I think blog posts are great when they are short, timely, contain photos, heart, passion, memories, or some deep thought. What makes a post great? the daily prompt
a weekend in Connecticut
Tag: writing
A Little More
Last night we saw A Little More Than You Wanted To Spend, a funny, sad one-man show with and by Chris Clavelli about the death of his 6-year old son Jess.
This sucks. I mean the play is awesome, but the show reminds you that life sucks.
Life is a total crap shoot. You get shit. You get joy. You live. You die. Other people live and die too.
You have to talk about it. You have to write about it. You have to tell about it. You have to live it. You have to make something, maybe theater, out of it.
The sucky part, sometimes, is living on and getting up when you feel like curling up in bed and not getting up.
***
Taking the garbage out last night with my daughter Charlotte, one of our neighbors, a former Hollywood starlet from the 1950s (and this is not even giving her away because we have several senior actresses in our building), asked me, “How’s your boyfriend?” or something like that.
Charlotte looked at me quizzically.
“He’s doing good,” I said, about my husband. “He’s got a great creative spirit. Is directing a show upstate this summer.
The former starlet said, “He’s wonderful. He’s got a twinkle in his eye and great artistry despite the tragedy of his life.”
We said good bye at the recycling bin.
“What did she say?” Charlotte asked. “The what of his life?”
“The tragedy. I suppose, she meant the tragedy of his Parkinson’s diagnosis,” I told my daughter.
I don’t think of my husband Chris’s life as a tragedy.
This is not the first time a neighbor has used stark terms to refer to my husband’s disease in front of my kids. I guess, in the dailiness of life, the reality of Chris’s illness is not a tragedy, it’s normal.
It is not always a comedy, but tragedy? I don’t know. Chris feels he is lucky. He feels there are worse diagnoses.
***
This is the second time I’ve seen Clavelli’s play. It’s blown me away. Made me laugh and cry.
I am friends with Clavelli, and his girlfriend Leonisa, who funnily enough, was my work out buddy at my former workplace, before she and Clavelli got together.
The play reminded me to hug my darlings, to love the people in my life, to laugh and cry with them, to talk about truths, to listen to other people’s truths, to make art.
When someone tells their truth, I can’t argue or judge. Hearing someone’s truth makes me want to tell my truth. Because, I know, making art is a way of healing.
Life is a tragic-comedy.
***
Any way, go see Clavelli’s show. It’s really good. It’s only running in June in NYC.
Related stories
A Little More Than You Wanted To Spend
Beauty in Tragedy, The Poem (writingsofamrs.wordpress.com)
I blog about happiness and honesty
When I started blogging, I had four blogs:
- My Beautiful New York, my NYC people and places
- Running Aground, my goal to run a 5K
- the Connected Life, getting my kids off technology
- A Church A Day, on trying to find meaning by visiting a church a day.
Now they’re all rolled into one (thanks to web developer extraordinaire Felicity Fields). This one, To Pursue Happiness, is about those four goals and the primary goal: to stay happy.
I pursue happiness though I may have absolutely no reason or right.
I feel a loss that my kids are growing up at lightning speed. I feel a sadness that my husband is increasingly challenged by his Parkinson’s Disease.
While these are challenges, they don’t define me. I don’t have to enter or stay in a place of permanent sadness or loss. Life is about what you do with the hand of cards you’re dealt. And I’m dealing.
I’m thriving. I’m staying honest. I’m finding joy. Two great joys in the last couple of weeks were:
- As a cast member of Listen To Your Mother at Symphony Space
- As the leader of Artists’ and Writers’ weekend in the Adirondacks.
I was anxious about how these would turn out. Would I deliver the goods? Could I? I did!
In these forums, I could be honest, funny, and surprising.
I could write about and share a lot of feelings, including but not limited to sadness or happiness. A range of emotions, even ambivalence and anger, is acceptable and encouraged in my writing.
So while I still do feel, at times, lost, I can find myself through writing and in the company of other women writers. That’s how I pursue happiness.
***
At last week’s Listen To Your Mother show, I was reminded that I am not alone. There are a lot of women telling their truths, deep stories about hardship and love.
Here are some of the Listen To Your Mother (LTYM) New York City posts from my fellow cast members.
Thanks to Shari’s blog for compiling these so I could repurpose! And thanks to producer Holly Rosen Fink, a steady presence, who made this show such a hit.
I got to work with the fab director Amy Wilson, who blogged on motherhood conspiring against her, even as she put on a show.
Here are more stories from the Mother’s Day show.
- Co-producer Varda Steinhardt‘s piece was about tracking the orbit of her sons’ stars.
- Marinka received the dreaded call from the nurse’s office, It’s Always Bad News.
- Kim Forde, 8 and 1/2 month pregnant, read Welcome To The Circus, a guide to the family circus.
- Elizabeth (Kizz) Robinson wrote About Me, on how to be child-free and loving.
I haven’t posted my story yet. I want it to be a surprise.
Over the summer, you can see the show at the Listen To Your Mother YouTube channel. There will be videos from all 24 shows across the country, some still going on. Also, upcoming are professional photos of our NYC show by the awesome Jennifer Lee.
***
At my Adirondack retreat and at my LTYM show, I heard a lot of stories that make me go, “aww” – and I feel in the company of AWW — Awesome Women Writers.
Through relentless honesty, these women writers (and one guy) make it okay to be honest and to tell my story too.
***
Related articles
- Learning Happiness: 2013 365 Challenge #141 (writermummy.wordpress.com)
- Sadness Like A Cloak (selasiebulmuo.wordpress.com)
- Daily Post: Have you achieved your blogging goals? Have they changed at all?
- after the curtain closes (multiplerealitiesblog.com)
Peter and the Starcatcher
When our daughters were little, they always wanted to hear a bedNIGHT story. Of course, they meant a bedTIME story but I dared not correct them. It was one of their charming childhood malapropisms. Chris and I would tell them stories until they entered the magic of their dreams.
And if you are like them — and like me and Chris — sometimes still, you want and need a good new bednight story, and so I suggest, little one, that you take yourself to see Peter and the Starcatcher. (Though for some reason I keep calling it Peter and the Dreamcatcher! A penchant for malapropisms may be genetic!)
Whatever you call it — Oh. So. Good.
I was bummed when it closed on Broadway. More than a few of my friends told me that I’d like it. But it’s not always easy for me to get to see everything I want in New York City. Though God knows, I try.
Once in a while, I get a reprieve. While it closed on Broadway in January, it reopened a few blocks away in at New World Stages with much of the same cast and in the same amazing production.
Score.
I don’t know how to summarize the show’s many themes — It is about how to grow up; how children are wiser than adults; how believing in one another is never wrong; how music and comedy make magic; how letting go is part of what you do when you love.
My favorite recurring theme was taught by the girl Molly. Here is her secret to good leadership: a leader looks out for her tribe. Molly taught this to the boy who became Peter. Molly, played by Nicole Lowrance, is the only girl in the show. She’s so good.
Molly has to be sister, friend, love interest, and, of course, mother to the orphan boys.
But she is not the kind of mother or leader who scolds needlessly, (although she does scold).
She is the kind of mother who finds magic in stories. She’s the kind of mother who soothes scared nerves by suggesting a running race. Molly’s a playful leader.
She knows that to save the day, a leader must:
- be creative
- be open-minded
- be brave
- be empathetic
- be funny.
I found a new heroine and her name is Molly! Molly is the starcatcher.
The musical shows how theater is a collaborative art. And there are many times when the antics reminded me of the joy of improv comedy, but the show only looks seat-of-the-pants hilarious. The action is all orchestrated. (Brilliant brilliant directors Roger Rees and Alex Timbers! And my old chum Wayne Barker — brilliant, brilliant — did the music! Funny. Funny!)
It’s a physical show where the leads play doors and walls and mermen.
The words are witty and the physical shenanigans are hilarious. At one point I was laughing so hard I was crying. And then at another point, I noticed that Chris was weeping.
I think his tears came from the place of nostalgia for we miss the nights when our darlings were still little enough to climb on our laps and beg for one more bednight story.
Ah well. We can always take them to see this show. And even if you’re not in NYC, you can see it too, as it’s touring this year, starting in August 2013.
The show is at New World Stages, 340 West 50th.
Order tickets at: PeterandtheStarcatcher.com
Related Stories
Girls can be pirates too. Empowering girls.
Sandy’s post about taking her 7-year old son to Peter and the Starcatcher
Diane’s post and a backstage tour!
Thanks to CultureMomMedia.com for the tickets. All thoughts (and memories of bednight stories) are my own.
Freelance work
I am working on a very short novel. I am working on my business. I am working on myself. I wonder if any of these things will work out.
I believe that I already have everything I need. I try to know, deep down, that all I want will come to pass. Yesterday I announced that I’m going to lead workshops for the International Women’s Writing Guild summer conference and in May I’ll be performing on Mother’s Day with the Listen To Your Mother Show. These are dreams that have come true for me.
Still, sometimes I think it’d be a heckova lot easier to just get a job and show up every day. And do what’s asked of you and then go home.
Sometimes believing in myself is a lot of work.
Speaking of work, I have a freelance assignment due tomorrow. A small part of me does not want to do it. Okay, a big part.
I like doing what I like doing, promoting my own workshops. (Come to the Adirondacks for a writing and collage art getaway! May 16-19) and my new biz (Am getting my new website up and running.)
I like my own stuff. But once I throw myself into something, even someone else’s something, I get into it. The problem is the throwing myself in. It’s like when you’re standing on the edge of the pool, hesitant to swim. You just have to jump.
About freelancing, here’s my truth — I love accepting a job; I love interviewing people; I like collecting the check. All the middle part, after the interview and before the job’s complete, all the writing and rewriting and fact checking, that’s a pain.
Related articles
- Designing a Freelance Life Part 1: The Brief (designthinking.ideo.com)
- To work or not to work? (chappytwife.com)
What my IWWG (International Women’s Writing Guild) workshop means to me
I just got great news. I’m going to be teaching at the International Women’s Writing Guild summer conference at Drew University. I’m going to lead a workshop on Dangerous Writing: Your Spiritual Autobiography from August 8 to 12. Yup, we’re taking our writing to the edge.
When I was 28, I wanted desperately to attend the guild summer conference, then held at Skidmore College, but my ex and I were flat broke. We were living in Inwood. He was unemployed. I was a temp. I was literally so sad that I couldn’t afford a week of writing that I lay in an empty bath tub, fully dressed and cried.
The next year I still couldn’t rub two nickels together, but by then, I was separated from my ex and willing to take risks to pursue my passion for writing.
I threw myself at the mercy of Hannelore Hahn, the founder of the guild, asking her for a scholarship and promising her that someday, as a scholarship recipient myself, I would give a scholarship to a deserving young woman writer like myself.
She agreed. For partial tuition, I happily worked the registration table.
That was, a-hem, more than 20 years ago. Off and on over the years, I’ve been able to attend the summer conference. I’m not quite yet able to give a scholarship, but I am able to give a heckuva workshop. Check back with me in 20 years.
Life’s funny, right?
Attending the guild summer workshop as an instructor is worth the wait. I’m just happy this year to be a part of it and not crying alone in the tub. (I hope!)
Check out the announcement about this summer’s conference (and register before May 15 for the lower rate.)
the event of a thread
The event of a thread is made up of many crossings of the near at hand and the far away: it is a body crossing space, is a writer’s hand crossing a sheet of paper, is a voice crossing a room in a paper bag… – Ann Hamilton
The exhibit at the Armory on Park Avenue and 66th is hard to explain.
There are pigeons, swings, talking paper bags, a writer, a reader, a listener, more…
The kids did not want to go but were glad they went.
It must be experienced. Laying on your back watching the billowing silk above. Hypnotizing.
I had one insight which is this: it is not work that makes the world go (the curtain lift), it is 
play.
Play is the engine.
H. discovered that our swing was not pulling the curtain alone. He spotted this when we were looking down from above. Our swing was inextricably, almost invisibly, connected to someone else’s swing who was also making the curtain dance.
Through play.
I found out about this exhibit while scanning my Facebook feed. Thanks, Yris Bilia! You made it look so fun. And it was.
Related articles
- Three shows to make you smile (ediebresler.wordpress.com)
- Get Cultured: The Event of a Thread (theharperproject.com)
- Park Avenue Armory: Billowing in a Field of Swings (theartjunkie.wordpress.com)
Les Mis
Yesterday I saw Les Misérables. This is my guilty pleasure. I love the musical. I have always loved it. Loved Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman and their vulnerability. I loved that they let themselves look like (or be covered in) shit. That’s an actor!
Today’s prompt is:
Tell us about a guilty pleasure that you hate to love.
I hate to love the movies, but they are my therapy.
They take me away. In the last month, I have seen a couple of awesome French films, Amour and Rust and Bone. And now Les Mis, which is set in Paris. The city is moody and dark, yet it is the city of light. This year we need a lot of light.
I’ve wanted to go to Paris for years. I have friends there and a place to stay, but I feel it’s too far or too expensive. With Chris’s illness, I feel I should only travel close to home and only for a few days.
When I go to the movies, I go to Paris and am still home in time to greet the kids as they walk in the door after school.
The life lessons in Les Mis are brilliant:
- To love another person is to see the face of God
- Show faith in and forgive people cast off by society just as the priest forgave the thief Valjean, played by Jackman
- Let your children love and let them go. This song, “Bring Him Home,” by Jackman was a real tear-jerker
- Care for all children, as if they were your own
- Show kindness, always
- Have passion for your cause
- Know that change will come
- Workplace squabbles can lead to prostitution
Maybe that last one is not a good life lesson, but you get the idea.
Believe in the power of passionate individuals to change the world. I know there are many more life lessons in Les Mis to explore, but I am heading to Middle-earth today.
Yes, I am going to see The Hobbit at noon.
And so I leave you with the words of Valjean.
And from a writing teacher’s point of view, I must point out these lyrics are so brilliant because they are so simple. Almost all of the words are one syllable, but they pack in so much emotion, just like the musical.
“Bring Him Home”
Bring him peace
Bring him joy
He is young
He is only a boy
You can take
You can give
Let him be
Let him live
If I die, let me die
Let him live
Bring him home
Related articles
- We Need To Talk About Les Mis (oneawkwardyear.wordpress.com)
- Today’s daily prompt
Conflict Resolution and My Ideal Saturday Morning
Writing about anything but yesterday’s tragedy in Newton, Conn, feels insensitive. But to cope with horrors, ordinary or extraordinary, I need to write. Through any endeavor, creative and artistic, we find out who we are, what we think, and how we feel. And we figure out how to go on.
I’m a teacher, a mother, and a writer. I’ve been thinking about conflicts.
I know in families and schools and all our relationships, conflict is inevitable. But how we deal with our internal and external conflicts is optional. I believe our society preys upon our conflicts. Our media exploits our differences — red state vs. blue state; stay at home mom vs. working mom.
Honestly, we have more that unites us than divides us.
As citizens of the United States of America, we have to find a way to seek common ground and lift one another up, not put each other down. We cannot whip out automatic rifles when we cannot get along — with ourselves or with our mothers.
We have to find and share our public spaces like our schools and our museums. Our public places and institutions are sacred.
I teach my writing students that conflict is the essence of drama. We mustn’t avoid conflict. But we cannot rest in a place of constant conflict. We must learn to use conflict to further the plot of our lives, to reach out, to state our needs, and to work on how to find a common humanity. Even when we want to find a common enemy.
Every child and every adult should lean how to resolve conflicts in a healthy way. Those of us who live in cities and ride the subways or share public spaces know we must coexist. And when we cannot live peaceably with ourselves, our families or our neighbors, we must get help.
And as every one is saying on social media, getting help should be a whole lot easier than getting a gun. There is no shame in experiencing conflict or in getting help with whatever arise in our lives. The tragedy arises when we cannot resolve our conflicts without hurting someone else.
To manage our inner and outer conflicts, we can:
- make art
- write in a journal
- talk to a friend
- work out
- seek professional help
- listen to music
- walk in nature
- attend a worship service
- read a book
I don’t know. There are probably a million ways to handle conflict healthily. But we must be taught them; they don’ t just come naturally.
Today’s daily prompt, What’s your ideal Saturday morning? Are you doing those things this morning? Why not?
Ideally, I may do any of the above conflict resolution items.
I write in my journal. I read the paper. I drink coffee. I go for a run. I make a nice brunch for my family with bagels and lox. My kids clean up the brunch without being asked. Then I go to a nearby spa for a massage. The kids get themselves to wherever they may need to go — basketball, Bat Mitzvah. I feel at peace. I make art.
While the first few things I listed do happen, reading, writing, drinking coffee — the last few things don’t. I cannot control other people. (I am concocting a plan to make the kids more self-reliant and supportive of one another and of me and my husband.) I also do not get lox or a massage on a Saturday morning because I worry about the expense. I feel guilty spending money on myself during the holiday season. My budget is already pretty tight with kids’ presents and holiday travel. I guess that would be an ideal too, not feeling guilty.
Just for today, I teach my kids to resolve conflicts in a healthy way. I love them well and hold my dear ones close. Just for today, that is my ideal.
Here’s the link to today’s daily prompt: Me Time
Here’s an earlier blog post on Navigating Conflict. I learned these skills at the Girls Leadership Institute, an amazing group that empowers girls.
Related articles
- Loving the Best We Can: Living through Tragedy. (bellableue.com)
- Enough with the Dichotomy (jubilare.wordpress.com)
My Mom, My Worries, My Optimism
Today’s daily prompt is Write a letter to your mom. Tell her something you’ve always wanted to say, but haven’t been able to.
A few days ago, the prompt was:
A writer once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
If this is true, which five people would you like to spend your time with?
My five people include dear ole mum, so this blog post fulfills two daily prompts.
- My mom – though I don’t talk to her every day (or even, every week) I think of her all the time. I thank her for passing down her good looks, sense of humor, personal style, and intelligence to me. Of course, she did this in combo with my dad, I know. But Mom still does yoga, teaches college, and stands on her head every day. What’s not to love?
- My secret garden – I would like to say more but, ya know, shhhhhh, it’s a secret. And it’s a garden. So ya… (it’s one of 7 Rules for Surviving, so revisit this post.)
- My three kids – they are my front and center; my alpha and omega. Everything I do and everything I want to do, I do for the darlings.
- Jolain and my girlfriends – When I became a mother, I found my center, but I also worried I’d lost my mojo. With a strong community of women friends, I’ve kept myself intact, even when I regularly lose it.
- Hal and my former colleagues. I know this is crazy, but I love my ex-coworkers so much. I love their intelligence and their passion for making the world better. I’m glad I’ve moved on from my full-time work, but this year, my heart and my social life is still full of the awesome staff from United Methodist Women and the General Board of Global Ministries.
I know many wives would put their husbands on their top five people. And Chris and I do have a great thing going, but, let’s be honest, the Parkinson’s Disease has really put a cramp in our romantic lives. We still are great co-parents and movie-going comrades.
Speaking of movies, next week our Screen Actors Guild special screening, Chris and I will see Les Mis and the Hobbit. How does anyone ever work full-time when there are so many amazing movies to see every damn week?
I have three persistent worries. And these are:
- Will we manage as we embark on two and a half months without health insurance?
- How long does my husband have in fairly good health? (I know, I know, no one knows how long any of us have, but with a spouse with a chronic disease, you worry.)
- How will we pay for our three kids’ college?
My sources of optimism:
- my boot camp for writers, my new biz
- my ability to make funny jokes
- my obtaining more wisdom and patience as I age, (right? tell me there are gifts to ageing)
- my crazy creative writing students
- my president
- my belief in the restorative nature of nature
- working out
- movies and books
100 Days of Poems and Pics 