one thing today

  Our public reading last night - I am onstage reading stage notes and one of the actors - in character -   says I can’t read this - and I say … oh, I have readers on me - do you want to borrow them. And everyone laughs because it’s in the play - not for real - and worse yet - it’s  my play.   After the reading - a woman said I was so moved by your piece. She had tears in her eyes. I thanked her. We joined hands for a moment. It felt very pure. 

  Lena Dunham wrote in the New Yorker about leaving the city for good. She writes about her parents … Getting to New York was their ultimate expression of self-determination, the place where they would shed preconceptions about who they were meant to be and create a new life among artists and experimental thinkers, planting their seeds in the fecund soil of the city. 

  playing my fav music on a lovely Saturday and this out my window. 

  We are all prisoners of our dreams. We can’t control them. THEY control US. They take US  where THEY want to go. Sometimes, too often, over and over again - they take us to people, places, things we'd rather not encounter. Hard, tedious work, filth, sadness, trouble, worry. Why not more love and sex and taste sensations, nature and warmth and safety. Why not more sun and sights and sounds easy and pleasing. There is no escape. More fatigue and bleakness awaits. It is so better and lovely to live and have your way in the day - and night - when we are in control - rather than captives - to what awaits us behind our so called resting eyes.  

  After the meeting tonight, I talk with Elliot, an actor in our group - my favorite member. He mentions that a trans actors shifts things in the piece he will be part of next week at our public reading. He says “it’s obvious he’s trans and I don’t have a problem with that but I don’t like having to accept his choice of identity when it comes to telling a story with him." It surprised me. Actually I thought he (trans guy) did a good job at delivering his reading tonight. But I kinda gave Elliot a “well …” kinda non committal response to his point. And then, walking home, in retrospect   … I thought - I should have said “I just think its good for me to take every opportunity I can to give a person the respect they desire and deserve.” But I didn’t.   I like Elliot. His comment should make me think less of him. But deep down, surprisingly, I don’t. God damn. Life gets more and more difficult to understand and do well as it unfolds these days.  

  My 600th post here - time soars fast&furious - and my first about my two lovely sister nieces, B & T … young and beautiful and warm, funny, cool and so alive and different from each other and both at the very start of all things I hope will dazzle them with delight and true joy. They make a car ride to the train   talking about music and peeps and this and that the most fun fun weekend thing. O to have young hair and skin and eyes and   thoughts and desires and wild time and the right tools to make a place for yourself in this ever more sorry ass world that needs giant salve. But they can and they will thrive - and it will be enjoyable to see how they unfold and flourish over time and place and space. As the genius Joni M lyric goes … I wish them both good, big    guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching .