Making Love to History

Went to The Cure concert tonight at the Santa Barbara County Bowl. They played Pictures of You and my earplugs made it sound like I was in a cup, or a genie bottle, floating on a whitewater current of sound, beat booming through my chest, bumping me against images, loosening memories and shaking them free. Giddy youth with The Cure on the radio. Bright nights, shy desires, young limbs unsure of how to hold them, and silly squeals, car rides, hope up in my throat, breathless, dreamy, wishful youth.

When I took my ear plugs out for Just Like Heaven, it was like the band and the sold-out crowd were inside the genie bottle with me. Rocking from the inside out, riding on the sound.

So wild to be at the source of the soundtrack to youth. These guys and their sound heretofore in my head, in my car, now right here in my face, and a few thousand other faces at once. This time, instead of wondering about the music as I hear it, I'm wondering at the memories the music helped create. I missed Close to Me. :( My verymost fave.

Good Lookin Meat

Geoff and Henry came over and we talked about shadow sides to our characters, the parts of us we don't really like, which are often scary, and which actually seem to undermine us. There are times when my character becomes absolutely limp, I cannot only NOT voice my thoughts, I can't think them. My whole being is in scramble code.

There are times when I'm going so fast and furious and narrow to get something accomplished that no one else exists and until I'm bounced out of that mind frame, nobody else matters. Once my great-Uncle Martin asked me if I had a boyfriend, an intended. I was probably 30 or so. I said no and shrugged my shoulders. He shook his head and said, "You gotta take your track shoes off." This is the same man who brought the deli tray out of the fridge before a party and said to his wife of 60 years, "Damn, Mom, that's good-lookin' meat."

I don't have a boyfriend, I have a notebook. Cuddly, sweet, sexy notebook, mm hmm, you should see it.

I tell my brother and sister-in-law I would love to have kids, but am so self-absorbed in my survival, I'm afraid to. They tell me having kids is the exact antidote to that.

Damn, Mom.

Inconvenienced

Splitsville for me and Bombo tonight. Our conversation was difficult and sweet. Hard to articulate. But was as kind and generous as the whole dating spell had been.

Nothing like the break-up with a guy from years ago whose name I don't even recall now. He was a stand-up comic. Things got weird. He emailed me to call it off. Wrote a couple of lines that ended with: Sorry for any inconvenience.

My Reply: Now that's comedy.

Am I really comparing break-ups? At this inappropriate moment? I have this theory that trauma that is hard to relate brings up past traumas as reference points. Experience comes in to try to help us understand and identify...pattern recognizing machines that we are. Experience in general has that pattern of referencing back to what we know, not just traumas. But something else societal teaches us not to bring them up so soon. Sometimes, soon is now. According to The Smiths, anyway.

Tale of Two Minds

Flew into Santa Barbara yesterday. On the descent, the beauty below was both strange and familiar. Golden hills, jagged mountains, lanky sea. In Seattle and Vancouver BC, the ocean and land are all entwined with each other in all these inlets and outlets and islands. In Santa Barbara, the ocean stretches and curves around the land that juts out here and there, reaches into a lagoon, a harbor, then rides down a very long coast.

I stare into the landscape from the sky and feel like my ten days away were more like ten months. How does that happen? The plane lands, we disembark. I stand on the tarmac of Santa Barbara's little airport and still feel a little out of place.

So much alters in my life when I travel, so many shifts and new people and new understandings that things look different when I return. I feel different.

Now I am trying to muster enough sameness to get ready for work. Remember that place? They're expecting me today. Same same same same work work work work, okay, here I go.

Fun worth having

It's so tired out I'm very late.

We went friending and dancing. With Tracy and Bernadette. Had sushi. Laughed. A lot. Watched lightning. Tracy made this yummy cocktail of bourbon, cherry juice and soda. Yum.

I got a psychic reading. From which many tidbits will creep in bench posts to come. Many tantalizing and tasty tidbits, my friends. Stay tuned. You won't want to miss what's on the horizon.

Oh, Portland

Regina is piled on top of Gina on their purple cushy armchair. Gina is rubbing Regina's legs.

REGINA: Ow, I got a bruise.

Gina rubs her legs.

REGINA: Ow!! Why when I say I have a bruise you go over it again? Why do you have to be such a masochist?

GINA: Honey, it's a sadist. Don't embarrass the family.

Travel Notes

In respect to "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle," I'm posting a pithy little email I wrote to Bombo. Travel notes keep playing...

I just got to Portland from Canada today after about 9 hours of travel, bus and train. I swear I've been going non-stop. I LOVE traveling. Have met cool people on every leg of the trip, making reading the books I bought and doing the work I planned totally obsolete. Chatted with a National Geographic photographer/youth tour leader all the way to Seattle from Vancouver this morning. So engrossed in talking, I was surprised to find we were already rolling into Seattle!! Then slept on the train to Portland from Seattle just about the whole time...Last night went to bed at 2am after 2 nights of staying up late talking to the guy I rented the room from, and kicking around town with the spritely artist I met at the bookstore before dinner. We walked around in the rain and the dark and made up stories and art projects.

Charles, the guy I rented the room from, started a charity for youth who learn how to raise funds for charities of their choosing. Very cool. Lots of cool conversations ensued. Then I was cruising around town at a fast clip, maximizing my two days. I met up with a woman who is a friend of the photographer who came to my office last week. She moved to Vancouver from Santa Barbara a year ago. At dinner we discovered we have a good mutual friend who was Michael's personal assistant when he died. Smaller and smaller worlds.

Got picked up at the train station tonight in Portland and went straight to a bday party at a restaurant for my best friend and caught up with all her good friends here in town, who all know me because of Regina, and the few times I've been up here. I'm telling you I'm crashing RIGHT NOW. My butt is on the couch, my bags not even toted to my room yet. My lips won't talk, my feet won't move, my eyes are closing, it's a wonder my fingers are tapping these keys.

Ah but it's good to be here. Idgie the pooch sleeping on her bed to one side and Regina reading my play on the other, Gina off to bed for brain rest, and us intermittently chatting and reading Nico's blog, getting good baby fixes. From one coast to another, several cities, visiting in real time and surreal time (ie, virtual). Warm all the same.

The Urban Exercise

This is a picture of Vancouver BC. What you see at bottom of the picture is Downtown Vancouver wearing the big green headdress of Stanley Park.
Here are a few exquisite closeups of Stanley Park.Stanley Park is the "second largest urban forest in the Americas." My muscles are nodding emphatically at that assertion this morning. Click here to see the satellite view of my walking route yesterday, and why I'm still in bed today at 10:15am. I walked from the bottom center of the picture to the tip of the park at the top. Caught a trolley to the bottom of the park, and then walked around the eastern edge of the city, and back to my starting point.

As a result, I think I'll spend my day being studious at the Vancouver Public Library (as seen here in Battlestar Galactica).

I Heart Seattle

This is where I'm living for 3 days...SEATTLE

Before I go here...VANCOUVER BC

and then here...PORTLAND, OR
Met a painter, a Swede, and a writer. The writer moved to Seattle almost site unseen and met her boyfriend the following weekend. They're still together. Dressed as a Jacaranda tree for a birthday party, had mussel leek chowder for lunch. Reunited with faraway friends and then sang Karaoke and reminisced with strangers about first loves. Travel is good.

Vacation!

I'm in Seattle! and in the bedroom next to mine, Linda is watching "Grey's Anatomy." Right here in Seattle! :-) 10 days of the Pacific Northwest and good friends start today. Love it.

Best Email I Got All Day

Dear Friends –

Just one hour ago the California Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision on the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry... and they ruled that to prohibit couples from marrying merely on the basis of gender is, in fact, discrimination, is unconstitutional and cannot stand!

This is an important step forward for families of all kinds, for fairness, for equality, and for loving relationships everywhere...

A portion of the actual text of the decision is below:

...“Accordingly, in light of the conclusions we reach concerning the constitutional questions brought to us for resolution, we determine that the

language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman” is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples. In addition, because the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples imposed by section 308.5 can have no constitutionally permissible effect in light of the constitutional conclusions set forth in this opinion, that provision cannot stand.”...

So, we ask that you join us for a public gathering and celebration...

DATE: TONIGHT – Thursday, May 15th

TIME: 5:30 p.m.

PLACE: Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Gardens

There will be speakers, additional updates and information on the decision, and more....

We hope you can join us...

Geoff Green, Executive Director

THE FUND FOR SANTA BARBARA
Celebrating a quarter century of “Change, Not Charity”
1524-1/2 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
120 East Jones Street, Suite 127, Santa Maria, CA 93454
Phone: (805) 962-9164 / Fax: (805) 965-0217
Email: email@fundforsantabarbara.org
Website: www.fundforsantabarbara.org

Running to catch up

!OMG it's Wednesday!

My poor daily bench got usurped by the daily grind. I'm finishing a play, so it's been another workday at the end of the workday for me, and I forget there are other words to impart in other places when my head is stretched as far as it's been. Sorry! Play's almost done though!! I'll post news here as it happens. After it's over, I'll have a reading with actors, develop it more from there, and then see what theatres or producers I can attract with it.

Don't be surprised if Lisa guerilla blogs. She knows my password! And knows I'm in the trenches at present. Coming up for me, a 10-day vacation to the Pacific Northwest...Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Theatre and explorations of new places for me. Very excited. I leave Friday. Hallelujah.

What man?

You remind me of the man.
What man?
The man with the power.
What power.
The power of hoodoo.
Who do?
You do.
What?
Remind me of the man.
What man?
The man with the power...

(anybody remember this?)

Late night

Ohmigosh it's midnight-thirty and I haven't blogged yet for the day most recently formerly known as today. 8 hours of writing. Putting together a play. Good progress. More tomorrow. (I mean today.) All the world's a stage. Peace out.

Bad Girls Good Women

Tania's in a play at Santa Barbara City College. It's her first...since grade school anyway. She took a couple of acting classes recently and before you know it, she's cast in a fantastic play with a fantastic part. No surprise to anyone who knows Tania, who paints from many pots.

There was one area, however, in which she did not claim expertise. When it came time for publicity photos, the director asked the actors to show in up costume. Tania and Lisa and I sat around the living room while Tania realized out loud that she should probably wear makeup. (Liberty taken in who said what.)

TANIA: They wear makeup on stage, right?
PEMA: Yes
TANIA: I'm not really sure what makeup to wear. Do you know?
PEMA: Not really.
TANIA: I don't know if I even have the right makeup. I'm a bad girl.
PEMA: Bad girls wear great makeup.
TANIA: Do you have any eye-shadow? Maybe eyeshadow.
PEMA: No.
TANIA: You're not a very good girl either.
LISA: I can't help. I only have eyeliner.
TANIA: We're all bad girls.
LISA: But great women.

Line of the Day

"Sometimes when I'm drunk in the mornings, I like to go to McDonald's and order a shot of wheatgrass."

-Fitch, as written by Michael Mahoney-Pierce

Fingy on the SW Express

No! Neck! Joe!!!

Okay I've searched the web for a Spike & Mike's "No Neck Joe" cartoon so I could illustrate the effect of my neck spasm the last two days, to no avail. Just this pic.

But trust me, me and Joe would have a lot to talk about right about now.

the sweet beginning

i am fascinated by these moments in life. the ones that make the history of the generation that will follow us. the moments when love overtakes. and flows for a very long time.
alexandering
new

Photographing Spirits

Here it is, the review I said I'd post if it got printed:

Bobbi Bennett's On Sacred Ground

The Lovers the Dreamers & Me

Today was a rocketship ride of a day. 11 speed-demon hours at work, playwriting class through the early night, quick catch up with Lisa, quick route to bed for a 5am wake up tomorrow. In today's orbits I think I grew three new gray hairs.

Change is afoot. At lightning speed. Break-up talk, divorce, breeching emotions, a baby on the way, a 40th bday surprise, an estranged mom visiting anew, another mom more terrified to pack up and sell the house than to allow foreclosure, tectonic shifts. Happening fast. These are windows into my community at the moment. What's happening in the bigger broader world if each person in my immediate circles are affected by something so forceful?

My solution this evening for this speed at high volume, unwittingly inspired by my friend and fellow playwright, Michael Mahoney-Pierce: Kermit. The Frog. Nobody but nobody says it better...Listen...