The Verdict

So, my verdict on the shamanic healing mentioned in second to last post, is that it has had a very good effect.  I feel calmer, stronger and somehow more protected, and so far it’s holding.  That is lovely.

I am on a train again, which seems to be my favorite place so far to write blog posts and it is blue blue blue outside and sunny, just perfect.  Going up to visit my mother and step-father and go through the ‘70’s box’ of photos and writing and such.  My mother called to say she just found a novella I hand wrote in 1980 (it was 1980 folks and I am So Old I went to school Before Computers…ahhhh, ooooohhh). 

We are now at a stop that reminds me of the past, a Northeastern small city my father used to live and where I visited him in the 1970s before he moved out West.  He brought me to science museums, which I loved and art galleries, which I did not love.  How I ended up in the arts instead of as a marine biologist who would learn how to talk to dolphins and thereby save the world (the original plan circa 1977) is beyond me.  I loved dinosaur bones, chemistry sets, chess and such.  I also loved Barbie Dolls and playing games with my best friend (recently rediscovered) that involved animals, domesticated and wild, abused or pampered by owners…and in which we fought over who would play the victim.  Pause there for a moment to allow that one in…hmmmm….

And so here I am in that small city, also the place I was supposed to go to college but instead chose another place, a weirder, smaller more idiosyncratic place to go to school, having had it with being the scholarship kid amongst the children of the rich and famous who would themselves become rich and famous (which for the record they have, except for the ones who have died prematurely of drug and alcohol overdoses and cancers…)…but of course the place I went also had its share of these folks and an inordinate amount of people who now rule Hollywood…I of course work in basements making experimental work, which is something you really should Only do if you have a trust fund, but do I?  No, just the attitude.  Fab.

OK, so the next small Northeastern city we are about to arrive at is where I was born, and we lived for a whopping 2 weeks before moving to a small town in another Northeastern state.  It has a poetic name and sometimes makes me feel special.  We are now moving past the requisite car junk yards that seem to live along with rivers, streams and abandoned warehouses near US railroad tracks.  And power lines and stations.  I was going to take the cheaper bus today but could not bear another bus ride so closely on the heels of another one, plus got my period today, which was a surprise as it’s on some kind of weird wheel of fortune peri-menopausal plan now…and I thought I was done, but No, it’s Baaaaaaaaaack.  Hmpf.

I have had in recent times some sad issues with fertility and do not have any children, the most gruesome scene was the miscarriage the day after the wedding.  That truly sucked.  Flushing down a bunch of blood, realizing it might be a fetus, scared shitless in another beautiful place we were visiting for our honeymoon.  Crying and crying and crying….that was after an operation to make it possible and etc., etc…and so now I thought, OK game over, period gone, let it go and now this.  I am, if I’m honest, sick of hope when it comes to fertility, the great guilt factory that it is for we the childless women…those who cannot Conceive.  Or have conceived and have had abortions and then Cannot conceive…and all that, all that, all that…anyone who has been around and around this fucking merrygoround knows of what I speak.  Thank God/dess I have some Amazing friends with whom I can speak about all this honestly, who have their own issues with it and experiences, and strength and hope and sadness and grief and joy and secret senses of relief that dare not speak its name and then the sadness again and Knowing there is something to being a biological parent that must transcend so much and connect you with so much and yet also Knowing that somehow I can do that even so in some small way, even if it’s not the same…but knowing, knowing, knowing I am connected, deeply to all living things and beginning to really feel this in my bones and the immense relief of it all knowing it’s not All About Me.  And Thank Christ for that!  Or Whoever…

There is a wildness to the US countryside even in the Northeast that is unlike anything in Europe, which has beautiful, amazing places, but you can feel how Long people have been there cultivating it.  Here, it feels no matter what it’s wild.  A BBC correspondent in the US said something very smart, he said: to understand America and Americans and their relationship to God, you need to understand that it’s a first world country with third world weather…and I laughed and knew he was right.  There were tornadoes recently in Queens for fucksake!  Tornadoes!  In the UK trains stop running when there are too many leaves on the line.  It’s just different.

Ah, and I finally figured out how to answer comments on the blog, so we can finally have something more like a discussion.  I’m really happy for comments to address any and all things brought up here or even new stuff.

As for something I don't want to talk about but probably should, I had a meeting with someone who is directing something of mine that will be shown publicly and it was good then hard then I realized he was kind of freaked out and then I got scared and then I had to figure out what was his fear and what was my own.  He is realizing now I believe how complex this thing is and how it's not a 'normal play' but still wants me to make it that for him, which of course I can't.  I also trust him to find something in it that is his, as I create things with maximum freedom for creators...However, I also had to admit I have my own fears - to myself - and allow him to have his - as I've been riding on train and doing my own thing I haven't felt so gripped by it and writing about it brings it closer in again, so will say only this now: his fear is his fear and I'm not in control of that.  My fear is my fear and I can work with that...I say now a prayer for healing of my codependency that I need not surrender to the fears of others nor pretend my own fear is someone else's nor project my own fear onto someone else.  And it's OK to care, even if it's scary...it's OK, it's OK, it's OK....

And as I said to a good friend earlier today, thank God he cares enough to be freaked out, that's a blessing.  Someone who's just going through the paces would not care that much.  Anyway, here's hoping  this is one of those constructive challenges rather than (figurative) train wrecks!  I believe it is, for the record, a constructive challenge, but my fear at the core of all this is: of course, of course I'm Just a Fraud and he Sees it...me and my 'so called experimental ideas' are rubbish, etc., etc....but now at least when this happens I bring up images of an internal warrior and a shield to protect me and realize that no matter how real seeming these voices are, they are not real, they are dumb cartoon animals with fake teeth and bad breath....old, old, old....

Which does not mean my stuff is perfect or I don't have anything to rewrite or to learn, but Does mean it's OK to trust 40 years plus of working in an art form and the ideas that have come from that... ya think?  yeah, probably....

And to anyone reading this who knows who I am and have worked wth me in the past or now, let me salute you for your bravery as I realize when I am suddenly in the world of the 'more normal' theatre how brave we are and especially how brave you all are...we take risks that are actual risks and that means something in this risk-averse, life-averse world...it does, it does, it does...

So I salute you and anyone else reading this who takes real risks...and as Robert Rauschenberg famously said: "You can take risk without risk."  Amen dear departed one, revered spiritual ancestor...Go with your gods....

And of course, just before posting this I get back an email from the director, which indicates he totally gets it...Me, of Little Faith!!!!