de Helen's bits

My first time ...

2012-02-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

So guess what happened to me last night? I got stuck in an elevator! With NINE other people. I went to a writing workshop, and afterward, got on the elevator which was already crowded, and then 3 more people got on after I did, the door shut, the elevator started down and then just stopped. We had gone 3 feet down. But it would not open, would not budge. And no one would come to fix it. We were put on hold, TWICE. So we called three times. Finally, we called 911. The firefighters got there. The elevator repair people never did arrive, although we had been told they were "almost there" a couple of times. The firefighters opened the door, one of them stood back in the hall with a bowl of candy from the reception table (from the workshop) stuffing his face, and the other (in full gear) reached a hand down, expecting us to haul ourselves up the 3 foot drop somehow, or be pulled up by our arms. I yelled up to the young woman from the workshop, who was dripping sweat from going up and down the stairs to deal with everyone, to get us a chair to climb on and she did, and then we older folks climbed out via the chair. I then beat it the hell down the stairs and outside. We had been in the elevator for an hour. I was hot because it was too crowded in the elevator, plus my hands were full, so I didn't take off my coat. Once outdoors I cooled down quickly and got cold. I had just missed my bus, didn't have hat or gloves and the wind was up. I called my daughter and asked her to pick me up downtown, then walked to the Hawthorne bridge and met her there. It was about a mile's brisk walk, and my ears were burning with cold by the time I got there and she picked me up. I was so glad to get home.
I had a couple of frightened moments on the elevator, but really just didn't let my mind go there. Instead, I struck up conversations with the other writers around me, asking them what they were working on. All the women have strong female protagonists -- even the YA writer. There was a young woman at the back of the elevator who isn't a writer, but is a broadcaster. She had been dealing with brain cancer. Is now looking for work. She seemed bright and optimistic, certainly was poised in our situation. I hope she finds work soon. We writers shared our current projects' stories with each other to pass the time. I was struck by the creativity and promise of each one.
All in all, I'd have to say I probably got as much from the experience in the elevator as I did from the workshop. Which is not a diss to the workshop -- I liked the interaction in the elevator is all. Plus it was free, and had the bonus of great relief at the end.

Busy, busy, busy -- writing!

2012-02-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

I procrastinated for one day, then dove in to my writing projects so hard I forgot to come up long enough to blog about them. I completed revising "Asylum No More" for the umpteenth time, but this time after seeing it performed before live audiences, receiving feedback from thoughtful friends, getting on-point questions from the director. Sent it out before deadline to an important festival. Was also referred by a director to a theatre company that produces works with African-American casts. It would be lovely to have the play read there as well.
Now I'm working on writing my new play: "The Stars Are Our Ancestors." This has meant listening to a book on tape which I read years ago -- "A Brief History of Time." Listening to it means I can listen to it again, until I understand the concept. When I'm reading, sometimes the pages are like Teflon -- my eyes keep sliding off. My play contains dark energy, dark matter, black holes, and stars. My protagonist has to have ideas, thoughts, and something to say about these things. So ... So do I.
Meanwhile, I'm also studying for a job that's coming up. Memorizing material. I like challenging my brain for that as well. I alternate my projects. Work on one thing for awhile, go away and work on another.
Keeping busy also keeps me sane. How do you take care of yourself?

Procrastination Day

2012-01-24T16:03:00.000-08:00

I am normally an organized person, right on top of things. I outline my plays, have to-do lists, keep a list of movies I plan to see, make my bed as soon as I get out of it in the morning. If you've checked your calendar, you'll note that National Procrastination Week doesn't begin until the second week in March. I don't have time for an entire week of procrastination every year. And I really can't wait until March to procrastinate, so I'm doing it today. I have a mystery novel that I've revised that needs those revisions uploaded on the computer, and formatted for amazon.com so I can sell more books. I have revisions to make to "Asylum No More" now that the show is over. I have a new play to finish the first draft on -- it is outlined, and the first 5 pages are written. I've had two days off to rest up, and I could be working today. However, I saw on my calendar that Procrastination Week was coming up and I'd need to find time for it somewhere, so I thought I might as well get it out of the way, particularly as it is already 4 in the afternoon. So, there ya go. All done with that. I'm not one to tell you what to do, but you might want to look at your own March calendar. Isn't that around the time you're usually getting your tax information together and taking it to your tax person? Or better yet, doing your own taxes and getting them out of the way? You're welcome.

Asylum No More -- Last Night was Closing Night

2012-01-22T10:46:00.000-08:00

The cast was really on last night, an even tighter ensemble than the night before. We had a smaller audience, and this time we had an audience who laughed on the inside. Ouch. I always remember that line from an old sitcome "I'm laughing on the inside -- where it counts!" No it doesn't. Not at all. It does make for a shorter show though.
Feedback still says they want to see a full production. Love the show, love the cast. One feedback sheet I haven't read yet because it is definitely for the playwright: covered front and back. I'm not quite ready for that this morning, but I know it is well-intentioned and meant for a playwright who is open-hearted and ready to rewrite.
It was delightful to watch the relationships develop between the characters onstage, even though these were staged readings, and the actors had scripts in hand. They rehearsed enough to be able to look up from their lines and deliver them face to face with feeling, they stepped out of each other's way at particularly heated times, their body language was beautiful to watch. This is one of those memories I feel so lucky to have, one of the reasons I am primarily a playwright instead of a novelist. It is the playing that brings me to the stage. Let's pretend. As the playwright I get to watch the players.
Live theater is a gift to the world and one we must remember to give to ourselves and friends and families. I bring my friends out to see live theater at every opportunity, proselytize constantly. Theater doesn't exist without an audience, it is a living, breathing thing, and the audience makes that so. Opening night, closing night, every night is new and different. There are moments when the world stands still inside the theater building and you can feel the oneness that we all are. You want to be there when that happens. I've been there, more than once. It's why I keep going back.

Asylum No More -- Last Night was Opening Night

2012-01-21T14:47:00.000-08:00

We had a decent house, sold more than half the seats. Not bad when the show doesn't start until 11PM, and it is POURING down rain on a Friday night in January. We handed out feedback forms and writing utensils before the show and almost everyone took the time afterward to complete the three questions. This after a lots of laughter, lots of applause for the actors who really delivered. I saw more places to cut, places I want to change, and the actors helped to illuminate the script so I could see and hear what I needed to see and hear. All feedback for the actors was glowing. As it should be! The director, well I can't say enough about Brian Demar Jones. He was a gift. I found him because I needed a new director after mine bailed, and Sven Bonnichsen sent me his headshot because Brian had applied to audition and Sven noticed that Brian also directs. Lucky me, Brian was brand new to Portland and hadn't yet been snapped up. By now, he is overloaded with projects, and I will not likely ever get to work with him again as he will be employed by all the big theaters from now on. So, I'm celebrating the fact that we are working together now, and he has been a tremendous help to me on Asylum No More.
We do it again tonight, for our second and last time in this run. It's a festival, we have only two nights. Maybe we will get to do a full production later in the year. I will do my best to raise the funds. All but one person who turned in feedback said they wanted to see the show in full production. The one negative person was negative in every way -- except toward the cast. When I read that feedback (so out of step with everyone else) I suddenly heard my NYC friend speaking in my ear "remember, when playwrights give negative feedback, they are telling you the problems they have in their own plays. It is not about you." So, I took it like that. Because seriously, it didn't seem to be about my play. After tonight, I will write about what I plan to change in the play, based on feedback, based on my own observations. Because it is, of course, still a work in progress.

Helen's corner of heaven

2012-01-18T11:40:00.000-08:00

My sister asked me to write something that someone could read at Mom's memorial. This morning I had a dream that I was standing in a field of a wild bird refuge that Mom had created simply by having fed birds out her window all these years of her later life, and hadn't seen because of not being able to get outdoors the past couple of years. There were flocks of herons taking off and coming back, that made me cry.
When I woke up, I was able to finally write something for Mom. Here it is:

Mom’s corner of heaven is filled with birds. And dogs. She is up there with her dogs and birds, feeding them all. Never having to eat a bite herself, she can just feed the dogs and birds as much as they will eat. Forever. She loved throwing out doughnuts and watching birds eat in a circle. She loved walking her dog to the pond and feeding the ducks and geese. Mom rescued more animals in her lifetime than most, beginning way before they called it rescuing and still called it "taking in strays."
Mom had a goat when she was a kid herself. She loved to tell the story of how she about drove her grandma nuts by riding her tricycle with a cow bell on it around and around the outside of their house with the goat following her. The goat came inside the house as well, and jumped on the dresser, among other things.
Mom made sure we always had pets in the house when we were growing up. One Easter we got baby chicks, dyed pink and blue. Mom named them Pink and Blue. They never lived out in the hen house with the other chickens. They roosted on the window sill. Another Easter we got a rabbit. Mom named him Bunny Hop, and he became great friends with our dog Leven. (We rarely got to name our own pets. Mom enjoyed that job.) Another holiday we got two collie puppies: Salt and Pepper. Unfortunately, Mom backed over Pepper, while he was still a pup, but Salt grew up to be a favorite -- until she bit the Sheriff. But strays! There was Neighbor, who came to live with us after his father, Ricky Nelson, a 20 pound yellow tomcat, died. Alberta named Ricky, but Mom named Neighbor because ... he lived next door. Lee, Mom got from the pound. Girl came from the no-kill shelter. And Bird, of course. Everyone knows about Bird. Now they can all be free, out of the cage, off-leash, no more aches or pains, all together, forever, in heaven.

DABDA: those 5 stages of grief

2012-01-16T13:05:00.000-08:00

DABDA: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We don't necessarily go through them in order, nor do we necessarily all go through all of them. Sometimes we get stuck. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross introduced these stages to us back in 1969 in her book On Death and Dying. I read the book back in the 70s when a friend my age was dying of leukemia and Kubler-Ross came to interview her. And now here I am experiencing the stages of grief (well one stage: anger) because my 94 year-old Mom has died.
I'm stuck like a moose in the spring thaw. I know it has been only 11 days, but my blood is boiling. Every communication I attempt with my sibling just makes my anger worse. She feels unable to speak with me, and I now feel unable to email her. I cannot go out to Missouri for the memorial service that they were not going to have, and now are having this weekend. I was not invited, but now am invited to write something that someone else could read (not my sister). I cannot. Mom always said when you don't know what to do, do nothing. At the moment, that is all I can do: nothing. And it feels wrong. I stand for peace, and today I am a hypocrite. I cannot make peace with my family.
Maybe tomorrow I will be able to move forward.

Grief

2012-01-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

Talk about taking things literally. I was thinking about how difficult it is to sever the apron strings, and then remembered that when I received my box of "stuff" from my sister yesterday, the stuff from my Mom's place, the detritus I get to keep now that my 94 year old mother has left the earth, in the box were several aprons. I don't know where the aprons came from. They weren't Mom's. They weren't mine. I expect they came from the "free table" at the senior housing where Mom spent her last 6 years -- the happiest years of her life. She loved to get stuff from the free table and put it in "my" drawer where I left things behind to wear when I visited her. A couple pair of shorts for the summer, a hat for the winter, slippers and p.js., a nightgown that disappeared and was replaced by underpants I've never seen before. Back to severing the apron strings ... do we ever really leave our mothers? Maybe sons do. Daughters become their mothers. I hear Mom's voice come out of my mouth now, even when I catch myself snoring. It's disturbing. Her words talking to my cat. Her voice telling my daughter I didn't mean to bother her. Shut the hell up, Mom. I hated when she said that to me.
I find myself so angry these past few days. Angry at my sister for her lack of communication, because I feel so shut out. Angry at my Mom for not wanting me there at the end. Angry at myself for not going anyway.
Then I remember when my first husband killed himself more than 25 years after I left him, but still soon enough for our son to perhaps have a life. I was suddenly thrown back into my life 25 years earlier, haunted by fear of him, recalling how I left him -- and my son -- remembering how I had feared for my life, wishing he had killed himself before I left so that our son hadn't spent those years with him. Angry that he hadn't. Angry that I hadn't killed him myself after all. Angry that I allowed our son to grow up with him. Angry, then sad, then relieved. Finally, relieved.
I remember ever further back when my Dad died. I was 7 years old. I wasn't angry then. Just scared and horribly sad. That was when I first lost not only my Dad, but also my Mom as she had to go to work at two jobs. We lost our house too. I guess it's time to start letting go.

RIP Helen B. Phelps 07/06/1917 to 01/05/2012

2012-01-06T12:45:00.000-08:00

Phelps, Helen B. 94 July 6, 1917 January 5, 2012 Helen B. Phelps died peacefully in her sleep. She was born in Orornogo, Missouri to Maggie Mae Strawhun Taylor and Virgil E. Taylor. Virgil was in the US Army fighting WWI at the time. She was raised by her grandmother whom she called Mom, and sometimes by Maggie whom she called Mother. Helen married Jim Brown when she was 16 and they had two baby girls who were stillborn. (Margaret Sue and Helen Rosalie). After they divorced, she married Albert Charles McCorkle, the man she called the love of her life. Their first child, John Patrick died a few hours after birth. Their next, Sandra de Helen survives them both, in Portland. Their third, son Howard Allen, also lived only a few hours. Their last child, Alberta lives with her husband Tim Mobley in Jefferson City, Missouri. They were caring for Helen and with her at the time of her death. Albert died in 1951, and Helen remarried. Her last husband was Lloyd Phelps and he also predeceased Helen in 1973. Helen has four living grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandson. She retired from Rawling’s Sporting Goods factory in Newburg, MO, where she was president of her union local for over 20 years. Helen was known for writing poems all her life, often to commemorate special occasions. After Helen moved to Portland, Oregon to live with her daughter Sandra in 1981, she often helped design and build costumes and props including a giant lavender satin hand, and a bat that flew through the audience. Helen led an active life and will be deeply missed by her family and friends, including many in the LGBTQ and theatre community.
I wanted to run this ad in the Oregonian with a photo, but I can't afford to run an obit in the Oregonian. It costs more than NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR ONE DAY. I especially wanted to run the obit in JUST OUT, but Just Out predeceased my Mom by four weeks. So I hope my friends who knew my Mom in the 80's will find her here. Mom always supported my theatre work, came to my plays, entertained my friends with her character. This is for you Mom.

First Day 2012

2012-01-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

The day is nearly over, and so is the life of my 94 year old mother. I just received an email from my sister that Mom has stopped taking in anything, is doing nothing but resting now. They think it may be a matter of hours before she slips away. Sis will call me to let me know. I will meditate on the life of my mother and write about her in the coming days.
I had the good fortune to have plenty of time with Mom to work through a lot of the hard places in our relationship when she came to live with me for nine years in my 30s and 40s. After that and from then on, we always talked and spent time together. We cried together, we laughed together. There was forgiveness in the mix. We knew that we are human, that we always were just doing the best that we could do at the time. Sometimes that wasn't so great. As Maya Angelou says: When you know better, you do better.
I hope you're resting well tonight, Mom. And when it comes time to breathe your last, I truly hope it is so painless you don't notice it. I know that there was a time when you were afraid of that pain, that you once asked "how do we know a person wasn't in pain when they died in their sleep?" We don't, Mom, so I hope if it happens to you, you find out that it is absolutely painless. And if you're awake when you go, that you are fearless. I love you, Mom.

Starting a New Play as the Old Year passes

2011-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note before the year ends. I might have time to write more tomorrow, but in case I don't...
I'm outlining a new play. My title is The Stars Are Our Ancestors. It's my first science play. Might be my last, but I hope not. I've always had an interest in science, I didn't have the self-confidence to write about it. Now that I've reached the third act of my life, I will write whatever I please. Note to young writers: write whatever you please for all three acts. In this new play, my protagonist Jenny spends most of her waking life looking at the stars. She has become agoraphobic, but lucky her she has a flat roof where she feels safe. She spends her nights lying on the roof. As an astronomer, she feels comfortable with what she knows. As a genealogist, she has come to believe that her ancestry stretches back to the heavens. Her adoptive mother Verge thinks she has lost her mind. Her 17 year-old daughter is trying to get through her senior year of high school, get into MIT, and get her mom out of the house. No urgency except daughter Djuna is doing her senior thesis on her family tree, so wants Jenny to find her biological family in South Korea, meaning Jenny has to get cured of agoraphobia before Gramma Verge dies of her metastasizing brain cancer and can help them find the family.
South Korea is like a black hole pulling them all closer and closer to the edge, faster and faster ... What happens on the other side of a black hole anyway? Is it true that we all become one?

Step Eight on the Eightfold Path

2011-12-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

8. Right Concentration
The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations.
How did I do this past week with Step Seven? Shouldn't I start with that question before I move on to Step Eight? Poorly. Stumbling around, tripping over and over Step Seven. Right Mindfulness eluded me throughout the week. Each day I had to try again and again. Last night before I fell asleep I asked to dream about my new play, to find the starting point. What I got was a dream about my spiritual practice. I dreamed I was telling an unknown woman about how I meditate, how I have been returning to my old meditations, looking at what I used to meditate on, seeing how I have changed or not changed. My cornucopia was filled with onions. Chopped onions. My yoga mat was lumpy and uncomfortable. I needed a new one. I told the woman that my practice is Dzogchen Buddhism and I was sharing with her the ways I have been changed by my open-eyed meditation.
It has been years since I've attended sangha now. And ages since I've meditated more than a few minutes at a time. And believe me my yoga mat is pristine. I never use it. My cornucopia of blessings is indeed layered with fractured meanings. Some blessings are hard to decipher.
Today I try again to be mindful of my body, mind and spirit as I move through my day. Now, let's look at step eight. Oh! it is about meditation. What synchronicity! I dream of meditation, and step eight is about meditation. Hm. Today, I will reboot my meditation practice. I will concentrate on mindfulness during my meditation. And eventually, it will become natural to apply elevated levels concentration in everyday situations. Yes?
If you have been following along with me in these eight steps, I'd love it if you would let me know. Here, or on Twitter, on FaceBook, wherever you feel comfortable. If you have questions, or anything you're willing to share, please do so.
Happy New Year! Thank you for watching me stumble along!

Step Seven on the Eightfold Path

2011-12-19T13:48:00.000-08:00

7. Right Mindfulness
Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualize sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualization in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.
One way to think about this is to choose something specific to be mindful about. For me two things immediately spring to mind: walking and eating. Let's take eating. Pick up an apple, carefully wash and clean it. Dry it. Look at it, really look at its shape and color, notice whether it has any bruises, whether it is fully ripe. When you bite it, is it overly juicy, does the juice run down your chin? Be fully mindful as you eat the apple, how many times do you chew each bite? Do you set the apple down between bites? At all, or do you eat the entire apple without ever setting it down? What is the size of the apple? Do you eat it all the way to the core? How many seeds does the apple have?
What would happen if everything you ate were given this much attention? Would you eat less or more? Would you eat things that you didn't like? Doubtful, isn't it? Would you continue to shovel food in your mouth to stuff down your feelings? Would I if I were mindful of my feelings? Look at the four foundations of mindfulness: Contemplation of the body, feeling, state of mind and of the phenomena.
If I were to commit to being mindful of my body, feelings and mind, I don't think it would matter what the phenomena were. My life would change dramatically.
Thich Nat Hanh says: Peace in Every Step. There is the Mindfulness Meditation where you take each step mindfully, commiting to every step just the way we did the apple above. Imagine living your life that way. Well, we don't have that kind of time, do we? We don't take that kind of time, certainly.
Suppose, just suppose that when I am feeling anything other than blissful, I pay attention to my feelings, check out what's going on in my body, and honor my feelings by taking care of my body with something healthful. I have a hunch that might be right mindfulness. Just for today, I promise to give that a go.

Step Six on the Eightfold Path

2011-12-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

Last week I was a day early, this week I am a day late. Life.

6. Right Effort
Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavors that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of un-arisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

So, this entire step concerns the effort to either arouse, abandon, tamp down, or maintain and perfect "wholesome states." What does this mean? This is all in the context of concentration, or the training of our higher consciousness. We may have to meditate to gain a better understanding of how we can achieve right effort.

I am continuing my quest to be a better person by being more mindful of my thoughts, words and deeds. By watching where I step, what I say, and what I put into my mind and body.

After nearly eight months of avoiding most sugars and for the past two months really struggling to avoid sugar in the form of sweets, especially craving ice cream, I ate a huge bowl of ice cream last night. And did I pay for it. My body rejected it in every way possible, first waking me from a deep sleep, and then waking me repeatedly.

I am grateful for this reminder today of what it means to keep to the Steps, and what it means to fall off the path. Last night I fell off. Today, I'm back on track. Today I'm remembering that this body is the only one I have to get me through this precious life. Today my Right Effort is to eat healthy meals and avoid things that are bad for me. To be grateful for all that I have and to avoid self-pity because self-pity leads me to self-punishment.

Do any of you who read this blog share my foibles, I wonder? Ever indulge in ice cream because you wished you had more money to spend on Christmas gifts? Yeah, I forgot to pay my credit card bill and when I got a reminder that it is due before my next paycheck, I realized I'd have to spend the money I set aside for gifts to pay the bill instead. Oh boo hoo. So I ate a huge bowl of ice cream. That'll show me.

Please tell me this has never happened to you. Has it?

Step Five on the Eightfold Path

2011-12-04T17:41:00.000-08:00

5. Right Livelihood
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.
These days I'm earning my livelihood primarily by way of my retirement benefits from Social Security and a small pension from That Insurance Company for which I worked. I also work a number of part-time jobs. I edit books, screenplays, stage plays, and other materials; I work as a patient model (also known as a standardized patient) once in a great while; I dogsit for a select clientele; and even more rarely, I catsit. I write almost every day of the year, but that doesn't bring in a lot of dough. Still, it definitely meets the criteria of Right Livelihood: it is legal, peaceful, and righteous. I harm no one with my writing, as I do my best to write as I speak, aiming to hurt no one.
There are many people my age who are resorting to selling their prescriptions in order to buy food or pay their mortgages. A person can understand how one can be driven to desperate thinking. But if one is living a Buddhist life, one cannot consider that type of livelihood, any more than working for the OLCC, or working as a meat wrapper for Fred Meyer, or a butcher for Whole Foods. A job as a bartender, or cocktail waiter would also violate the principles of right livelihood for a Buddhist. As would working at a place that sells medicinal marijuana, I think. And I think this because I believe that people choose to stay there to use the marijuana. If people picked up their drugs as they do from a pharmacy and left, that would be a different matter. As a person who lives with pain on a regular basis, I feel no need or desire to socialize with other sufferers while I take my medicine and seek relief. Therefore, I don't understand why medical marijuana users need a socializing area either. I believe this hurts the cause. Well, that was a tangent. I could be wrong. Seriously though, people who need and receive morphine for their pain, do not need a cafe in which to "enjoy" their morphine. They pick it up or have it delivered, and get relief. Period. Why wouldn't marijuana be the same when used for the same purpose?

Living with Migraine Headaches

2011-12-02T15:53:00.000-08:00

Most months I average 6 migraines a month. One month this year I had only three. In November, I spent 10 days down with migraine. Today I have another, even though the last one was just two days ago. This makes life difficult sometimes. On good days, I am on top of the world, especially when I have several good days in a row. On days like today, when I haven't had much of a break, I feel particularly gloomy. There are some migraine days when I feel like walking into the ocean with a pocketful of stones. Except that I don't feel like walking, or driving to the ocean, or going outdoors, or getting dressed, or even opening my eyes to the light. Or hearing the roar of the ocean.
I don't feel sorry for myself. I know there are people so much worse off. I've had worse pain myself. It does wear on me though. And there isn't a lot of comfort in numbers, even though there are more than 36 million migraine sufferers in the US alone. Most of us women. I think there are five of us in my family. I'm the oldest one. I'd like to tell the younger ones that migraine disappears after menopause, but it didn't for me. It got worse. I'd like to be able to say it's possible to find all your triggers and then just avoid them, but that hasn't been possible for me either, although I've been diligent, and I've been looking for over 30 years. I've identified my food triggers, and I avoid them.
I try new drugs, new "cures" as they come up. There was a new drug that was supposed to come on the market this past month, but it didn't pan out. In the last leg of the experiment something went wrong. I'm going to get some butterbur the next time I'm out -- if Whole Foods got it in -- and give that a try. It takes a few months to work, but I will try it. That's an herb that has been shown to work in trials in Europe. And here too in alternative medicine.
Today I just feel like sharing about migraines. I have written about them in the past, but not recently. If you are a fellow migraineur, I share your journey. I hope you are having a good day today. Make the most of it. That's what we all have to do, isn't it?

Step Four on the Eightfold Path

2011-11-29T09:44:00.000-08:00

4. Right Action
The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts for Buddhism.
Basically, Right Action, means: don't kill, don't steal, don't be sexually stupid, and don't lie. And, it's way deeper and broader than this. It means living life mindfully, with careful and explicit thought about everything I do, every step I take every single day of my life. Do I do this? No. I work at it. That is my spiritual practice. I am becoming a better person. Practice, practice, practice. Pick up the spider and take it outside -- IF it is bothering me. IF it's going to bite me. Really, a few spiders can live in my house without harm. Those big garden spiders? They belong in the garden. Juicy gossip? Keep it to myself. No one needs to hear that. I try to avoid hearing it myself.
Stealing? Of course not. It also means if I find something, I do everything possible to locate the owner of the lost property. Or give it to someone who is in charge of Lost & Found. Sexual conduct? I could have done better in my past life. I won't talk about now, thank you. Suffice it to say I'm not hurting anyone. Lies? I do my best to adhere to Thich Nat Hanh's training: "Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small."
Have a great day, and please share your own dharma!

Step Three on the Eightfold Path

2011-11-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

3. Right Speech
Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however it IS essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently, don't gossip and -- basically: to talk only when necessary.
Everyone knows she shouldn't lie. Everyone knows she should speak in warm, gentle tones and be friendly. Not gossiping is harder than you think. Oh, I don't gossip, you think. I don't talk about people behind their backs. For most of my adult life I have honestly believed that I NEVER engaged in gossip, never spoke negatively about people behind their backs. Then I became a Buddhist. I learned about Right Speech. It was explained to me that to truly honor the intention of Right Speech I should never talk about people at all. Good, bad or indifferent, it was not my place to discuss other people. Not my business. Okay, try going one day in the company of other people not saying one word about someone who is not there. Don't mention your mother, your sister, your children. Don't talk about the bus driver or the guy who cut you off on the way to work. Don't mention the doctor you saw, the cute baby in the stroller who kind of winked at you. What? But that was so cute! What's the harm? I don't know. There could be a hundred reasons you shouldn't mention that baby. I'm a writer and I can think of ten off the top of my head in an instant.
Right Speech is my biggest challenge every day of my life. I want to say bad things about bad drivers. Or slow drivers. Or drivers who don't use their blinkers. Why am I in such a hurry? I always leave in plenty of time. Slow down, de Helen. Breathe. Using malicious words against others -- even if they can't hear me -- means I lack moral discipline. Therefore, I have to refrain from using malicious or harsh words. It helps if I can remember that we all want the same thing in this life: we want love, we want happiness. Taking a deep breath, putting a smile on my face, these things help me maintain my moral discipline. Help me become a better person.
By the way, it's time to check in re the walking and veggie commitment. I have kept my veggie commitment and have slacked off on the walking. I let migraines and rain and cold keep me confined to the indoors. I promise to get back to the walking. Even when it is rainy and cold, when I go out and walk I always feel better about myself. And I also have the alternative of going to the gym and walking in the saltwater pool, or even (shudder) on a treadmill. So I have zero excuse. How about YOU? How are you doing? How will you do this week? I am starting my gratitude list for US Thanksgiving Day this Thursday. You?

Step Two on the Eightfold Path

2011-11-14T17:39:00.000-08:00

2. Right Intention
While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.
Last Monday, I wrote about Right View, about keeping in mind how everything is a sentient being, and operating from that point of view, so that I can have compassion for all beings. Remembering that we all suffer, that we all want love and happiness. So this week, I am working on Right Intention. Making sure I keep my commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Let's look at Buddha's three types of right intentions: 1. renunciation. Well, I gave up sugar 7 months ago, and yesterday I allowed myself to fall off that wagon. Why? It was Harvest Potluck. I made a special cake that took me 4 1/2 hours to build from scratch. I ate two small slices, plus I had another garden club member's special dessert. Then I got a migraine which still has not abated, in spite of two doses of meds. Was it the sugar? hm. Maybe it was not keeping my commitment. 2. Resisting feelings of anger. As I was driving yesterday with a migraine, I said (aloud) in the car "I should not be allowed to drive with a migraine," because I was calling people idiots and stupid drivers. They couldn't hear me, but that is no excuse. I was not resisting my feelings of anger. Oh, and it didn't help my headache in the least. 3. The intention to harmlessness...to develop compassion.
I'm always working on developing more compassion. I actually did do a better job of that yesterday, even after I got the migraine.
I hereby declare myself RE-COMMITTED to my intention of renunciation of sugar, in spite of the upcoming holidays. And I will resist road rage. I will have compassion for my fellow drivers. They are not idiots, they are drivers, like me. They may be having a bad day, or a migraine. They all want love and happiness, just like I do. I will keep that in mind.

Barbara Grier, dead at 78

2011-11-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

Probably every lesbian author has a Barbara Grier story to tell. I first met Barbara when I was a budding playwright in Kansas City, MO in Actors' Sorority. I was one of the co-founders of that theatre company. Barbara came to show her support, as did most of KC's lesbians. She learned that I was one of the playwrights, and told me that if I ever wrote a lesbian novel to send it to her at Naiad Press, which she had just started with her partner Donna McBride.
I learned from other women in the company that Barbara was well-known, not only in our community, but across the nation. She had been an early leader in the lesbian community. She was also well known for owning every lesbian novel in and out of print. Her personal library was the envy of every lesbian I knew.
Years later I finally wrote that novel, a mystery. Not exactly a lesbian novel, but one I thought all women would enjoy. I sent it to Barbara. She called my house and left a blistering message on my machine. Told me to throw it out and start over. I had just spent 18 months writing this novel. She said my premise was politically incorrect and I would be shredded by animal rights people and there was no hope for it. All this on my machine. I called her. I didn't agree of course. I'm a HUGE animal lover, and something of an activist myself. She was wrong. And I was CRUSHED. Barbara Grier was telling me to toss out my work.
Well, she told me the same thing on the phone, only louder.
I didn't write for months.
But then, I realized I could send it to other publishers and test my theory that I was right, I wouldn't have to start over. I did get the book published. But my heart was broken. I had so wanted to join Barbara's stable. To be published by the great Barbara Grier. Rest in Peace, great Barbara.

Occupy Portland

2011-11-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

I'm agitated today. Mayor Sam Adams of Portland has given Occupy Portland a deadline to vacate the two parks (across the street from each other) where they have been encamped. They have until 12:01am 11/12/11. What will happen? Is the protest supposed to end? We all know that is not going to happen. What are the alternatives? Are we supposed to imagine that rich benefactors will provide safe haven indoors for protestors to encamp for the winter where Portland Police will not have to watch over them? Who is provoking whom here? What is happening in other cities right now? What are the words being shared in the inner sanctums on both sides? I so want to know!

Sharing my Practice of Buddhism for Eight Weeks

2011-11-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

I share a lot of my life here on this blog. I've kept my daily commitment to walking and eating more fruit and vegetables for a solid month now. I hope I've inspired some of you to do the same. I will continue that commitment and will continue to check in periodically to let you know how I'm doing. I look forward to hearing from you here or on Twitter (where I hear from you more often, I have to say!) As of today, I plan to share with you weekly about my renewed Buddhist practice.
If you're curious about Buddhism, you can go to www.thebigview.com for the basics: the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path. There, they will be spelled out for you in detail. Here are the 4 truths in brief:
1. Life means suffering.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4. There is a path to the cessation of suffering.

The path to the end of suffering is of course The Eightfold Path. The first step on the path is called Right View. Right View means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.
So how will I put Right View into action this week? I'm thinking today about the preciousness of all sentient beings. I'm thinking about how last week in NYC two carriage-pulling horses collapsed on the streets. People have been fighting for years to end this needless cruelty, but others find it "romantic" to be pulled through the streets by horses. I'm thinking how thoughtlessly people kill "pests" that do no harm to them, how many animals are "farmed" for their flesh and fur, and it makes me both sad and angry. I look forward to the day when all the meat that is consumed by humans is grown from cells, as is now possible.
I am grateful for all the wonderful human beings in this world who make it their jobs, their passion to save the lives of animals, birds, fish, plants, species of all kinds for today and for the future. I am grateful to share my own life with the world's best cat, Stanton. And to have had the privilege of sharing the lives of so many companion animals over the years. And to be friends with so many more.
I have learned more about unconditional love from animals than from any human being, and I strive every day to be more like Stanton in that way. Greet my loved ones with love, no matter how much they have ignored me today or in the past. Be loving, always. Forgiving, always. Let everyone know when I'm happy, whether they care or not. State my feelings, then get over them. Sincerely over them. Be affectionate. I'm trying to be these things. I have a long way to go to reach Stanton's level of evolution.

Seeing my name in print

2011-11-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

I never thought about getting my name in print by editing, but tonight when I went to read the reviews of a book on amazon.com that I edited, there indeed is my name listed as editor. I don't know why I was so surprised except that I hadn't thought about getting credit for my work. That wasn't why I did it. Still, it was a thrill because I really like the book, I think it's smart and funny, and lots of fun. In fact, I think many of the poems, and sayings inside should be plastered on refrigerators, tee shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers across the country. It's possible to actually buy some of them through Cafe Press, and I'm gonna get myself some to have around the house. They won't have my name on them.
If you're curious about the book, it's "SnarkyKu" by Michelle Shy. Delicious, really.

Walking, veggies check-in

2011-10-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

Wondering if any of you are keeping your commitments to daily walking and eating your daily allowance of veggies and fruit? I've been walking AT LEAST a mile a day since October 15th, usually 2-3 miles. Walked 3 yesterday. I do allow myself to take 2 days a week off, but I've been taking only one a day off so far. I guess I'm afraid that if I take off 2 in a row, I might not go out on the third day.
I find it hard to get as many veggies as I need to eat. Not so hard to get the fruit. So lately I've been buying red or orange peppers and slicing them up to eat raw. Today I bought a bag of baby carrots, which as we all know aren't really babies at all, just carrots that are cut down to baby size. I find it easier to eat raw vegetables than to eat cooked ones unless I'm eating soup, or someone else is doing the cooking.
Last week I ate soup 4 days of 7. Vegetable soup, of course. And many different kinds of vegetables including turnips, which I would never eat otherwise.
I'm not getting on the scale for awhile yet. As long as I can still wear the same clothes, I'm not going to weigh myself. But my jeans, which used to cut into my waist, now feel like sweatpants. Comfortable.
I'm having trouble with my sweet tooth. So, I'm allowing myself peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And today I bought some honey to eat on rice cakes. The jelly is no sugar-added kind. I don't eat sugar substitutes like aspartame or splenda -- they give me migraines. I'm not eating sugar because I think it will be good for my health, not because I've been ordered off sugar.
I invite your comments. Join me in making a commitment to walking and/or eating more veggies. We can do this!

SALE! Thru 11/1/11 only!

2011-10-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Two of my plays: Blue Roses, and Copperheads and Common Women, are on sale right now at www.lulu.com
for 30% off today and tomorrow thru close of business. All you have to do is use this code at checkout:
HAPPYHALLOWEEN325
In fact, you can get 30% off on ANYTHING on Lulu's site up to $50 off, so go! Shop!

BLUE ROSES at Dramatists Guild Friday Night Footlights 10/28/11

2011-10-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

It’s 1940 and Dr. Freeman is on the cutting edge of mental health. Two young women named Rose are in an asylum together; their attendants Tee and Flora have obstacles of their own to overcome. The State Hospital for the Insane is no sanctuary as the two Roses meet and bond over their shared family secrets. Tee and Flora, though of different races, share the same working class values, degradations, and abilities to overcome the hardships life throws at them.

CHARACTERS:

ROSE Irene Longshore

ROSE ISABEL Elizabeth Bell

TEE Natalie Claire Holly

FLORA Anna Malinoski

DR. FREEMAN Steven Hauck

NUN Doubled by the actor who plays TEE

RICHIE Doubled by the actor who plays DR. FREEMAN

STAGE DIRECTIONS Jane Altman

DIRECTED BY VIVIAN ALTMAN

You can buy a copy of this play at amazon.com or read more of my work at www.sandradehelen.com

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO THE READING OF THIS PLAY! Support Mental Health. Take care of your own, it's a precious thing. Please leave any feedback you have about this play after seeing tonight's reading in the comments section below.

NYC Blue Roses

2011-10-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Attended rehearsal last night at the Ta-Da theater on West 28th Street. Met my director and cast for the first rehearsal of this coming Friday night's reading of "Blue Roses." What a joy! This is the third time I've had a reading of this particular play. The first time was in Portland and it was directed by one of my favorite directors, Matt Zrebski. There were also a couple of my favorite actors in the reading: Anya Pearson as Tee, and Cecily Overman as Rosemary, but I'm blanking on the rest of the cast. (My apologies people, my brain is like teflon.) The following year there was a reading at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha. I didn't know the director or any of the cast. It was a fine reading and I was primarily interested in what the panel of 3 judges had to say. They all thought it should be produced, and what feedback they had, I have since incorporated.
This director is firm yet gentle, has creative insight -- in short, she totally gets the play. What more could a writer ask? Nothing. Except great casting, and she's done that as well. Even the woman doing the stage directions is top notch: a beautiful voice, whip smart, instantly responsive to the director's changes.
I'm in love with the cast. They're enthusiastic, professional, and great to look at. You'd think they were doing Broadway rather than a one-night reading at the Dramatists Guild Friday Night Footlights. That's what being professional is all about, isn't it? As an actor, you never know who this playwright might turn out to be, who your director might refer you to, when your fellow actor might suggest you to someone else. It's all about networking in this business called show. Still, everyone I've met seems genuinely interested in my script, they are all working to do their best, and I so appreciate it. I'm learning even more about the play from being here, watching the process of rehearsal, answering their questions about the characters, about the story.
This is why I'm a playwright. And now I want more. More play time, please. I'm going to upload their pictures so you can see them. I can't work out how to label them, so: the first picture is of the director, Vivian Meisner. The next is the character Rosemary, Irene Longshore. Rose Isabel is played by Elizabeth Bell. Next picture is of Natalie Holly who plays Tee. Our lone man is Steven Hauck who plays Dr. Freeman. Stage directions are read by Jane Altman. I have no picture (yet) for Flora.

A1 Editing Services

2011-10-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

Have opened up for editing business after successfully editing for several people recently. Have been editing books and screenplays, along with the usual articles and stage plays, and as I'm getting paid now, I thought it was time to hang out the shingle. We'll see how that works.
One of the things I do that sets me aside from the crowd is I speak fluent medicalese. I spent more than 25 years using medical terminology in my job, so I know how to spell it, pronounce it and use it in a sentence. This means I can edit medical papers for journals, etc. It isn't quite as fun as editing screenplays and stage plays, but I do know how and I've always found reading about medical issues fascinating.
I'm also editing children's books, young adult books, articles related to kids and parents, and college essays. So, if you know anyone looking for help, please send them to my website, where they can get in touch with me. Or send them to me at dehelens@gmail.com
a1editingservices.weebly.com

Envy: one of the deadlies, for a reason

2011-10-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

Envy can hold us back. I don't believe in "sin" per se, so I'll call it a gift. If we are willing to look at these feelings that plague us and get in the way of our progress on the road to getting what we want in life, then they can be gifts, even envy.
The other day I met up with Ivy* a long-time friend whom I've only ever known online, until now. She and I have many friends in common. Several of them live in my home city. She started our conversation by exclaiming "Glinda* is magnificent, isn't she?" *names are changed to protect me and them from embarrassment.
I said that Glinda and I had gotten off to a bad start. Ivy encouraged me to "let it fly" or words to that effect, but I said that's not who I am. I really don't have anything bad to say about Glinda.
I could have recounted the way in which Glinda and I got off to a bad start TEN YEARS AGO, but what would be the point of that? If we haven't resolved or forgotten that by now, we never will. The truth is, and now that I've been made uncomfortable by meeting up with Ivy face to face and finding out she likes Glinda AT LEAST as much as she likes me (maybe more!), I have to examine what it is that keeps me from actually liking Glinda.
I could -- and have -- fall back on the fact that many of my local playwright friends don't hang out with her, don't like her, supposedly because when she first started writing plays she padded her resume. Lied about her productions. Maybe she did. The truth is, she sure doesn't have to pad anything any longer. She has productions -- real ones, not just readings, like most of us get or hope to get these days. And she has them frequently, and everywhere. She is well-loved (see above example of Ivy) and well-respected by people from other cities, as well as from my own. Clearly other playwrights and other theatre folks in my city do love and respect Glinda, and if they ever had a problem with her, they've moved on.
As for me, I've been wallowing around in ENVY. Feeling that it is unfair that Glinda should be getting productions, getting respect for her work, getting readings in far-flung corners of the earth, winning awards and grants, having actors clamoring to read her scripts, directors asking to read her new works, producers wondering when she'll have something just right for their theatre companies. Unfair that SHE has it, and I don't.
Ironic because when anyone else ever said anything remotely like that to me about her, I said "No, it's great that she's being produced! Any time any woman is produced makes it more likely that another woman will be produced." What's more, I believe that. But somewhere inside, I wasn't believing it about myself.
It's a new day. I do deserve it. I have a reading coming up next Friday in New York City. I have a new play that will have a reading in Fertile Ground in January. I'm writing a new short play right now. My work will be seen. I will receive useful feedback that I will incorporate to make even better work. And I am finished with Envy of Glinda! Thank you Ivy for showing it to me and helping me clear that up!
Readers, are any of the deadly gifts getting in the way of your progress to your better life? Do you feel like sharing? Please, do tell!

Poetry again

2011-10-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a few poems this month, having signed up to receive a prompt a day, or at least to be aware that there is a prompt available to me once a day. Today I wrote two poems, and it felt good. For awhile there I felt as if I had forgotten how to write poetry (again). What that feels like for me is that I see or hear a prompt and I immediately take it literally and want to write something literal. Trying to think outside the box is not even possible. That feels so depressing that I then don't even want to write at all. So I instantly think of all the other things I need to do, and just don't write a poem.
Ever happen to you? Yeah, I thought so.
This is going to be short. I seriously do have to do something else. I'm meeting someone in 45 minutes, and I have to get ready to go. But I wanted to take the time to say that I am writing. I hope you are also writing. Oh! And I have been walking EVERY DAY (20 min or more now), and eating my veggies and fruit. I have to go to the store this evening and buy more groceries. I've also been practicing biofeedback on the migraines (successfully today). Taking care of my health, in other words. Please write me if you have advice, or want to check in on how you are keeping well, what you are writing, how you are maintaining your writing schedule, any of that. I do want to know.

Cleaning house

2011-10-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Literally. Today I have to clean my house because I cannot stand it another minute. This seems to be my current M.O. I wait until I can't bear it, then I clean. And I clean everything. Today I started by cleaning up my website. Go check it out: www.sandradehelen.com
As soon as I return from picking up my granddaughter from school, I will start at the top of my place (sleeping loft) and keep going until I have shoveled out the hovel. This time all clutter has to go. It's fall cleaning with a vengeance. Tomorrow I will pack for my 3 week trip. So, yes, my place will be dirty when I come back home. Cat hair, litter, and dust will be everywhere again. But no clutter (there isn't that much now, truthfully). But all the extra clothes, bric-a brac, magazines, and so on will be gone. Books delivered to the library. Things I thought might come in handy delivered to Goodwill along with clothes I didn't wear this summer.
I feel 10 pounds lighter already! I did not walk yesterday, nor did I eat my allotment of fruit and veggies. I was groggy all day yesterday because I got a migraine at 11pm the night before and took my meds. I wasn't able to just sleep off the headache because I had my handyguy coming at 9am. So I had to get up, and then of course I just stayed up, loggerheaded, all day. Back to semi-normal today, and I will meet my commitments today. Remember, my commitment is to walking FIVE days a week, so I'm allowed one more day of not walking this week. Veggies should be SEVEN days. So, I have missed one day. I will try to make it today for sure. You? How's your day going? How is your commitment to health coming along? And what about your balance between health and creativity? How you doing? Eh?

Walking, eating veggies... wasn't I supposed to be writing???

2011-10-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

Having the same problem I always have: balance. When I add in focusing on walking and getting enough veggies, I forget about getting enough pages. This should not be difficult. We're only talking about 10 minutes of walking a day at this point! Of course, I am also running errands, doing household chores and catching up from having been gone all last week, but still.
Must get better at folding in new stuff. Just like in a recipe.
How do YOU do it? Right now I feel exhausted, and it's 6:13pm. Please, just tell me how you manage to do it all.

Walking, thinking

2011-10-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

Reporting in: So far, so good. I've kept my commitments. Walked 10 minutes yesterday, the last minutes before dark. And today, in the rain this morning. Ate more veggies yesterday than I did fruit! That's because my friend gave me tomatoes from her garden. Big ones. I'll have to make a bigger effort today. I might have to break down and eat (shudder) chard.
Spent some time thinking. Thinking about memory. For years I was the memory keeper in my family and in my circle. I remembered everything, both short and long-term. Phone numbers, names, faces, events, trivia, lines, poems, you name it. Everything I read, sang, every argument, conversation, every movie I saw, every house I ever lived in since I was still in my crib. (This is true, ask my 94 year old mother, who hasn't lost her memory yet.) However, once I started on beta blockers in my early 40s, I started having trouble with my short-term memory. I started having to make notes. Before that, I didn't keep a calendar. Didn't need an organizer at work. I kept everything in my head. So once I started forgetting and keeping notes, there was a transition period. I'd turn over my daily planner calendar and find a note that said "lunch." Great. Lunch with whom, I wonder? What time? Where? I had to learn to fill in details like that. Now things are even worse, but I'm used to it. For example, I'm currently re-reading a book that I read in 1998 because the author has written a sequel. I knew I'd read it before because I've read everything she's written, but I also knew I would have forgotten it. So, I'm reading it, nearly finished with it and I call my friend and tell her that I'm re-reading it in preparation for the sequel. She says she's already started the sequel without realizing it's a sequel. I start trying to tell her about the book I'm reading and realize I've already forgotten what I've read. It's like living in the present, and only in the present! As I read the book I think: Oh yes, I remember this. But I don't know what's going to happen next. Then after I've read it, I forget it again. Oy. So, really. Do I need to read this book? I'm going to have forgotten it by the time I pick up the sequel anyway.
I don't have dementia. I don't have Alzheimer's. So, don't worry about me. I don't leave burners on. I remember what refrigerators are for. And I don't get lost. I sometimes get in the car and have to go back into the house to get my glasses though. But I always leave in plenty of time for things that could go wrong, so no worries. Just know this is something you might have to look forward to, if you ever have to take beta blockers, or get forgetful in later years.

Starting a New Year in October: resolutions

2011-10-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

I know. It's October 9, 2011. Not exactly New Year's Day in anyone's book, right? My friend Jenny just finished her Mussar Year. It was just Yom Kippur (I'm not Jewish), and it's not Chinese New Year, or any of those. But I've been reflecting a LOT lately. Wanting to begin a program of self-reflection or self-improvement or both. Trying to decide on which and what program. This morning I get an email from my healthcare provider: Kaiser Permanente. Thrive. Yeah, right. I'm always so skeptical about them. I do not feel I get that great of care from the Kaiser. But this morning they sent me info about weight loss and exercise, and I actually need something to help motivate me to get me back on my walking program. I want to make it a daily practice like brushing my teeth, not something I dread. I have to remember how much I actually LIKE walking.
Anyway, here is this missive. I click on the links, and lo and behold, I actually completed part of this program 3 years ago. So, I start over. Now I go further. There are multiple levels to this, like a video game, only this is actually helpful, as helpful as I want it to be. And now I have a blog. Someplace I can make a public commitment, and check in everyday. Someplace I can actually thrive. The program has digital support, consulting, logs, mp3s and so on. Today I looked at stress management and nutrition assistance. I actually do have good nutrition, I need to lose more weight, but my pounds have been going in the right direction over the past years. Walking will help me with this. The cholesterol levels will be helped as well.
Walking 5 days a week is my goal. No, it is my commitment. 5 days a week and eventually 30 minutes each time. This week I will begin with 10 minutes each day. I know I can do 10 minutes. If I do more, I'll say so. Also, I will commit to eating more veggies. I have no problem eating my fruit servings. I need to add more veggies.
Anyone want to join me? If you're a Kaiser member go to www.Kaiserpermanente.org and sign up for the Succeed program (free). If you aren't, just join me in a walk and eat more veggies. Make a commitment to do something healthy. State it publicly if you feel like it. I find I am more apt to keep my commitments when I say so in public. Or in writing. Both is like concrete to me. I'll be back tomorrow to let you know how I did today!

Asylum No More ... Table Read

2011-10-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, the play reached final draft point. The End was written. Table read date was set before I even started writing the dialogue. (Yes, I'm fearless that way.) On Monday I began the process of printing the play, getting copies made, collated, covered, and so on. One always has to allow for running out of ink (check), not being able to replace said ink (check), finishing the job on a different computer in a different location (check), and so on. I bought water for each reader including stage directions reader, arrived early to get set up, got out my notebook and sat back and listened.
I was thrilled to find that my director for the already scheduled staged reading (January 20 and 21st, 2012, 11pm) was there, he read one of the roles in fact, as well as my writing partner who read another. I knew they would provide great feedback. The reading was delivered well, especially for a cold reading. My thoughts were: I need to show more of Tee's motivation; more of Tee's inner process needs to be outer; and whoa! this climax is TOO BIG for this little team. So, after the "popcorn" responses, and the positive feedback from the audience, it was time for my question to them: did the climax see believable to you? Their responses rained down: in a word: no. Not only did it feel too big, but most people don't believe a nurse would be so unfeeling as to start a fire, even in an empty building if there was a possibility of danger to human life. She would be too compassionate. Okay, I hear you.
I have some work to do. I just want everyone to know I also heard the positive responses re the dialogue, the complex characters, the humor. It's a good play, and now I'm going to make it better. That's why we have a table read. And especially why we have it in front of people who know how to make plays better.

The Purity Argument

2011-10-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

In 1970 I organized a protest march against the wearing of fur at a fashion show. This was the first of its kind in Anchorage, Alaska at the time, so the media turned out in force, even though there were only about 12 of us marching on that March day. Nearly all my social sorority sisters were inside that fashion show that day, wearing their furs. They stared at me in shock and horror as they crossed our line to enter the hotel that day. Some spoke to me. And that was the first time I heard the argument that a person could not protest the wearing of fur if she ate meat or wore leather. "What are your shoes made of?" Apparently, if a protestor wore a speck of leather, she had no right to protest the clubbing of baby seals -- which was rampant at that time in Alaska. My hand-made sign had a picture of a baby seal, and the words "He died for your skins!"
Now all of PETA is overly familiar with fur wearers arguments. Those arguments probably contributed greatly to veganism. Fine. I have no problem with veganism and pleather and options to wearing animal skins. I'm a vegetarian. I was then.
Here's the thing though. This is a free country. We have the right to free speech. We have the right to protest whatever we feel is wrong. And we do not have to be pure before we can speak out. So, please if you feel in your heart that you should say something about the fact that the makers of UGG boots are using the skins of raccoon dogs that have been SKINNED ALIVE (see www.hearldsun.com.au), but you eat meat and wear leather shoes, don't let that stop you. Okay?
If you want to join with other protestors in Pioneer Square this Thursday at noon October 6, and protest Wall Street, but you happen to own stocks, or invest your money in bonds, or some combination that you don't even understand, but you still don't believe that the people who brought this country to its knees should get away with it -- well go protest!
Remember the last line from "Some Like it Hot": "Nobody's perfect." That's right, none of us are, and if we all speak up, stand together, do our part, we CAN make this world a better place.

Knowledge is Power, redux

2011-10-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

Just coming off a migraine again. But no headache today. Today I want to think again about the universe, about spiritually, about connectedness and what we really know. On June 15 I was musing about these things whilst in the throes of a migraine. I didn't come up with answers about why I believed in reincarnation, but not necessarily in a higher power. I haven't found the answers yet. I don't know whether I believe in karma, though I would like to. It would be satisfying to believe that somehow, somewhere people who perpetuate evil in this world will be repaid. But they might not. And if I believe that, does that mean that people who are now suffering horrible lives are paying for past or future deeds? Or is it all random?
There are millions of people starving to death in another part of the world -- right now, this minute -- while grapes in my garden are falling to the ground and rotting. While people are throwing food away because they're too lazy to eat leftovers, because restaurants give out too large servings, because we buy too much and don't eat it. I can't ship those grapes anywhere, they aren't even "food grade" grapes. I eat some of them, the ones I can reach and pick over. I try not to waste food at my house, and I know I am in the minority. I also know that I do this because I am scraping by financially.
There are millions of people starving to death and we knew the famines were coming, we know about it every day, we know we could end it, and we do nothing much. We could end the famines easily by cutting back on war. Just us, the US. We could. Imagine if all the nations worked together to end the famines. We could continue on with the wars and still end hunger.
If nations worked together, we could end war. End hunger. End disease. End global warming. If we worked together, there is no end to the good we could create. Knowledge of that is more than power, it is heartbreak. Because for some reason, we don't want to work together. We don't want peace. We seem to prefer fighting, conflict, war. Where is the love, the peace, the understanding?

Asylum No More, once more

2011-09-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

When I finish a draft, I read it aloud in order to clean up spelling errors that cannot be caught by spellcheck. I also find lines that don't flow well, other little bits that need cleaning up. This time I realized I really did have to include that final scene that I thought I could leave out. The irony is I had started to write it, then thought "oh no, they'll think the play was over with the last scene. I'd better just cut this out." So I deleted it, didn't save a scrap. When I read the play aloud, I thought what? where's the rest of the play? Just like my audience would have. Too abrupt. Fortunately, I had the beat sheet right there in front of me, so I knew what was lacking. This morning I wrote that scene -- again -- this time, fully, and finally. Much better.
I also took a gigantic risk and sent the play out to a producer who is looking for material for Fertile Ground. I am already planning to have this play in Fertile Ground, but if it is accepted, I will let them produce it instead. I will do something else. I sent the producer two plays. Maybe they will choose the other one. Or neither one. Submitting plays is always a risk, a risk of rejection. But if you don't send them out, they will never be produced. And I write mine with the assumption that I will see them onstage at some point. I love the act of collaborating with the producer, the director, the designers, the actors, everyone involved.
I have co-founded and founded theatre companies myself, so I know the work involved, and I know that it is hard, that it takes a ton of organization, of commitment, and I also know that it needs to be fun. No one wants to work with people who are jerks, or who don't follow through, or don't pull their own weight. I love to do my part. I love to hear what others bring to the table. I like hearing others' feedback about my plays, and I will let it in. I want my plays to entertain audiences, so I try to create good stories. I know that other theatre artists may know more about certain aspects of the story that I'm telling than I do. So my ears and my heart is open.
For one of my plays (The Godmother) I have grandiose dreams. It would make a fun and interesting serial. Either live onstage, or on TV. I don't have the money to produce it myself or I would. Then I would produce live serial versions every year. Why? Because I believe in the characters in this play. Everyone of them is real and deep and interesting to me. They deserve to have their stories told. Maybe someday.

Writing Process: A New 10 Min Play

2011-09-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

I'm no Mark Harvey Levine. He's had over 700 productions worldwide of his 10-15 minute plays. I haven't seen or read any of them, but I'm guessing he is a master storyteller. If you think writing a full-length play is hard, wait until you try writing a good short play. My play "The Bobbsey Twins Go to Hell," was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and also won a production the same year. It has also been adapted as a short film and is in post-production.
Now that I'm using the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet as structure for my full-length plays, I decided that I would adapt the beat sheet for ten-minute plays. First I tried adapting it by number of lines, but that was just too specific, so now I have it by number of pages, just like for the *big* plays. Then I tried the beat sheet out against "The Bobbsey Twins" and found that my play fit the beat sheet structure very well. No wonder that play works, where others have not.
I can begin to create my cast of characters and their back stories now. I know the two main characters already. But who will be my third? Maybe I'll work on creating the back stories for the first two today, and see what that stirs up. There will be more dynamics with a third character, but sometimes the third character is not a person. It can be a city, for example. We'll see where we are tomorrow.

Wrapping that baby up: First Draft Asylum No More

2011-09-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

I said I'd finish the last scene today and I did! Look, it's barely noon and I just wrote those magic words: The End. 100 pages. Ten short of what I thought it would take, but actually that's good. That's a good amount of pages. I can still add if I need to, or cut if I need to. Ninety minutes made a full evening and can be run without an intermission. Or if I need to add, we can have an intermission. Either way it's all good. I did this one so it can be rated PG. You could perform this one in Middle Schools. Although it's an adult drama, I'm just sayin'. It could be performed in churches. Maybe. There are a few hells and damns.
There is conflict, both inner and outer. There is soul-searching and there is character arc. There is social change going on. I'm not saying this is a perfect first draft. I'm saying this might be a good play after I get some feedback. It has potential. It has a table read coming up, and it has a staged reading scheduled for Fertile Ground in January. Now to send her out into the world so other readers can lay their eyes on her. Bye bye baby!

Getting a crush when you're a grandmother

2011-09-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

Getting a crush on someone not your own age, when you're as old as I am is a bummer. Let me rephrase that. I have a crush on a young woman and it's a bummer. I know it will pass, because this is one of those crushes that a person gets on a celebrity, or in my case a performer. I don't know her. If I did I wouldn't have a crush because it would be totally inappropriate. Men don't feel this way, apparently. Look at all the May/December relationships. But I am not into that. No way no how. I feel brave owning up to this temporary crush, let alone writing about it in a public blog. The thing is, I feel pretty sure I am not the only woman this happens to. If I am, so be it. I know I'm queer in a lot of ways. This is one of them.
Last night I went to a concert of Edna Vazquez and the Mariachi Band Los Palmeros with whom she's been playing for 12 years. She has the most amazing voice. I first saw her at an event at Latina Gay Pride. A friend of mine invited me to go as she was playing piano that night. I was blown away by Edna's voice, so when I saw her name on the calendar I knew I was going to go see her. But when I saw her last night, I suddenly got a crush. While I was watching her sing, I kept wishing I was 30 or 35 years younger so I could ask her out. I thought about how I was when I was 30 and 35 years younger. I would have asked her out back then. Of course, she probably wasn't born back then. So you see how ridiculous this is. But it is a fantasy.
In real life, I do enjoy her singing so much. I tried to order a CD from her website, but as far as I can tell, it consists of nothing but videos of her singing. (And I'm complaining?) I am going to take my two grandchildren with me to her concert on Sunday. Both are singers and I want them to see and hear her. For one thing I want my grandson to hear a woman who can sing as loud as he can. And for my granddaughter to see a woman sing and play the guitar in person who is not her former teacher, not Taylor Swift, etc.
My crush will go away. Probably by the time I publish this post. If not, it will evaporate in its own time. It's one of those strange things that happens to you as you age that you don't expect to happen -- like pimples. What the hell? You have skin tags AND pimples? How is that fare? I certainly don't expect myself to feel like a schoolgirl about someone who is young enough to be my daughter or maybe even my granddaughter. That feels wrong. Then I remind myself it is just a feeling, nothing I have to act on. And it will dissipate as feelings do. Anger doesn't last. Even grief which is perhaps the longest lasting feeling one can have, doesn't last forever. A crush is nothing compared to grief. In fact, it is rather pleasant.
If you're old enough to be a grandmother, and you have or have had a crush lately, I surely would like to know I have some company if you're brave enough to share. :)

Dark night of the soul -- hers, or mine?

2011-09-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the pages flew by ... I described them as a river. Today: a trickle. After I'd been writing for hours, the page count was ... four. Four pages. To be fair, today's pages are mostly monologue, rather than dialogue, so they add up to more minutes than the usual four pages, but still. Difficult to get those words down today. It seems that writing the dark night of the soul is not so easy as I thought it would be. Oh, I so blithely tossed it off yesterday as I forecast today's writing. Oh yes, today I would put my protagonist through hell. Ha. Methinks it was the other way 'round. I am literally sweating today as I write. I realized as I wrote that I am sitting here with the windows closed, even though it has warmed back up to 80 degrees. So, I got up and opened the windows. Doh. Much better. Still, I did feel as though I were pushing the words through a sieve to get them out of my head and onto the computer. I'm hoping the rewrites will be easier.
Tomorrow I'll add to this scene, then on to the next where she will arrive at the solution.

Asylum No More ... Dark Night of the Soul tomorrow

2011-09-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I wrote the entire Bad Guys Close In section today. It flowed like a river. I feel so bad for my protagonist! Of course I know how strong she is. I also know what lies ahead. But right now she is devastated. Every thing that could go wrong has gone wrong. As she goes to bed tonight, even her mother is having chest pain and trouble breathing. She seems to live for work and family and her extended family has pulled away from her -- again -- her mother is ill, and she just got laid off from work. Worse than that, her cousin whom she promised to help free from prison is now lying in the violent ward of the State asylum, with no hope whatsoever of being freed and in danger of being lobotomized. Oh things are very bad indeed.
Tomorrow she has to realize that she is beaten. Hope is gone. Then and only then will she realize that she has the solution and think of it. Of course the risks are unbelievably high, but then so are the stakes. Once she thinks of it, she will have to put it into place, start overcoming obstacles, and so on. Stay tuned.

Asylum No More ... halfway point

2011-09-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

Writing plays has changed for me since I discovered "Save the Cat!" by Blake Snyder. Yes, it's a handbook for screenwriting, but really it's about structure a story. Once I've spent the necessary time setting up the foundation and framework, the rest is like painting the walls, decorating the house, getting ready to welcome the guests. Today I passed the midpoint, I finished page 56. Tee has reached her false peak, where everything seems to have come together. Starting tomorrow the bad guys are going to close in. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. By the time I get through with her, she will be reduced to a pile of wrung out snot. She will be hopeless, clueless, maybe drunk, possibly stupid. She will be ready to jump off a cliff. But she won't. Because while freedom is worth any sacrifice (the theme of this play), it isn't going to require her to sacrifice her actual life. She will somehow find a way out of this mess using her last best efforts to beat the bad guys. Well, we hope that's what is going to happen. Stay tuned.

Wanting to be a good person

2011-09-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

My friend Jenny is doing her Mussar year. This is a year of doing something she has never done every single day. But it is so much more than that. She is also doing something called Mussar practice (see http://www.mussarleadership.org/), telling her readers about that as she goes along, how the practice relates to whatever new thing she has done that day.
I am following along, day by day. And I have been changed by Jenny's writings. I have been led to deep thinking about my own life, my own practices, my experiences. I have written about several of them here. And after today's entry by Jenny, I sought out the Mussar website and read about the practice because I wondered whether it was restricted to Jewish people. I see that it was developed for people of the Jewish faith, but I don't see why a person couldn't adopt these practices in order to become a better person. One would have to read the Torah. I've never read the Torah. I am a Buddhist, I guess I'm actually an agnostic. I believe we are all one in the sense that we are all made of the same materials, we all exist in oneness. I believe in the collective unconscious. I believe in reincarnation or parallel lives or something like it because I know for a fact that as a child I had memories of prior lives as an adult. That came from somewhere. So, I'm not looking to convert to Judaism, because I'm not looking for religion of any sort.
I do believe in morals, ethics, being good to my fellow beings, to the world. And in being thoughtful. Jenny's Mussar practice seems to me to be a practice of deep thinking, one of creating balance in one's life. I don't know whether it is for me. Certain aspects of it have been for me as I have followed her blog this year. Have you checked it out yet? Her post today is one I highly recommend for anyone. It is about all those thoughts that run through our brains when something unexpected happens -- and how she dealt with them, given her practice. Truly something to think about.

Writing Asylum No More

2011-09-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday went fairly well, once I spent an hour completely screwing up my Style format that I had set up to write my new play. I should never try to do technical work before I have my tea. So I stopped that and had my tea while answering email, reading Twitter, looking at FaceBook, reading NYtimes.com, and so on. When I finally returned to my play, thinking I would format it old school, Word wouldn't let me. My format was so screwed up, I couldn't write at all. Copy and move to a new blank document? that doesn't work in Word.
Only one thing to do. Learn how to fix what I had broken. Well, that took another two hours out of my day. Not to mention how many more gray hairs I sprouted, and cortisol hormones I sprayed throughout my body. Probably took a few years off my life as well. But, I did learn how to properly create Style formats! Still, it was 5pm by then, and I decided it was time for lunch. After that I might as well just hang it up for the day.
I didn't though. I kept going, and actually managed to produce some pages. Enough to realize that while I had been busy recruiting actors for the table read I have already committed to on October 4th (oh be quiet, I'll have a draft by then, I will!), I don't seem to have outlined any scenes onstage for one of the actors I have cast. Hm. In my mind, he's an important character. In the outline, he's never onstage. Ruh roh. I foresee a change acoming. Either on the page, or I have to cancel an actor that I really like. It has to be on the page. I like the balance of characters with him on the page. How to get him there? flashback? or do we have to visit him in the Pen? that's no fun. Looks like a flashback scene is coming up. This should be fun. Oh! Put that in the fun and games section! Thank you, Save the Cat!

Asylum No More

2011-09-12T16:42:00.000-07:00

My new play is becoming real. There is a lot of work that goes into a new play before the writing of the script begins. At least there is for me, now. Now that I use "Save the Cat!" as my method for scriptwriting. Although the book is a primer on screenwriting, I have found it works for me for writing stage plays. Now before I start writing scenes, dialogue, I already know the spine, the theme, every character, what the protagonist wants, what are the obstacles, what the climax will be, when it will occur, and what the first and last scene looks like. I know what the catalyst will be, and on what page it will occur. Still, when I start writing the scenes, everything comes alive, it is all exciting and brand new and anything can happen! Sometimes things happen that have to be excised. I gently cut them out and put them in another file in case I can use them some other time. So, today I finished Scene Two, and in the next scene I will write in the catalyst that will send me off for the next 15 pages or so. I will bring in two more characters tomorrow and more conflict will ensue. There will be food and drink involved. (Director's nightmare. I'll try to keep it simple. Maybe the conflict gets so intense the food never makes it to the table.) This play already has a table read scheduled. October 4th. So, in addition to writing, I'm also busy finding actors to read the roles. This is exciting too. I have three lined up already of the seven. Two will be wild cards (playwrights) at the meeting, so only two more to nail down. I'm thrilled with the ones who have already agreed to read. This is why I write plays: it's fun. Like being a kid and you say, let's play (whatever), you be the king and I'll be the knight, and you be the dragon, and you two be the fairies, and you be the witch, and you be the queen, okay you can be a princess, and now when the dragon comes in .... etc. Only with luck and a bit of skill, you get to do it for a paying audience and they laugh and cry and applaud. We have a staged reading scheduled for this play as well. Fertile Ground New Play Festival. Jan 20, 21, 2012. 11pm at the Backdoor Theatre. You can come see it for yourself. It will be a bit more finished and polished by then. I promise. :)

Going forward ten years later

2011-09-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

This past month, Pema Teeter has written daily, bringing memory to light, showing us a way to grieve, to share our stories at www.storycharmer.com and has done so in many different ways, some painful, some beautiful, some mystical. If you haven't checked out her site, please do so. As for me, I have remembered 9/11/01 and the days after as well as the grief that was reactivated by that horrific day. I've honored my own dead, and have spent some time grieving my past loves and dying friends as well as my sorry ass sins. Not necessarily all in this blog, some only in my mind. Today, I seek peace and peaceful reflection. The opposite of terror and war. And I send peace and healing light and love into the world.

Anniversary of an Adventure in Love

2011-09-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

28 years ago today I began my longest relationship. We were together almost 19 years, meaning we broke up in June of 2002. We stayed together about 17 years too long for our mental health. But we are still friends, still bound together in deep ways. We were friends for 3 years before we became lovers, and we would have married had marriage been allowed between two women. And now we would be divorced. Divorced friends. We share the same values, same politics, same ideals. We kept house alike, both love animals, enjoy the same movies. And we make each other laugh. We had many good times, unfortunately they were outweighed by the anger.
We never cheated on each other. There was no alcohol, or drugs. No physical abuse. Well, almost, a couple of times, but we got that in check. But there was emotional abuse and plenty of it. So we saw couple counselors for years. We learned all the communication devices. We tried living apart. For years.
And finally I called an end to trying. After a couple of years I tried with someone else for a few months -- and got my heart broken. I don't want to try again. I think I'm too old. Or maybe I tried too long and too hard for too many years. So today, I'm going to celebrate the anniversary of the day I embarked on a great adventure of love. It was a rocky road, and it didn't last as a marriage, but the friendship endured. That in itself is worth celebrating. Cheers!

Honoring our Dead

2011-09-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

Today I honor my own personal dead. This is a list of my own. These are the people whose funerals I attended, or bodies I viewed, or graves I visited before I was 8 years old:
Margaret Sue Brown, stillborn. My sister.
Helen Rosalie Brown, stillborn. My sister.
John Patrick McCorkle, lived 1 day. My brother.
Helen "Nettie" McCorkle Bailey. My great-aunt.
Howard Allen McCorkle, lived 1 day. My brother.
Emma Bailey McCorkle, my grandmother.
Albert Charles McCorkle, my father.
Thank you. Please send your own lists. These babies listed above have never appeared on a list before. Howard Allen I remember so clearly. My dad and I were the only ones viewing him when we sat with him in his tiny white casket. He was pale with blue lips. We buried him while Mom was still in the hospital. I was 4 years old. The other babies were all born before me, I was the first child to thrive. I've visited their graves many times throughout my life, and imagined those older sisters so often. My younger sister and I were 2 of 6, only 2 lived. Imagine. I was also 4 when My Aunt Net died. It was shocking to me to see her in her casket, to attend the funeral and see all the grownups crying. And I was 5 when my beloved Grandma Emma died. She was beautiful and tiny, soft and sweet. She had so many grandchildren, and yet I felt special. I've written before about the loss of my dad when I was 7. Tell me about your losses.

On that day: 9/11/01

2011-09-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

Today is 9/01/11, not 9/11/01, but we are nearly there, nearly ten years to the day. The day we all remember where we were when it happened. Right? You remember where you were when you heard? I was sitting at my kitchen table, up early, working on my laptop trying not to disturb my soon-to-be ex-partner who didn't want to hear my tap-tap-tapping on the computer. I saw the news alert email from the NY Times: plane hits the World Trade Center. What? I thought it must be a small plane that somehow got confused, maybe there was smog, maybe the pilot had a heart attack. I kept working, then a second alert. I jumped up and turned on the TV and saw the pictures of the bright blue sky, the boiling white smoke, the crawl at the bottom of the screen, and I ran in the bedroom and woke my partner, saying "Get up! Get up! the world's gone crazy!" She didn't doubt me for a second, but came straight to the living room where we stayed glued to the tv. As the commentators began to speculate as to who or what group could have planned such a thing, she and I turned to each other and simultaneously said "Osama bin Laden." Where did that come from? We weren't people who read political op-ed pieces, watched political talk shows, but we had watched Sixty Minutes and obviously those pieces had stuck in our minds.
The day before I had seen the last of the attendants off at the airport from a regional conference of the International Centre for Women Playwrights that a few of us had organized here in Portland. We had a wonderful time here with about 40 women from around the country and Canada in attendance, several from NYC. The New Yorkers were very much on my mind that morning, along with my other New York friends. Before long, one of the playwrights who had just been here called me to ask if I'd heard from the others who had been here. I hadn't. She had witnessed the planes flying into the towers from her own balcony, and was obviously in shock. I did my best to calm her, while breathing in her fear into my own lungs through the landline.
I don't know when I've felt more helpless. To be 3,000 miles away from some of your closest friends, seeing the destruction happen live on television is a disempowering experience of the most humbling kind. I still haven't heard all their stories. Out here in the West we were being fed fear with a shovel. We were terrified of every noise in the sky as all flights were grounded. Any large bird caused us to think we were about to be blown to bits. People didn't know whether to duck into doorways, or run outside. Were we safer in our houses or in the parks? All travel was off, of course.
Meanwhile, how could we even think of speaking or writing of our own fears or experiences when they paled so in comparison with those of our East Coast families, friends, compatriots?
Ten years later. It is time. Time for everyone to tell her story. No matter where you were when you heard. Maybe you weren't even born yet when it happened, but now you've heard about it and you want to write about it. Tell your story. It's time. Be heard.

North Carolina Beach

2011-08-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

This morning when the alarm went off I was dreaming I was on a North Carolina beach, sitting in the way of people trying to play softball. I've never been on a NC beach, though I've been to the state many times, on business. Driven through it, stayed in a couple of the cities, enjoyed the scenery. But last night it was on my mind for a different reason, of course: Hurricane Irene. I don't know why I dreamed about NC when I went to bed thinking about all my friends in NYC. Maybe because Irene is actually still in NC? In my dream the beach was beautiful and warm and filled with happy people just trying to have fun.
Katrina hit six years ago. My son and his family have never recovered. Their home was only ever partially restored because they never received enough money to restore it. My son suffered two major heart attacks and was never able to return to work. My daughter-in-law's job took ages to return to full capacity, and she wasn't reimbursed for any of that. They had to file bankruptcy. My granddaughter's grades suffered. My son and daughter-in-law divorced. My son eventually went into rehab, and is now living in a single room. And they are only one family. Their damage was minimal compared to tens of thousands of others.
So, yeah, I'm concerned. I'm concerned about my friends on the East Coast. More than they know or could guess. I'm concerned for all the people I don't know, for the animals and wildlife, the flora as well as the fauna.
All this on the heels of an earthquake that rattled the emotions of many, though it did little physical damage, and coming up on the tenth anniversary of 9/11/01. People in NYC and DC are fragile right now. A disaster is not what they need for their anniversary.
What they need is a nice warm beach holiday, like the one in my dream. If only I could give it to them. Instead, I will send love and light and all best wishes for their safety.

Currency and Value

2011-08-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

Question of the day (from the Story Charmer) is: what are your currencies, what do you value? I often think about what my own value is to my family. Once a person in this country retires from her day job, she begins to lose value like a new car driven off the lot. When I last worked a full-time job I made the most money I had ever made in my lifetime of work, and I began working at age 13. I worked full-time from age 17 on. When I returned to school at age 29 to go to university, I quizzed out of freshman year entirely, and worked 3-5 part-time jobs while going to school more than full-time so I could finish as quickly as possible and owe as little as possible.
All throughout my lifetime I gave presents, loans, supported as many people as I could, and managed to save money for retirement as well. I do not regret a single cent I ever gave or loaned or spent. The recession ate up more than I spent, and I regretted not having spent more so Bernie Madoff didn't get that little bit of my retirement savings. He wasn't who I loved.
So nowadays my currency, my personal value is no longer cash money. I give what I can of myself. And still sometimes, I feel a bit useless. I recognize how much perkier I am when someone asks for my help. Whether it is to show them how to sew on a button (my grandson), or to edit a script, sit with a dog, or work at one of my part-time jobs, I perk up more than when I'm working on my own writing projects. I enjoy helping others, and may find more value in being helpful than I do in my own creativity.
These are deep thoughts and not all that pleasant, to be honest. I find great conflict here. Isn't my writing as valuable as helping someone else? Do you suffer from this syndrome? Is it a syndrome? Is it even a problem?

Good Grief

2011-08-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

Pema Teeter, the Story Charmer, is doing an amazing and beautiful series on her blogsite (www.storycharmer.com) to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11. What she is doing is genius, and is breaking my heart daily. (I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.) This is a good thing.
My dad died when I was seven years old. He dropped dead of a massive heart attack when he was only 42, leaving a 33 year old widow with two young girls. It was 1951, and I lost not only my dad that day, but also my mom who then had to go out and work two jobs, and also our home to renters, while we moved into a 15 foot camping trailer. My sister was ten days away from being two years old, and we were days away from Thanksgiving. Christmas was a 15 cent coloring book and lots of sad faces. Tears were discouraged.
I spent the next two years praying every night to die and join my dad in heaven. If I hadn't been raised in church and taught that suicide was the only unforgivable sin, I would have killed myself. Instead, I spent a lot of time trying to trick God: staying out in the cold trying to get pneumonia, walking too close to Hwy 66 trying to get sucked under the wheels of semi-trucks, staying too long on the railroad tracks hoping I'd trip as I jumped out of the way of the freight trains that came by across the road from our house. None of it worked. Only time caused me to give up my quest for death at such a young age.
I think it was the death of my first step-father that shook me out of my deep depression, because my mom was already going out with the next man she would marry. And when she married him we were going to move into town. That was going to radically change my life.
I may have moved forward a lot sooner had grieving been encouraged in any fashion. Instead I was told not to cry, to forget about my dad. We severed all contact with my dad's family, all those aunts, uncles and cousins I had grown up with to that point. All were now erased from my life. Mom remarried only four months after Dad died. Today I realize she did it so we could move back into our house, and she could work only one job instead of two. Then I thought she was trying to replace my dad, and I hated my stepfather and withdrew from my mom.
Grieving is good, necessary even. When we repress those feelings, they do not go away, they just go deep. I believe I'm carrying about fifty pounds of tears in my body to this day. Will this be the year I let them go?
What are you holding on to?

One More Stop: Book Review

2011-08-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

"One More Stop"
Lois Walden
Arcadia, 2010
9781906413613 245 pp

Author Lois Walden has an impressive résumé as a singer/songwriter/producer. This debut novel, written in the first person, is a fast read. Her protagonist Loli is at mid-life, still searching for herself. She has an unsatisfying relationship with Simone, who leaves her to work at her career, which sometimes results in long absences. They have an open relationship, which Loli doesn’t remember agreeing to, or doesn’t recall why she agreed to it. After twenty years together, Loli is trying to sort out her feelings for Simone. Interestingly, her mother committed suicide almost twenty years ago as well, and now Loli is battling her own mental illness. Her mother’s voice appears as nursery rhymes, even though neither Loli nor her older sister recall their mother ever reciting rhymes to them.
One of the rhymes Loli hears is the Irish song Molly Malone which turns out to be the name of a bright young student Loli meets in Beatrice, Nebraska. Loli gets hired by a theater company to teach in schools across the country where arts programs have been cut. This is good for them and good for Loli – if she can keep her head together. She struggles along, looking forward to Beatrice because that is also her mother’s name. And when she gets there, there is Molly Malone. Molly has a beautiful mother. Married. But unhappy! In fact, the guy is a real jerk. Maggie and Loli have an affair, keep it secret from Molly who is finding her creative and scholarly self under Loli’s guidance at school. After Beatrice, Loli returns to New York, leaving Molly behind to deal with her bad marriage, and Maggie to continue her struggles in school. She herself has to come to grips with her relationship with Simone, as well as her escalating mental illness in the form of her mother’s voice. Her father is dying. Everything comes to a head, and is resolved.
This reviewer cringed at the ethics (or morals) of messing around in Molly and Maggie’s lives, especially as the protagonist barely knew them and wasn’t going to be around when things got ugly. The author created a protagonist with no apparent awareness of the realities the vast majority of people – particularly women – face in today’s world. This tale is set in a time of budget cuts, and the theater company who hires Loli is struggling, yet Walden writes of daily psychiatric visits, spur of the moment flights, and shoplifting candy bars with her grown sister before jumping into their BMW as if these are routine events available to (and desired by) anyone. It may be Walden’s intent to test the consciousness of her readers. Readers can’t presume the protagonist is anything akin to the author. This is fiction, not memoir, but it may rankle.
One reviewer slammed Walden for writing “unsex[y] sex” but on that issue I have to disagree. While I sometimes thought the sex was gratuitous – I found it realistically sexy, and I was happy to read a drama with a somewhat butch protagonist.
"One More Stop" was a finalist for the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for debut drama. Given Ms. Walden’s track record in her other ventures, her next novel will no doubt be more original, have a swiftly moving plot, and be more mindful of her audience’s realities. I will keep the faith.

Asylum No More

2011-08-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Asylum No More is the title I'm trying out today for my new play. One of my playwright friends suggested Asylum. I like it. I like a few more words.
When you see the above title, what do you picture in your mind, or hear in your head? Do you think no more sanctuary? Or the end of an insane asylum? Maybe both? Both would be ideal. Either one is good.
The one word title could be good as well. Because it means both things: sanctuary and loony bin. My protagonist works at the State Asylum. She helps people escape. By the end of the play, she will leave the asylum forever, and she will also try to put an end to the hospital itself.
I've decided on which characters are necessary for the play. I've outlined it. I've done the 15 beat sheet. I have a working title. In the next couple of days I will begin writing scenes. Today I have a murderous migraine that I can't treat until late tonight because I have an event I cannot miss. The young woman I mentored when she was in high school has finally returned to college as an adult and is graduating from college tonight, and has invited me. I wouldn't dream of missing this special occasion. So today, I'm working on the title only. I'm wondering what your thoughts are about my title? Any suggestions or comments?

Working on the new play

2011-08-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'd like to be able to put the title of my new play as the title of today's post, but I don't have a title yet. My working title is "the sequel" because it's the sequel to "Blue Roses." Or maybe it's a companion piece to "Blue Roses." In any case, three of the characters from BR are also in the new play. I now have the story, the characters, the beginning, and the end. I have an entire cast of characters, some of whom will not appear onstage, and today I'm going to work out which of them are so critical to the story that they MUST appear onstage.
From there I will continue on building the outline, the 15 beats, and so on. And soon I will begin writing more dialogue. I have the opening image with its few lines already written.
This has been an exciting week, working on the new play. I have visited the ScriptLab website more than a few times, looking at outlines of films. I have watched films that are in the same genre as my new play. I am once again reading Save the Cat! as I religiously follow the rules for writing my script.
What are you working on this week? Do you ever write from an outline? I have found this to be the most freeing thing I've ever done in over 30 years of writing scripts. I always thought it would be the opposite, that it would hamper my creativity. Instead, it's like fashion design: know the rules so you can be free to create something beautiful instead of a hot mess.
I've asked before, and some people told me they never use an outline, but some use mind maps (I have before). Some let the characters show the way. What has been your most successful method? Do tell.

Life and Death

2011-08-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

This week I visited with an old friend who is waiting to die. Those are her words. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 6 years ago, had radiation and was pronounced cancer-free. A year later it metastasized to her bones and lungs. She moved into hospice several years ago. She became one of the few people to live longer than expected. Finally she has been given 9-12 months to live, but she is eager for the 6 months mark so she can take advantage of Oregon's Death with Dignity law. Her doctor promised at the outset to help her end her life when she had only 6 months left. For a long time she still had enough quality of life left that she was in no hurry, but this week she told me she is marking time. She sleeps as much as possible to speed up the process.
This morning I learned that another friend, one I haven't seen in years, a much younger friend, died last week of a heart attack, and is at this moment being laid to rest. I missed the service because I learned of it just a little too late. She was a great talent and wonderful spirit. She directed my solo show on my 40th birthday, one I decided to put on for 50 of my closest friends to show "what forty looks like" to the total mortification of my teenage daughter. She had no idea I would strip naked. My director didn't judge me, she helped me do everything to the best of my abilities. I may have been my most creative self under her tutelage. She leaves a great hole in Portland and the world. RIP Carolyn Holzman.
And that is life.
Death. Dying. Holes ripped in our universe, scars left on our hearts as we experience loss of loved ones, and even of those we never knew. Consider 9/11. As we approach the 10th anniversary of the day the World Trade towers came down, the Pentagon was attacked, and Flight 93 was hijacked, we are reminded of lives that were lost, which reactivates all the grief we still have stored in our bodies, our minds, our hearts. My friend Pema Teeter is doing a beautiful thing over on her blog from now till 9/11/11 -- she's writing a story a day to help us all heal, and she's inviting you to write as well. Check it out: http://www.storycharmer.com/

Blue Roses news and Poetry news. NEWS in other words.

2011-08-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

I am busy lining up a director for my New York reading of Blue Roses at the Dramatists Guild Friday Night Lights series on October 28, 2011 at 6pm. Stop by if you are in Manhattan that evening. The play runs between 60-75 minutes. You can still make your 8pm show.
I will have finished a first draft of the sequel to Blue Roses by then, which I can pitch at will to anyone who shows interest, and maybe to strangers who will listen, just for practice. (Pitching your story is critical if you're a writer who wants to get produced.)
On the poetry front: I received a late night email from Binge Press and Productions. They want to publish my mini-chapbook "Invert Sugar" of lesbian poems. I'm quite happy about it. They produce these minis, not to make money, but to promote poets. I'll receive 50, fifty!, of these little charmers, plus 100 broadsides of one of the poems from the book to promote myself, and they will sell as many as they can at places like the AWP, book fairs and readings.
Serendipity much? I'll be giving away books and broadsides at my reading, won't I? And handing out business cards, of course. Speaking of which, my new cards sport ALL my social network info: google+, Twitter, blogspot, Facebook, website, email and cell. What do you include on your card?

At least one more time on Government Debt Ceiling issues

2011-07-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

What I really want to call this would result in too many swear words, and I hope I have a better vocabulary than that. This country has devolved into one of a rising population below the poverty line, a shrinking middle class, and 1% who controls more than 80% of the money. And that 1% pays little to no taxes. They do not want to pay taxes. They want those of us who live below the poverty line to pay taxes, the shrinking middle class to pay taxes, those who are out of work to pay taxes. They want us to have little to no education, little to no health care, and no Social Security. No Veterans' Benefits. No Welfare. They would be happier if we would all just curl up and die, leaving any property we might own to them.
I have had it with the rich who do not produce jobs, who outsource jobs, who pay no taxes, who do no charity work, who don't believe in social welfare, or the golden rule.
I take back anything I said earlier about being willing to compromise that didn't include taxing the rich. (Did I say that? surely not.) Tax them to the gills, but certainly at least tax them in a way that doesn't include loopholes. Tax and spend! If by spend you mean: Pay our bills, why yes, Senator, that is precisely what I mean. And I note that many of the bills we have run up include a great deal of pork for your state, your home town, your county. I also note you personally have benefited from your lobbyists, your backers, your friends, your cronies. I notice that YOU have healthcare, a paycheck, a home, schools for your children. And who is that pays for those things exactly? Oh that's right: the government. Kiss my foot. And then, raise the debt ceiling!

Social Security Checks

2011-07-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

Even if the government does go into default, Social Security still has money in its account to pay benefits. There is no reason not to send out Social Security checks unless the government raids the SS account to pay its other bills -- like payroll to Congress or something it thinks is more important than the old and disabled, or the widows and children of deceased workers.
When the media, or the politicos tell the public that the government isn't going to send out Social Security checks, they do so in order to WAKE US UP. We are now counting down the days until the government runs out of its ability to borrow any more money.
We have not been paying attention, because we do not think we ARE the government. Well, what do we think WE THE PEOPLE OF THESE UNITED STATES means? We elect these representatives, these congress people who are at loggerheads, who don't seem able to reach a compromise so that our government can pay its bills. WE do. YOU and I do. We have to light the fire under their chairs.
We have to write our congress people, sign petitions, call them on the phone, send email, tweet, however you reach your representatives. NOW IS THE TIME. Okay, I'm sorry to be be shouting. I'm a little impatient. With all of us. Especially with our so-called representatives.
We have to get to yes.

US Debt Ceiling, Are You Kidding Me?

2011-07-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

This is getting serious. John Boehner storms out AGAIN. President Obama has offered serious cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and asked for taxes from the rich and corporations. I don't know why the corporations complain, they don't pay them anyway. Seriously, GM takes in how many billions and pays ZERO taxes? Do you read these news articles about what the corporations don't pay? They have a 35% tax rate, but so many loopholes that they never pay anything at all. Apparently Republicans think no services should be given to the poor, only to the rich, and only the middle class should pay taxes. Poor have no money, rich want to hold onto their money, and corporations are too slick to ever give out any money. So, if you're middle class you are totally screwed.
For starters, Social Security should be taken out of everyone's paycheck, regardless of how much one earns. Right now that is capped at 100,000. Why? They still give you a benefit check if you earn over 100,000. Pay up. Also, close down those corporate loopholes. Give them credit for doing good works, but tax them fairly.
And until Congress can reach a compromise how about we shut off their pay? That's right, all payment to Congress is suspended until agreement is reached. What do you want to bet agreement is reached before August 2nd?

RIP Amy Winehouse

2011-07-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

I was planning to post about the debt ceiling in the US today. But then word came that Amy Winehouse was found dead in her apartment, of a presumed overdose. Her father is on an airplane, not knowing that she is lying dead, while millions of us are already reading and writing and talking about it. They have already made her a member of the Forever 27 Club, along with Janis, Jimi and Morrison.

So many people are FaceBooking, Tweeting about Amy that her death was a given, because of her addiction. That's easy to say now that she is dead. But people do overcome addiction, even when it looks as though they will fail. And there are celebrities who are still struggling while in the limelight. I want you to know, even though they don't, that I am pulling for them. Lindsay, Brittany, you're in that group. You CAN make it. Millions of people want you to.

It was a happy day when Robert Downey, Jr. turned the corner. He struggled mightily in front of everyone, and seemed lost so many times. Let's hope he never has to struggle that hard again. He is a brilliant man with so much talent and we are so lucky to get to be the beneficiaries of it. That is how I feel about all the people I know who are survivors of their addictions, who are making it in this world in spite of that terrible disease. They are heroes. Addiction is a killer.

We are going to have to do better as a society. We have recognized that addiction is a disease. We have devised various ways to deal with that. But we still attach a stigma on the one hand and glamorize it on the other. We lose family and friends and our celebrity darlings. These are real people with real talents. We have to do better. We need our people who have talents and skills in the areas of science, medicine, counseling, celebrity wrangling, psychology, to start putting their heads together to save our future generations from addition. And as for the rest of us we need to stop stigmatizing and glamorizing ... however and whenever we can.

Addiction runs rampant in my own family. I have survivors, I have practicing alcoholics, I have family members who think they have control. We all know which ones we are. How about you? Are you untouched?

Blue Roses

2011-07-20T19:40:00.000-07:00

Awhile back (Gearing Up post) I wrote that I was going to do a major rewrite of Blue Roses. Then last weekend I ran into Andrew Wardenaar at JAW. He loves Blue Roses, and can't imagine why I'd want to rewrite it. He's right, of course. There's nothing wrong with the play. I have a new idea about the characters. So what I should be doing is writing a NEW PLAY. A new play with the same characters, a companion piece. [smack to the forehead].
When I wrote the Gearing Up post, I said I was going to begin by using Save the Cat, and I am. Tomorrow. This is my public commitment to begin tomorrow. Even though I am still struggling with my brain, I can begin by re-reading Save the Cat, and making notes, making note cards. The beautiful thing is: I already have my characters! As a companion piece the play can be a prequel, a sequel, or even set at the same time, in a different place. Or even the same place. Oh, this is going to be fun.
What are you doing to exercise your creativity right now? Please share.

The Dress that Changed My Life

2011-07-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

I was just reading a blog about a designer that believes he makes dresses that can change women's lives. Really? Have you ever had or even worn a dress or ANY article of clothing that changed your life?
My last post was about the possibility of the US government defaulting on its debt, and today I'm writing about dresses that could change your life. Really, Sandra? Really? Has the economy turned around? Has Congress suddenly decided to compromise? Maybe. The President is endorsing bipartisan "deal on debt", and the so-called Gang of Six [Senators] are pressing forward on something that appears to be a bipartisan compromise that will include slashing the budget and raising revenue. Including some cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
Also new today: President Obama has endorsed the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. All in all a red-letter day. Or maybe a red dress day. Secretary Clinton has not endorsed the repeal of DOMA, nor has she come out in favor of same sex marriage. Come on, Hillary.
I have had a lot of favorite clothing items in my life beginning with that cranberry red silk velvet dress that I outgrew at the age of four and am still writing about. I've worn dresses that made me feel beautiful, and one that I hallucinated in and that hallucination became a self-fulfilling prophecy ... that was sad and horrible. Was that life-changing? If so, it was in a bad way. Every now and then I go through my wardrobe and through out everything that makes me feel fat or dumpy. Even if I bought it last week.
I can remember almost everything I ever wore at events that were life changing, but nothing I ever wore actually changed my life. What about you? What was it? Where did you get it? In what way did your life change? Did you become a better person? A better singer? Suddenly you could dance? Oh wait a minute! I never walked until my mom bought me a pair of shoes, but the minute she laced them up on me I took off walking. Does that count?

Our Government in Default

2011-07-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Because I studied Economics at University, I would expect myself to be more educated on this topic. Instead, I find that I am lying awake worrying at night instead of reading up. Like others, I signed a bunch of petitions and hoped that my representatives in Congress would find a way out of this gridlock. I even refused to sign the last few haranguing President Obama on the subject of Social Security -- even though that is the majority of what I live on these days -- because I'm willing to give a little just to end this stalemate.
I am dismayed that our country has come to this, and I blame RACISM. I fear and believe that the Republicans were so shocked and outraged that we elected President Obama that they are doing everything they can to ensure his is a one term presidency. And within a very short time of his taking the reins, Democrats too began to lose patience. Apparently they thought they had elected a savior rather than a politician. And so, we failed him. Had all of us who elected him stood behind him from the outset, really backed him all the way, we would not be in this mess. But we didn't. And now he is having to try to steer his way, almost completely alone.
We will blame him for this default.
And when that happens, or whatever happens -- because what miracle could happen now to overturn these past few years? Even finding and killing Osama bin Laden didn't make much difference. Whatever happens, we will be a long time waiting for our next president of color.
So, if you are like me, worrying what will happen if our government chooses default over compromise, think about why we are making that choice. Why the two parties can't reach a compromise. Why our President is up there in his shirt sleeves mucking out the stalls all alone.

Plawrights Festival here in Portland this weekend and next

2011-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

I'm starting my weekend out right: with a brand new play by a woman playwright, right here in Portland. This year, it's the ONLY play by a woman in this annual festival of new plays. I never miss this festival. Not only is the festival free, but it is a chance to see new works by playwrights from across the country, and thanks to the commitment of Portland Center Stage, new works from Oregon's playwrights as well (the Made in Oregon series). Any playwright in the area who is worth her salt is in attendance, learning, relearning, or honing her craft, while simultaneously networking and being entertained. As my long-time writing partner always says: we can always learn something, even if it's only what NOT to do. I've learned what TO do, from the most seasoned to the freshest youngsters who are still in high school -- the curtain raisers.
This year we'll see some sort of avant-garde work in the men's restroom. A couple of years ago it was the women's.
Read all about Andrea Stolowitz's play below, and join me there this Saturday, won't you? 4pm sharp. No! Come early and grab a sandwich or a drink, schmooz, people watch, network with other creatives like yourself.

The JAW Festival opens with with Made in Oregon series, featuring works-in-progress from Oregon writers, with performances at 4pm and 8pm July 16h & 17th on the Main Stage. Admission is free and no reservations are required for Made in Oregon readings.

Gerding Theater at the Armory
128 NW Eleventh Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209 | 503-445-3700

Antarktikos by Andrea Stolowitz
Directed by Gemma Whelan
Saturday, July 16 at 4pm
Main Stage

Somewhere between Oregon and Antarctica lie several points on a continuum: Susan, a writer at an artists residency at the South Pole; Captain Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the British Antarctic expedition of 1912; and Hilary, Susan's 21-year-old daughter. When an insomniac EMT named Alex becomes the hapless link among them, time collapses, geographies blend and destinies emerge.

About the playwright: Andrea Stolowitz is a graduate of the MFA playwriting program at UC-San Diego. Her plays have been developed and produced nationally and internationally at theaters like the Old Globe, The Long Wharf, Victory Gardens, and the Cherry Lane. Antarktikos was written in Sept. 2010 and has been developed at Artists Repertory Theater, Key City Public Theater, The New Harmony Project, and White Pine Productions. It was a finalist for Play Penn and Premiere Stages. Andrea serves as the Oregon Regional Representative to the Dramatists Guild, is a proud member of Playwrights West, and teaches at Willamette University.

Gearing Up

2011-07-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

Although I do think that most of my energy, creative and otherwise, is going towards healing my body from the fall, I can feel my brain trying to steer itself back toward writing creatively again. I have two big projects: a major rewrite of "Blue Roses" and a minor rewrite of "The Godmother." Blue Roses first I think, because I'm excited about it. Although the characters from The Godmother periodically harass me, even in my dreams, to DO SOMETHING, to get the play produced. That bunch, they want out of the box. Each character has a full life that wants to be lived onstage. I could do an entire series with these characters, if I had the chance. I could see them in a TV series, for sure.
I would love to see them in an onstage series, although that is so hard to do. Not that a TV series isn't hard to do! Right? Where would THAT money come from? I guess what I mean is, that because a local production seems more doable, it seems harder. The TV idea would be completely up to someone else who came along and bought the rights.
The point is, I have enough ideas, enough character background and story to write the material. These gangsters are kicking at the file cabinet all the time. Where they are it's 1928, Kansas City, Missouri, and Prohibition is in full swing. Not really enforced in KC because of politics, so the Irish Mob is doing great. The Godmother is a young butch dyke who has just taken over for her murdered brother. She is Tomboy McCorkle and she chooses for her second Mr. Uppity Jones. Half her crew is African-American, half her girls are too. She's got a thing for her widowed sister-in-law Corker, and she's got a younger brother to raise. She's also got some serious competition to watch out for with Chee Chee di Mayo and his boys. So, you can see I'm gonna have to get to them soon.
Blue Roses is getting a complete overhaul. The current protagonist will become a background player as one of the background players steps up to take over the story. I'm excited about it. It makes so much more sense in my mind already. I'll tell you more after I complete a draft.
How do you gear up to write new creative works? do you outline? mind map? talk about your work or keep it secret? I'm planning to use Blake Snyder's Save the Cat to outline Blue Roses this time, just as I did when I wrote The Godmother. It is a screenwriting book, but it works for the stage as well. Tell me your writing secrets! I'm spilling mine.

The Day the Cast Came Off

2011-07-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

At last the cast is off my right arm. It was only two weeks. I don't know what I was thinking. I nearly passed out from the pain when my arm was freed. Seriously. They had to lay me down, get a pillow, a wet rag for my head, some orange juice ... and wait. I guess I thought that my arm would have magically healed while encased in fiberglass and I could do everything as before. Alas no. I also have a sprained wrist, so I have a brace as well as a sling now. If anything I'm even more encumbered. I can take those off, in fact I have to take them off and exercise my arm at times during the day. Also ice the elbow 20 minutes a day.
The arm doesn't have a huge range of motion yet. The fingers are good to go, not so the thumb (I think that's to do with the wrist). My elbow looks like a grapefruit, size and color. Very nice.
Doc gave me a large container of Vicodin to encourage my doing my daily exercises. As my brain has been mush anyway, I don't see how it can hurt. I think all my faculties have gone toward healing these past two weeks. I am curious to see how long it will take me to get back in writing shape. Physically and mentally. Stay tuned if you have the patience!
And, please ... do write and say what your own experience has been in similar circumstances. Has injury ever affected your creativity?

I Saw a Successful Writer Last Night

2011-07-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

I went to Willamette Writers' monthly meeting here in Portland yesterday evening where we always have a speaker, and I ALWAYS learn something. Last night I mostly just had a great time watching a young fellow describe his experience of "winning the writer's equivalent of the lottery." (Quote by Cynthia Whitcomb who introduced him.) Daniel is the man who sold his first fiction novel -- when he had written 100 pages -- to Steven Spielberg. The finished book "Robopocalypse" opened in 13th place on the NY Times Best Seller list. He's been consulted all this past year by Dreamworks about the robots they're building, and rightfully so because he has a Ph.D in robotics.
See this isn't really a lottery. This is a smart guy writing about what he knows and what he has a great passion for. Everything he has written (non-fiction up to now) has been successful because he is a hard worker, clever, quick-witted, and passionate. And yes there was some luck involved, but not as much as you might think.
What did I learn this time? Don't hold back, use everything I have, this might be the only book I write so do my best, and follow every lead for a shot at publishing/agent/etc. Daniel has used everything he learned in academia to aid him in his writing career. Smart man.

I Am a New Yorker

2011-07-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

Never mind that I do not now, nor have I ever -- in thisd lifetime -- been a resident of New York. Since the first time I read about NYC I wanted to move there, live there. The first time I flew into La Guardia I had this feeling in my stomach: I'm coming home. By the next afternoon, as I was walking the streets of Greenwich Village, people were asking me directions, and I was giving them -- correctly. I have a good sense of direction and I pay attention. I don't know why people ask me for directions, but it happens.
I saw many, many Off- and Off-Off-Broadway shows on that first trip, no Broadway shows. It was 1979. My collaborator and I were there to visit with American Place Theatre about the possibility of their producing our play, but they weren't comfortable with our requirement of an all-woman cast, so there went that dream, onto the next.
Over the years I have returned to NYC as many times as I could afford it. I have made many friends in NY, and friends have moved to NY. I've subscribed to The New Yorker since 1981 and read the blurbs about the current shows, arts, music as avidly as if I were planning my weekly outings. I read the New York Times for news and arts the same way.
So what keeps me from moving to Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Queens? Not money, though I have none to speak of. I live small and frugally, I could manage. No, I stay where I am because of family.
I was born with a huge case of wanderlust. I love to travel. I have, in fact, travelled. Now that my resources are so limited I just want to be near my family. And they don't want to live in NYC. Nor could we afford to, as a family. So I'm looking to my next visit to New York, my real home.

What have I learned so far from my big fall?

2011-06-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to think about what it means to be injured -- not horribly injured, as in paralyzed or blinded, but definitely sidelined. If I were a sports player, I would be benched. I'm having to type with my left pointer finger. Not so great. I also find that my concentration is limited, and my memory is pitiful. I have left things behind, forgotten words and names, and I feel pretty cranky in general. So maybe I've learned nothing yet. I'm taking in the fact that I have a great many friends who are concerned. I appreciate so much the ones who have been able to bring me food when I couldn't get out, and run me on errands when I couldn't drive. I can only barely drive yet.
I have a feeling there is a lesson still to be revealed. If you have been injured I'd like to hear from you. What have you learned, if anything?

Old Enough?

2011-06-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

During the Vietnam War the people of the US put enough pressure on Congress to lower the voting age to 18 because young men were being drafted at 18, fighting, dying for our country at 18. I know the drinking age was 18 in some states as well. I don't know if that was nationwide.
The voting age remained. The draft was abolished in favor of an all volunteer military. But during the Vietnam War, it was rare for people to do more than one tour. Now they do three or four. Our volunteer military goes way above and beyond the call of duty IMHO. But that is not my subject today.
Age is. We are an aging population in the US. I had many friends who went to the war I protested. I worked for the US Army Recruiting Main Station before I became a protester, so I witnessed literally hundreds of young men going off to war.
One thing that never occurred to me to protest was the age limits for holding office. This morning I read an article on this topic. John Seery is proposing an amendment to the US Constitution to lower the age requirements. I agree with him. Read his article and see what you think.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/26/john_seery_age/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

down ... temporarily out

2011-06-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

like humpty i took a great fall. yesterday at weiden & kennedy, missed the last step, went down hard on left knee and right hand. hand so hard that i broke my elbow. now typing one-fingered with left hand. don't expect a lot of words for awhile! i'm in a cast.

Intention of my work

2011-06-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today I am completing an application to further my work as a playwright. I haven't written a lot about my playwriting here on this blog. When I started here I thought I would. I thought I might even put up scenes from plays here. So far, no. I thought I might put up poems, and I did put up a few, then I learned that posting poems on one's blog was considered "publishing" them and I stopped. Good grief. I was looking for feedback on fledging poems, but that was my naivete. Now that I know, I won't be posting poems here until after they have been published elsewhere. After I have already sent them out into the world. Scenes from plays can always be reworked. Playwriting is a whole 'nother ballgame.
Anyway, the app asks, as one possibility, for a person to describe her intention of her work. Today I think I might choose that option. So, I am here to explore with you or in front of you, that intention. And then, I'd love to hear from you what YOUR intention is about your own work, any piece of your work. Whatever you are working on in your life. Put it out there. For example, for a long time I worked in the field of disability. I was an examiner for Social Security. Then an analyst for that insurance company, then a supervisor, then a manager. Then I left to become a person who represented Social Security claimants at their hearings before Administrative Law Judges for their disability benefits. I was good at it. Because my intention in that job was for a win-win-win. I felt that what I did benefited not only the claimants by obtaining their benefits for them, but the insurance company by reducing their payout, as well as Social Security by assuring that only the people with genuine claims were being represented. I should add a 4th win, because of course, my company also got paid. I loved that job. That's the one I retired from.
My intention for my work as a playwright is similar. I want my characters to overcome their obstacles, my plays to have the proper structure so my audience feels the satisfaction from a story well told. Above all, I want my audience to be entertained. Not necessarily happy, but moved in some way, changed from the time they entered the venue.
How about you? How do you get satisfaction from your work? Does intention help you?

Supreme Court Rules for Wal-Mart against 1.5 million women today

2011-06-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

The Justices ruled 5.4 to throw out a discrimination suit against Wal-Mart today brought by almost 1.5 million female employees of Wal-Mart who alleged that the employer discriminated against them because they were women. Didn't pay equal wages for equal work, didn't promote them the same as men, and so on. Same old same old. Case is thrown out. I have this to say about that: we would not have to sue for equal wages, or sex discrimination if we were equal citizens under the law. Women are do not have equal rights in this country. We never have had. We have yet to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
We have tried. We have come THIS close. We could still do it. We are THREE STATES away from passing the ERA. Still. I know, it seemed like we lost back in 1978, and many of us gave up hope, and the whole Women's Rights movement pretty much fizzled out at that point. There are still feminists, even Second Wave feminists. Now Third Wave feminists. But there is now legal interpretation that shows we can still pass the ERA itself if three more states will ratify it. We need to put life into the movement once again. For this we need new blood. We need our BROTHERS, we need our ALLIES, we need everyone who is willing for women to have equal rights to stand up and be counted.
Please go to http://equalrightsamendment.org/ and read up on this issue. See what you can do, and then take some small (or large or ANY size) action. Be a hero for women's rights. Do you have equal rights in your state? Are you a feminist? What does the word feminist mean to you?

Father's Day: My Dad

2011-06-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

I was a daddy's girl, but I called him Dad. Many of my earliest memories are of my Dad. He took me with him to the woods, fishing, "hunting" although he never killed anything in front of me after the turtle incident when I was two. We were fishing and he caught a turtle and killed it. I freaked. He fished and hunted for our protein, but I was not having turtle, even at two, believe me. I was 4 or 5 before I figured out that the squirrel and rabbit we ate was the same as the ones running around outside. (duh). I stopped eating them then. I never ate deer. I think he only brought it home once and that was only part of one that he was sharing with a relative. Anyway, after the turtle, he did target practice when we went out, but mostly when we went tramping around the woods he was teaching me how to be quiet, how to identify plants (poison ivy, edibles), how to find my way back home, how to track animals. He also taught me how to shoot when I was about 6, and made me a sawed off .22 when I was 7 -- the year he died of a heart attack.
When I was 4, Dad taught me to read and tell time. Reading was the greatest gift, and he had infinite patience. I sat on his lap going "what's that word, Dad?" and "what's that word?" until I knew all the words. Then he, Mom and I sat and read together every evening until bedtime. Dad always tucked me in and sang to me as long as I can remember, until he died. He also used to ask me if I would always be daddy's little girl and if I would always sit on his lap. I would say yes, and he would say "even when you're 14?" And I would say yes. We never had the chance to test that promise.
Dad wanted a boy, but he got me. There had been a boy before me, but he died before he was a full 24 hours old. So, he had to make do with a girl. I would never have guessed that I was second choice. Not when I was little. If he had lived until I was a teen, things would probably have got tense. He didn't, so I continued to idolize him.
Dad has been gone a very long time now. I still miss him. I have come to see that he had his flaws, as we all do. I think he did his best to save me from my mom and that's why he took me with him to the woods, to his work when he could. I wonder whether he was happy with my mom, or whether he stayed with her for the sake of me and my sister (she was still a toddler when he died). Whatever the reason, I'm glad he was there to the end. My heart broke the day he died. I prayed on my knees every night for two years to be taken so I could be with him. That didn't happen, obviously.
Here's to you, Dad. You were the best. If reincarnaton does exist, I hope to see you in the next life.

Wedding Day: Fiona and Kaspa

2011-06-18T14:35:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the bride and groom, may you be happy together forever. Here is the small stone I wrote for the couple:

Purple hearts of the redbud tree weep raindrops of happiness onto white roses who hold their petals as if for the bride's bouquet.

As I look out my window today in Portland, Oregon the weather has changed once again back to rain for a couple of days. My Eastern Redbud sits in front of my door, its beautiful purple heart-shaped leaves bright against a background of many shades of green. Under it is a rose bush with stark white roses. Today, the purple leaves are drip drip dripping with rain, and drops are glistening all along the branches as well. Yesterday the sun was shining through the leaves, making them deep red -- another gorgeous sight, today it is rain and I choose to see the drops as tears of happiness for the bride. They do seem happy and have gathered so many people to celebrate with them, asked people to write these small stones for their wedding. To share in their joy. Brilliant! Ask for what we want, share our joy. These are concepts to be taken up and employed in all our lives, people. Better than wedding cake!

Knowledge is Power

2011-06-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

When I was in my late teens I thought I knew so much. I had already experienced quite a lot of life: love, marriage, childbirth and was living the life of a battered wife of an alcoholic. I was biding my time until I turned 21 and could escape (in Missouri you had to have your parent's permission to divorce if you were under 21 and I didn't have it). I hadn't graduated high school, but I was self educated. I read everything, carrying my paperback dictionary with me on the bus to work, looking up every word I didn't know as I read my way through Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. After the Greeks I moved on to other philosophers, other readings. At 21 I finally asked a librarian for a list of the classics and read authors by the armload. Complete works of Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and so on. Wish I had been pointed to women authors earlier, but picked those up in the 70s.
When I went back to school, university at age 29, I tested out of the entire first year of college and all English requirements, all Fine Arts. 30 semester hours total. After I finally finished my university degree many years later, and wrote my master's thesis and had it accepted, I did think I knew quite a lot.
Those words engraved over the side door of my high school "Knowledge is Power" stayed with me. I know that my vocabulary, my ability to learn quickly, my excellent memory in my younger years, my insatiable thirst for information -- all have combined to help in move ahead in the world. I was able to provide for my family because of those things.
I could have been a factory worker like my mom with a tenth grade education, but I fought hard to move past that. I was kicked out of high school for being pregnant. My teenage husband was insanely jealous and when my (female) teacher at night school drove me home one night, he thought I hadn't gone because I didn't walk out the front door of the school(and he had come to check up on me.) So I was beaten and had to drop out.
Now that I'm older and actually think about things, I find that I don't know as much as I thought I did. So much of what seemed so clear now seems so fluid. So amorphous. Yesterday I wrote about the meaning of love, and not being sure that I do understand the meaning of love. Lately I've been thinking about what I believe about life. All my life I have believed in reincarnation. I mean ALL my life. When I was a very young child I remembered, remembered clearly my past lives. I would tell my mom about "before." I would say to her, "don't you remember Mama, when I was the Mom and you were the little girl?" and so on. I got into trouble for this belief at Sunday School until finally Mom told me to stop talking about these things at Sunday School, stop telling these stories. She tried to convince me they were dreams. They were not dreams. They were memories.
I also experienced deja vu ALL the effing time. It happened so often I couldn't believe other people weren't experiencing it too. It never happens to me any more. Why is that? And why did it happen so often when I was a child? What is that about? Why do I suddenly sound like Andy Rooney? Good lord.
So, if I believe in reincarnation, what else does that mean? I thought that made me a Buddhist. I have told people for years that I believe in the Goddess. I have had dreams about the Goddess, in which she comes to me and tells me I will never be alone, and so on. But I don't actually believe there is some Goddess somewhere in the sky or outer space somewhere protecting me. It's more that I believe we are all one. Like all the same energy connected molecules, and we will all just come back and come back over and over. Like that. But is there a higher power?
Will we always be people? Why would we be? When I say "we" are all connected, I mean that everything in the universe is connected, everything that is made of the same energy is connected. We could as easily be a cloud or a raindrop or a star or a piece of bugshit. Right? All the same. So why the memories?
What about Karma? Why do we have minds and memories and morals? This is too much to puzzle over in one day, particularly with a migraine. Ha ha! Threw you with that one, eh? Yes. This is one of those headache days in which I cannot take meds because I can take them only twice in a 7 day period. Two more days before I can take meds again. So, I am writing to take my mind off the pain. Now I will rest.
Please, if you have thoughts on these topics that you are willing to share, I'm interested.

Understanding the Meaning of Love

2011-06-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today I worked at one of my part time jobs. This one has some built in downtime and we are to bring a quiet activity. I brought a book, and I brought an essay to work on. I thought I would try to write an essay for a contest. I didn't think I would win it, this is one that attracts literally thousands of entrants. I thought it would be good practice for me, and because it has a big prize ($3,000) and lots of competition, I would try my best. Then I pulled it out, and looked at the title. "When did you first understand the meaning of love?"
I used up all my first bit of downtime thinking about that question. Not making notes or working on a mind map. Just thinking. Back to work. Next downtime. Had to re-read the question. So, when DID I first understand the meaning of love? Well, what IS the meaning of love? I didn't have access to anything except my own brain at the time, so I pondered. I thought about my first experience of love and assumed that must have been my parents. The problem is I don't think my mom actually loved me. So forget that. My dad loved me. But my dad died when I was seven years old. Did I understand the meaning of love by then? I don't think so, because at that time I think I believed my mom loved me. Although it wasn't long until I understood that she did not.
So then I thought about my own children and how I love them and when I loved them and I just feel like such a bad mother myself that I couldn't think what to write about that. I thought about people I have professed to love and all I can do is wonder: do I understand the meaning of love? I know what unconditional love is when I am on the receiving end: my cat gives it to me. My babies gave it to me until they had been hurt enough times not to trust people any more, to be wary of giving love without condition. I didn't abuse my kids, I don't mean that. But I yelled at them, I withheld love from them, I ignored them when I could have been loving and kind. They felt hurt, ignored, unloved.
And what's the use of thinking about people I've been "in love" with? It was never unconditional, it always changed.
So, what is love anyway? When I say I love someone what do I mean? I love my daughter probably more than anyone in the world. Today that means I would do anything in the world for her. I would die for her. And yet she is also the person I have caused the most hurt. I can't change that, but I would if I could. I love my grandchildren, my sister, my son, my friends, even my mom.
When I say I love you, it means something. I'm not always sure what. I think we've established that it doesn't mean I'll always live near you. For some of the people I love it does mean that I will do anything for you, give you anything I have. Those are a precious few. For everyone else, I'm still exploring the meaning of love. I'm open to discussion.

Overcoming our personal history

2011-06-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to see a one-woman show by Brenda Phillips called No More Pity Party Blues. Brenda has a gorgeous voice and is a wonderful entertainer. (She is also an artist, and her "tickets" were take home cards of her art. Bonus!) Her material flowed through stories from her life, covering the first time she was "in love" in second grade through being sexually abused by "play uncles" through real loves in her adult life, to today. She shows how she has come to take responsibility for her own self, her own part in her happiness. Along the way there was wonderful singing of the blues and gospel that had the audience moving, clapping, and vocalizing along. Next time she brings this show out to play, be sure to go. I'll let you know as soon as I hear about it. This was a short notice kind of thing, Brenda will be bringing it back.
I too have been working on my own personal history, as I recently wrote about. We all have things we have to overcome. Some are worse than others. For me I find that some of the things that might be considered the most horrendous to others are not the ones that were hanging me up. Or maybe not the first step. My most recent non-fiction piece that I wrote about was about being molested by a friend of my mom's. Not losing my virginity at the age of 12, or being married at 15, or being a battered wife, or when I was raped, or the things that I consider much worse that I won't even mention here. But that molestation was what changed me from the innocent babe that I was, to the person I was to become. I began taking the steps to take charge of my own life, began making my own bad decisions that led to many of those bad things that happened later in my life.
At this stage in my life the big decisions all have to do with forgiveness. Brenda talked about that yesterday. Forgiving oneself. I find it relatively easy to go back and forgive my 12 year old self for the decisions I made, but I still stick at the decisions I made at 21 and older. Intellectually I can say that I did the best I could at the time. When I knew better I did better. My heart twists and turns when I try to forgive those decisions that resulted in pain for my children. I'm still working on forgiveness.

Deep Thinking

2011-06-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

My friend Jenny is spending an entire year doing things she has never done and blogging about it. This has led to some deep thinking -- on MY part. Today her entry is about a friend of hers who is moving away, and Jenny thinks about what it is like for the person left behind. I am a person who has moved so many times I can't remember how many, and until today I don't remember giving a thought to how the people I left behind were feeling. Maybe I did. But I don't remember it. I do remember wondering why they would be angry at me, why they wouldn't be happy for me.
From the time I started reading books at age 4, and knew there were other places to be, I wanted to go to those places. And I didn't just want to see them, I wanted to live there. I wanted to live in faraway places. But in lots of places. Also, I love houses. Apparently, all houses. So, I always wanted to move. I like decorating, I like redecorating. I'm forever seeing another place I want to live in. Once I was away from home (at 15), I started changing houses. Once I was free to move out of town, I did. My second marriage was to a military man. After I divorced him, I was even freer to move around. I started in Missouri, but I've lived in Alaska, Texas, Kansas, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and in Oregon.
I've traveled to every state but Delaware and Rhode Island, and to 20 countries on 4 continents. I have friends in many places, friends I see fairly often. Two of my dearest friends live in other countries. I have as many close friends in NYC as I do in Portland.
Maybe. Maybe I feel that close to them because traveling is such a part of my nature. Maybe they don't feel that close to me. Maybe they only feel that close to people who ARE that close, literally. If I can't be there to wrap my arms around them, hold them when they need it, bring them something to read, make a pot of soup, am I really the friend I think I am? Or am I all just talk? Nice warm cozy words that no one can cuddle up to when pain is real and what they really want is a warm body, not a virtual hand.
These are the thoughts I am having today. I have no plans to move today or any time in the future. I'm happy in my 250 square feet. But if I ever do move again, I will have a different attitude about leaving people behind.

I support women's plays and new work in theatre.

2011-06-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping you'll join me in sending money to support this new play: http://www.indiegogo.com/The-World-Premiere-of-The-Garden-of-Monsters
Mara Lathrop is a brilliant playwright who has won awards with her work, and like all playwrights -- but especially women -- struggles to get her work produced. She has raised some money already and is currently raising more specifically to compensate the artists in this production.
I've written here before how I've irritated local theatre companies with my emails addressing the inequity of women's plays in their lineups. I won't go into that again right now. I will say that there is a recent article in the New York Times about the dearth of women's plays being produced in New York. So, even if I weren't a playwright myself, if I were just an audience member -- which I also am -- I would support women's plays. As a playwright though, I also feel compelled to support NEW work. If I don't advocate for new work and ask others to do so, how can I hope to get my own work produced? What if all we ever watched were things we know we like already?
It's beginning to seem that way in movies, isn't it? Everything is a sequel or a prequel to something we already know and love. How safe is that? Come on people! Get risky! Dare to taste something new, see something you might not like, take a chance. A movie is less than ten bucks. So you waste a couple of hours. You can actually get up out of your seat and go home and waste your time in front of the televison. Or, get this: you can read a book.
At the theater, seeing a live play you might want to wait for intermission, or in one of those new-fangled plays where you have to sit through the entire 90 minutes, you'll have to watch the whole thing -- or not! People actually do get up and walk out if they are offended or bored, you can do that. But look at it like an adventure! Be the explorer of your posse. Choose something from your local rag or online calendar that has a title or synopsis that piques your interest, call and make reservations, or buy your online tix, and show up.
Or if that's too bold, just donate a few bucks to Mara's Garden of Monsters. Please.

You think you have it bad?

2011-06-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we feel really down, life can be really unfair. Then we look around just a little and sure enough, someone has it worse. One of my dear friend's husband is battling a relapse of throat cancer when the first battle was scarcely over. The treatment is dreadful, and the odds aren't great. They have twin boys who just turned 14. But wait -- they're not the ones I mean. No, it's their friends who were similar. The mom is fine, the dad just lost his battle with cancer a little over a month ago. They also have two boys, one 16, the other 10. The 16 year old was shot in the chest on Sunday in an accident. He's in critical care, has lost a lung. Now it's just Mom and the younger brother praying for all they're worth not to become half a family. Prayer circles have been formed, people are donating blood in his name.

Still, if we look around further, there are others even worse off. People suffering alone with no one to care or notice. If you are alone, maybe you can notice or care about someone today who needs your notice. Sometimes that is all we can do. And sometimes that is enough.

Writing on Wednesday

2011-06-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

On Twitter, people use hashtags (the number sign) and words together to create categories that can be searched. On Wednesdays, there is #WriterWednesday or just #WW. People sometimes report what they're writing, where they've been published, or share their favorite authors, blogs, books, all kinds of writing. This is a good way to learn about what is new in the publishing world. New authors to follow, new writers to learn from. I love reading tips from other writers, even if I've heard them before or read them before, it is good to be refreshed. All writers love to read about writing, especially when we aren't writing at the moment.
Today I worked at one of my part-time jobs, which entailed taking two buses on the way, walking a mile after the second bus, working for two hours, then hitching a ride for that mile, and taking two more buses back home. The first bus of the day was 35 minutes late because the Rose Fleet arrived downtown and the bridges were up. So, I spent all that time just standing looking down the street and checking my watch. After a certain amount of time I knew I was going to have to walk that mile. Not happy, me. Not that I can't use the exercise. I was looking forward to having the time to get lunch and go over my script for work. It all worked out okay. I had a cold wrap and still had time to go over the script anyway. Plus I got some exercise.
Walking gave me time to finish up the non-fiction piece I worked on the past two days. When I got home this evening, I went over it again, reading it aloud and made the changes I had made in my head earlier. Then I found three journals to which to submit it, and did so. Now I have something to tweet about. And that's my #WW. You?

Shame

2011-06-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

After spending my writing time for the past two days on a piece in which I felt many things, one of them shame, even though I was blameless, the feeling is up there for me today. And along comes Representative Weiner of NY, standing up in front of a crowd of press and accepting responsibility for his admittedly "dumb" actions and feeling the shame of it all. He had some tears, and he squirmed, but he stood up and answered all the questions they threw at him. I thought he would read his statement and leave, but he didn't. He said he would now take their questions, and he took them all. He answered them all, over and over again. He denied nothing. He said that he had initially denied sending the picture and tweeting because he was embarrassed and he knew he had done a dumb thing and he didn't want to get caught. He told lie after lie. And now he was finally telling the truth and he felt horrible, and it was no one's fault but his own. He refused to blame it on alcohol, or anything that could be counseled away, anything but his own lack of judgment.
I don't know the man. As I watched him, I felt as if I did. I felt as if I were feeling the shame, the sadness, the surreal-ness of all those reporters asking those questions. He found the inner strength -- I think -- in the truth. By not having to come up with another lie, by telling the truth, he was able to stand there and continue to answer their questions.
May he continue telling the truth and learn from this. May we all learn a lesson today from watching a man face his shame head on and beat it back with the light of truth.

Mining the past

2011-06-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

For the past 22 years I've been writing about an incident in my life that happened when I was 12 years old. It wasn't the most horrible thing that ever happened to me by any means. I've often wondered why do I keep writing about it, why does it stick in my mind, drawing me back the way a lost tooth draws a tongue to the hole in the gum. I wrote 600 pages in 1989 in 6 weeks at a mountain retreat. Since that time I've reworked that material, written short stories, plays, poems from that mass of material, sometimes going back to the same incident, sometimes not -- but that incident is the spark. I think I have finally found the reason why. That was the pivotal moment, the incident that forever changed the journey I was on, switched my track. I made a momentous decision because of that incident, one I thought was a grownup decision, and I suppose it was, but was to set me off on a rocky course for many, many years. I'm writing a creative nonfiction piece about it now called "Losing My Place." I hope this one puts it to rest.

Taking Care of our Bodies

2011-06-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

I'm reposting a quote here that I got from a friend's blog this morning. It's a quote from Buddha: “To keep the body in good health is a duty; otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”
I don't get enough exercise. I always intend to, but instead I spend my time writing. That's what I have always wanted to do my entire life -- have enough time to write as much as I want. Now I have the time, that is what I am doing with my time when my time is free. My other habits are good for my body: I don't drink or smoke or eat things that are bad for me. My diet is excellent. I drink enough water, I don't eat sugar or fat. I'm a vegetarian and I eat lots of vegetables and fruit. High fiber content, low processed food, no trans fats. I laugh a lot, I try to get enough sleep, and I surround myself with loving people.
I do garden, so I get SOME exercise, and I walk some. I like to walk, I like to swim, I just don't discipline myself to do it daily as I have done in the past.
How do you take care of your body in order to keep your mind strong and clear? Or do you? And if not, is your mind strong and clear anyway?

ALWAYS SEARCHING ...

2011-06-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

I've had headaches for as long as I've been an adult. And I've had migraine headaches as least since I was in my mid-30s. At first I had them a couple of times a year. Later they became worse and worse, lasting longer, once I had one for 16 days. After that someone told me I could go to the ER and get something for my headache. Well, back then you could. I started going to the ER and getting a shot of demerol. That was about 3 or 4 times a year. My doctor told me what to ask for, it was demerol and an anti-nausea med. I don't remember the dosages. But by the time I was 55 the headaches were more frequent, and I was having to go to the ER for chest pain way more often that I was for migraines. I was a mess. Finally everything came to a climax: I had a heart "event" after 3 hospitalizations in a month, then a hotel house call for a migraine (I was working and on the road), an allergic reaction to Plavix, and heart failure. I retired. After 18 months of cardiac rehab, I began to get my health back, but the migraines have persisted. So ...
I'm always searching for a cure for migraines. I've found some things that helped a bit. I located my food triggers and eliminated them from my diet: all corn products, nitrites and nitrates, aspartame, sucralose, too much soy. And I became a vegetarian and recently I gave up sugar/sweets as well. I don't drink coffee. I drink plenty of water. I take Co Q 10, and magnesium tablets. I tried feverfew, ginger, butterbur. None of those helped. I tried chiropractic, acupuncture and massage. I learned biofeedback and it sometimes helps. I take Topamax which probably prevents me from having 15 to 20 headaches instead of 8 to 10 a month. It may also decrease the severity. I can't take most of the migraine meds because they give me chest pain. I'm stuck with butalbital and phenergan, which I can take only twice in a week in order to avoid rebound headaches. Oh yes, I'm allergic to aspirin and ibuprophen as well (see Plavix above, severe allergies to meds).
So, now someone has recommended Dermamag oil, which is magnesium oil that you apply to your skin and supposedly is absorbed and has less effect on your digestive system, but is helpful re migraines. It is expensive. But I am about to try to find some locally and apply it. If you have tried this, I would very much appreciate hearing from you. If you don't wish to leave a comment, please contact me via twitter @dehelen.

Off for a Wilde Night

2011-06-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

I'm off to be inspired by that old standby: Oscar Wilde. What a man he must have been. So witty, so bright, and so arrogant to allow himself to end up in jail, beaten and broken. He died way too early because of that. But why wouldn't he believe that he would win over such injustice? Anyone might feel the same.
Tonight I will see The Importance of Being Earnest filmed in HD live on Broadway starring Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell. My daughter and grandson will accompany me and I expect to have a lot of fun. Any time that happens, my muse wakes up and sparkles, shakes her wand in my face and I come alive in all sorts of ways.
Have a splendid evening and night all! And BTW, I'm grateful to Third Rail Rep company for bringing this entertainment to Portland.

Blogging For LGBT Families 2011

2011-06-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

As a lesbian mom, I just want to say I support LGBT families and always have. I'm a gramma now, and proud of my grandchildren as I am of their parents.

Here's a shout out to my friends who have LGBT families, and here's to all of you I don't know! All best,
Sandra de Helen

SMALL STONES' KASPA AND FIONA

2011-06-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

Kaspa & Fiona have taken over my blog for today, because they need our help.

They are both on a mission to help the world connect with the world through writing. They are also getting married on Saturday the 18th of June.

For their fantasy wedding present, they are asking people across the world to write them a ‘small stone’ and post it on their blogs or on Facebook or Twitter.

A small stone is a short piece of observational writing – simply pay attention to something properly and then write it down. Find out more about small stones here.

If you’re willing to help, we’d love you to do things:

1) Re-post this blog on your own blog any time before June the 18th and give your readers a chance to hear about what we’re doing. You can simply copy and paste the text, or you can find the html here.

2) Write us a small stone on our wedding day whilst we’re saying our vows and eating cake, post it on your blog, and send it to us.

You can find out more about our project at our website, Wedding Small Stones, and you can also read our blog at A River of Stones.

We also have a July challenge coming soon, when we’ll be challenging you to notice one thing every day during July and write it down.

Thank you for listening, and we hope we’ll be returning from our honeymoon to an inbox crammed with small stones, including yours.

Kaspa & Fiona

GUERILLA GIRLS and me

2011-05-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I went to a meeting of Guerilla Girls in NYC, it was a networking meeting for theater women. I don't remember a lot about the meeting. I don't live in NYC. But I do remember the talk about the inequity between women and men playwrights being produced across the country. There were some stickers available that a person could plaster on theater walls or bathroom walls etc. Instead, I vowed to contact my local theater companies every year and either congratulate them on having women playwrights in their lineup, or let them know of my disappointment and ask them to consider to include more women next year. I think the only difference I am making is that I am making a nuisance of myself in my own backyard, and pissing people off. Is this what an activist does?
I am like everyone else, I want to be liked. On top of that, I am a playwright. It is not in my best interest to piss off theater heads. What the hell. No wonder the Guerilla Girls had stickers available. I could have remained anonymous, but I thought I was being courageous. A real woman. If there were a pack of people -- women AND men -- talking to theater companies about this very real disparity, then maybe I wouldn't be a thorn in someone's side. As it is, I'm an irritant. This is distressing. What is the answer? Just give up? What would Susan B. Anthony do if she were the only one?

The Stillwater Review, Poetry Reading

2011-05-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have a poem coming out in the inaugural issue of THE STILLWATER REVIEW. There will be a reading and book launch on Friday, June 10 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Atrium of Sussex County Community College. That's in New Jersey, and I'm in Oregon, so I won't be there, but lots of wonderful poets will, so go if you can. Buy the book if you can. Later there will be a smaller version available online. I'll let you know about that when I know about it.
My poem is "Mom's White Strapless Dress: A 50's Memoir." Look for it when you pick up your copy. Thanks for your support.

SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT: WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS GETTING PRODUCED

2011-05-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

I wish I could also say "right here in River City ..." but not quite yet. However, there are companies in the US who are making it their mission to create equity, and Halcyon Theatre in Chicago is one of them. They are offering a festival of FULL PRODUCTIONS, of five women playwrights this summer. Go here and see: http://www.halcyontheatre.org/mission
This isn't their first year to produce women's plays either, but this year they went out and got five women to write plays inspired by other women's plays (from the past). Who wouldn't love to see that? If you are in or around Chicago, go see. If you can make the trip, go do. If you have funds you can share to support Halcyon's mission, please do that. Support women playwrights however you can, please. Right now, women are being produced only 20% compared to men. We are aiming for 50% by 2020. Anything you can do to support that is much appreciated. Talk to your theatre companies. Let them know you appreciate seeing plays by women, want to see plays by women, then show up when they present plays by women. Women write every kind of play. My last play is "The Godmother." It's about the mob in Kansas City during the Prohibition. In case you thought she was a fairy godmother in a silver coach with white horses. Just saying. Now get outa here you crazy kids.

Migraines

2011-05-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

As a long-time migraineur, I'm only beginning to come to terms with this debilitating condition. I have these headaches as often as two or three times a week, month in, month out, and have had for many years. They became worse in my 50's, until I was forced to retire from a combination of migraine and heart disease, but once I retired the heart disease became manageable (after a couple of years). The migraines continue to be so bad that there is no way I could hold down a job, however.
These days, since the beginning of 2011, I've decided to try to write a poem for every migraine I experience. Most days I can't write the poem on the day I'm having it. I've managed a few, but usually the pain is too severe or the nausea, or both. Today is another day after ... I feel groggy, headachy, less than mentally sharp, and really wish I could just stay in bed another 16 hours. But I have a life I have to attend to. So I soldier on.
There are millions of us, doing the same. Most of us are women because more women than men are stricken. I have tried every thing I've ever heard of except for having nails driven into my skull, and I might yet try that. I learned biofeedback, I try every herbal that I hear of, I take supplements regularly, I take preventive meds, and use painkiller meds only on the day of, and never more than 2x a week, no matter how many days I get a headache. I've tried acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, juicing, exercise, hypnosis, crying, laughing, and many Western meds. Prayer and meditation. Now I write.
Writing has been my answer for everything else in my life, why not for migraines? It may not cure them, but I don't see how it can hurt. What do you do, fellow migraineurs? Retreat? Medical marijuana (that I haven't tried)? Ice baths? What?

BLOGSPLASH

2011-05-29T14:32:00.001-07:00

You might want to consider joining the blogsplash of these poets who publish "small stones" for their upcoming wedding. Instructions are here:
http://www.fionarobyn.com/wedding/blogsplash.html

INVERT SUGAR

2011-05-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ever have your mom or gramma or other loving relative say to you: gimme some sugar? Maybe they don't do that in the North, but where I come from, we say it all the time. My grandma and grandpa, my favorite aunts and uncles were always after my sugar. Fond memories.
When migraines took over my life in 1999, yes they did, they took over my life, I eventually had to change every aspect of my daily living. In 2000, I went on the elimination diet and discovered that my main trigger for migraines was CORN and all corn products. Wow, are there a bunch of products that have corn in them, that do not sound like corn. Invert sugar is one of those products.
Invert also means homosexual. Did you know that? It's another old-fashioned word, like using "sugar" to mean love. I first heard it used when I was ten years old and read Radcliffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness." Yes, I was precocious. I read "The Well of Loneliness" at 10. I read everything I could get my hands on, and that happened to be in our bookcase. And then later on, I turned out to be an invert myself. Whoa. Do you think it was the book? or the sugar? I think it was the DNA.
So. Putting the words together: Invert Sugar, sounds like lesbian love to me. I'm giving that title to a mini-chapbook of my lesbian poems. Take that, CORN industry. :)

Carmencita, first draft completed

2011-05-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

Tornado, it is! And the first draft has been sent off to the musical director. She and I will discuss when she returns from her vaycay in a few days, casting will begin soon, and rehearsals will take place over the summer. Production most likely in October, but certainly in the fall. Very excited to have this happen.

Carmencita

2011-05-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

In adapting Carmen for teens, my biggest wall so far is what to do about the bullfight. I don't want a bullfight in Carmencita. I recognize the importance the bullfight has played as a symbol, a metaphor of the violence of the relationship between Carmen and Don Jose. And I do not want to have this blood sport as part of my adaptation. I do want a violent metaphor, but not a bloody one. What to do? I want to keep the music and the lyrics as close to the original as possible, and lose the bloody bullfight. I've been meditating and pondering this question for weeks. Today I think I may have found the answer on the weather channel. What is more violent and unpredictable than tornadoes? This does mean rewriting the lyrics [in French!!!] but it is better than bloody bullfighting, IMHO.