  Movers will bring boxes and boxes of my books and papers and some clothes and linens.  It will smell of London.  It will make me cry.  There won't be room for all of it.  Then what?  Storage?  Throwing stuff away?

My books, my writing, my memories - these are the closest I have to a home town.  I don't throw any of it away easily.

I don't throw people away either.  Sometimes I cling to the wrong people.  Sometimes I run away from the wrong people.  Sometimes I just don't know.

There's a lot of change happening, that much I know.  Transitioning to NYC artistically will not be like magic, that much is clear, too.

I have a meeting tomorrow with two people involved in the reading of We live in financial times, the director Rik Walter and the actor Marietta Hedges, who is also de facto producing the reading.  I will fly back to NYC to this, which is lovely.

There are other places that are not being so receptive and I have to live with that, too.

I watched the video I made for Southend on Sea in July - showed it to my parents who were quite complimentary.  I was surprised, not that they liked it, but that I kind of still liked it.  I saw the problems, but am happy with this idea of video painting and want to see where I can go with that, photos and performance of text, etc.

This means letting go of my prejudice against video on stage.  So many prejudices I've had to ditch recently.

I must add however that even though I bought the smart phone, I still am not convinced it was the wisest idea, since I can see how ADD it makes me.  Hearing the little tinkly sounds when emails appear, "just checking", etc...I do that enough with my laptop and now there's another version.  Oy.

Could not sleep last night, which was surprising, because I have slept well here, but tuned into the sound of the overhead fan below me and could not not hear it.  I share with my mother and father before he died crazy-sensitive hearing.  It's the horrible truth that when you Hear something you can't Unhear it...

Kind of like...well so many things...

On a positive note, my mother brought us to a beautiful yarn store today in Bath to pick out some yarn and a pattern so she can knit me a sweater.  Isn't that amazing?  Found a lovely rust orange wool that is very soft and a pattern for a hooded cardigan.  I'm very lucky to have a mother who knits, that's rare.  I am not one who knits, even though I hear it is becoming all the rage these days.

I am flying back to NYC tomorrow, to my cat - hooray - who according to Marietta has been walking around and even let her pet him.  This is excellent news.  I am very relieved to know he's not just huddled in a corner.

This will be the first time I'm coming back to where I live.  Will be interesting to see how that feels.  It was so strange coming to Maine and telling people I'm from NYC, no longer the one who came all the way from London.  Not so special, just another American coming from the big city.

It feels both comforting and strange.  Also weird was the feedback from a piece I submitted here (NYC) that it was too local to UK and "we don't see things like that very much here."  That made me laugh.  It is a local piece, made from found text from a building in Portsmouth, but the idea that I may now be too British for NYC is pretty funny in a sad kind of way.  Also, that it is too visual art and not theatrical enough.

I am some weird hybrid now.  This much is clear and it's not just about UK/US.  It's about artistic work and academic work, writing and directing, writing and photography and now video.  Various ways of going, labs and productions, plays and prose, philosophy and theater....I used to think all of these various paths were a problem, that adults Chose a Path and Followed It.  Now I'm waking up to the fact that I am a multiplicity and that choosing one path would be like cutting off a limb...this means I may not be as far along as someone who is on a more straight-ahead or mono-focused path but it also means there is a richness to what I am, who I am and Hopefully what I create.

And then too there is this weird thing - this blog - that I don't even know what it is anymore, if I ever did.  I write to you, who are reading it, but I don't know who most of you are.  I know you are from many different countries on many different continents.  I know some of you as friends and some of you who have become friends through the blog.  Most of you are strangers.  Who are you I wonder?  What do you get from this?  I am moved by you, you people whom I have never met that are reading these words and following my life as it changes.  I hope it offers something.  Please feel free whenever you want to respond.  Or not.  I'm just glad you're all out there reading...thanks.

My gratitude list for the day: my cat is OK with a new person, I have a gorgeous sweater coming my way, my parents love me and even get my weird art, I have great friends, one of whom helped me a lot today sort through some gooey emotional terrain, I have a reading of a play coming up, the house is warm, I have eaten well, I have clothes and the ability to travel, I do not live in a war zone and I am even employed doing something useful.  Sometimes people even give me money to create my own work.  Finally, I am alive another day and not killing myself through active addictive behavior, the primary miracle of my life is this: that I am alive.  And my life, as a good friend ceaselessly reminds me, is none of my business.