Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Driving in the country this afternoon, I saw a chicken – yes, an actual live chicken – pecking the grass at the end of a farmhouse lane.

To the best of my knowledge, the chicken never tried to cross the road... reducing the risk of existential questions.

Butterflies and Gnawing Locusts

After six months apart, we met on a park bench.

I sat in the sun, a flowing pink skirt brushing against my calves; he arrived with a guitar case slung over his shoulder.

We embraced.




And then -- what exactly?

It's so difficult to say...




We spent seven hours together.



He played a few songs...

We shared a picnic on the top of a hill in Riverdale Park (fresh multigrain bread, seasoned olives, Canadian brie, and smoked fish) while children tossed baseballs to each other on the fields below...

We trekked through the Don Valley, charting new paths...

We argued -- as we so often did.

But we stayed -- as we also often did -- and found points of connection: the words unsaid, and the real sense of words we'd each spoken.



I am learning to live with less certainty -- and more trust.

Poetry, Elliptical Orbits, and Heliocentric Lives

This was a truly lovely day.

I saw Ewan, after he'd been away from the city for a few days... and it felt so nice to take his hand and wander around the Annex streets. We stopped to sit and talk beneath trees, on campus benches, and in a small courtyard with a chessboard inlaid into the concrete tabletop...




He's delightful.




I want more of this: more poetry, more kindness... more afternoons with dark chocolate... more moments of connection, of slowly drawing each other back to the sun...

On Hanlan's Island, a Short Ferry Ride from the City

Yesterday afternoon, I headed out to the Toronto Islands with five colleagues and friends from Perpeual Motion Theatre Company. (They're a brilliant young troupe from Minneapolis; I'm stage managing their show at the Toronto Fringe Festival, and I'd like to encourage anyone reading this to please see it -- and to write a review on the bulletin board at eye weekly...)





While waiting for the ferry, Derek pulled out a pocketknife and began whittling...




And Mark pulled out his notebook, showing me the pages for the virtual rock / paper / scissors tournament that he recently hosted on his blog, Enriched White Bread...




I watched the boat's wake through a small porthole...




... watched small sailboats through tree branches...




... and smiled as I saw the CN Tower through the trees and summer smog.



--------------------

(The first photograph -- the gorgeous underwater shot -- was taken by Avye Alexandres, who documented an earlier production of "The Depth of the Ocean" in her fantastic photo blog.)

On the Beach with Colleagues and New Friends

(Thanks to Terry for taking these photographs -- and for amusing us with some of the funniest stories I've heard in years...)

I Could Not Take a Photograph

thick fog:
streetlights twine
through maple leaves

softly, in pace,
past teens on the swings:
(2 a.m.) pendulums swaying...
haze of the night
like stratified time

(your hand in my hair)
(knees damp on the grass)
(overexposed)

moment replayed:
lines overlaid

A Country Girl Becomes a City Girl Again (Until the Harvest)

On Sunday, I leave for Toronto; I'll be there for roughly six weeks (and may spend a few days in Montreal and Ottawa, or elsewhere in Eastern Canada). I'm excited and very happy...

In a Park where I Played as a Child

Walking through a playground by the home of a childhood friend, I found myself remembering.




There are so many places we frolicked here. I found it a bit surreal to look at the swingsets and jungle gyms and see how small they are, since in my memory they towered like skyscrapers...




Other memories tower too.

I remember her dunken father: unsteady on their yellow porch, bellowing.



Remember how afraid she was to walk across the grass alone to her abusive father's fists. (She spent the night at my house so often as a child that my mom bought us bunkbeds. When we were just a few feet tall, she told me she wanted to run away. She didn't, though -- how far can a ten year old girl run?)



I found myself wondering about her: hoping she has found a safer place to be -- and still feeling afraid.



Did she marry a man like her father?

The Joy of Fresh Peaches, Still Warm from the Sun

I sometimes see the simplicity of my current life and think I don't deserve it. (What right do I have to spend hours writing, painting, reading, designing, and cultivating an organic veggie garden?)

Then I remember how very hard I've worked: how I barely breathed for years -- and how severely I crippled my wrists during 70-hour weeks hunched over a laptop in Toronto -- and I say yes: I do deserve this.

(And so do you.)




A couple days ago, my dad and I picked about twenty peaches from a tree in our yard. They were magnificent -- organic (and sometimes a bit insect-eaten) and so aromatic. I had forgotten how wonderful they are...




I've been watching the seasons change. I love to look back at my photographs of the transformation: a photo from Spring (pear blossoms) and the small Japanese pears that are now growing on that tree. (Delightful!)

Toad's Eye View

Just a moment ago, while weeding sunflowers...




... a discovery:

A Flowering Summer Squash, Accompanied by Georgia O'Keefe

"Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time -- and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.

"If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself -- I'll paint what I see -- what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it -- I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

"Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower -- and I don't."

Georgia O'Keefe

Three Days of Rain

When I woke this morning, the sun had just begun to burn the fog away. I dashed outside with my camera and captured this:




And this:




Three days of rain -- and the sunflowers have grown to my thighs. The desiccated earth is moist again. The leaves are vivid green... The lake is high.

It Had Hardly Rained for Weeks...

... and the earth had begun to break in jagged fissures, splitting patches of grass into miniature islands, creating thin canyons. (Whimsically, I found myself thinking about scale and perspective, remembering the firefly's arduous journey across my arm.) Driving on old country roads, black tar rose from gravel: forming boils that crackled beneath my tires... a sound reminiscent of popcorn ringing in an aluminum pan... or of wringing a sheet of plastic packing bubbles with my small childhood hands.

Last night, minutes after midnight: a deluge.



I scampered to my outdoor painting studio and pulled a canvas beneath my shirt to protect it from rain. I slid boxes of acrylics and liquid lead beneath the porch overhangs. Then, hearing hail, I darted back inside.

I shifted to the (enclosed) porch to comfort my anxious golden retriever... listening carefully for any signs of intensification: a howling train-whistle wind -- or sudden silence. Finding neither, I watched (delighted) as the darkened windows glinted with reflected light.



The flashes mounted until the night sky was rarely even dark, but caught instead in flickering suspension: like a jar of captured fireflies -- or a flurry of photographs beneath a dim streetlight.

I Wrote "I Love You" in the Sand (as Titania Watched and Faeries Frolicked)

I wrote "I love you" in the sand.

You built our castle.



This is no crumbling edifice -- no dreamt midsummer night -- no tempest in a cup of herbal tea.

This is simplicity -- divinity -- instinct manifest.

This is the innocence of swing-sets by the slow rise of a waxing moon.



This night is a white kitten on the sidewalk by the park...

tofu and bean sprouts on the pavilion steps...

and an orange tiger lilly in a water-bottle vase.

Simple rural serenity: a few photographs

A few country images: moments of tranquil escape for my city friends...

An onion that has gone to seed:


Drying rye in a planter of concrete bricks:


New branches near the base of a tree:

Still Life with Fireflies (and Einstein)

The fireflies are swarming.

On my arms like preludes to approaching rain, I feel their tiny bodies ricochet.

Most dive and recover, arcing off my skin; others land, stunned, and crawl across follicles that are nearly half their size.

Everything is relative, it seems -- their obstacles are thin as filaments.

I strive to walk slowly...

I don't want to impede their flight.

The Angel of History

I have been folding my grandparents' clothing.

This is an intimate task; they died several years ago, but their clothing is still a corporeal presence. We have a closet full of fabric no one wears: Grandma's modest cotton sun-dresses... Grandpa's polyester slacks (some with wear spots at the knees)... a dozen pairs of white long johns (because he was thin and always cold). At the back of the closet: pairs of shoes that still hold imprints of their feet.



There is so much history here: a Christmas photograph from 1955... Grandpa's lunch bucket from the years he worked in the coal mine... Grandma's driver education card -- granted in 1939...

The objects they chose to keep are notable signs of what they valued -- but also interesting is what they didn't keep; neither grandparent wrote a journal, so I have no direct window into their most personal thoughts.



There is such history in this small town as well: the town where my great-grandparents immigrated and raised their families, where my grandparents had lived all their lives, where my father returned to raise his kids (and work with his sister, who has also lived her entire life in this town). My brother and I are the first generation to leave; though we're both home temporarily, he has spent the last decade in Austin, Texas, while I've been away at college and then off working in Toronto and New York.

I am humbled by how often I meet someone here who I don't remember. Often, they are people who knew me as a child... or who know my father or grandparents. Some simply recognize me from articles in the local newspaper, and they congratulate me on my academic and artistic achievements. When I tell them how I've failed -- perhaps not as often as I've "succeeded," but surely more spectacularly -- they dismiss failures instantly. What is most important to them is that I've followed my aspirations and trusted my own dreams.

When I find myself in conversation with old friends (even those I didn't know particularly well), the dialogue is so fulfilling. I am still thinking about my talk with Tom, who has worked at the local newspaper for more than five decades... I am thinking of the joy of running into Angela at the library -- and seeing how happy she is with her spouse and child. I am thinking of the waitress I worked with while I was in high school; her husband recently left her, and despite her obvious pain, she's much better off alone. I'm remembering my grocery store conversation with one of the "girls" (all must have been over 50) who sat at the gossip table at my restaurant, drinking coffee and fawning over the local "heartthrob" (who was also in his 50s). And then there's J.R., my closest high school friend -- who recently reminded me that we made a pact as kids to marry each other if we didn't find other partners by a certain age. (I laughed -- then thought about it -- then revised the age slightly upward -- but agreed that we'd probably do quite well together. So the marriage pact is valid...)



It is a joy to return to this small Midwestern town -- two and a half decades after I was born into it.

I see it differently now; I can appreciate what it is, rather than demeaning it for what it can never be.

For years now, intent on succeeding in the (cannibalistic) arts worlds of major cities, I have neglected my own heritage and the many friends and relatives and teachers who helped me grow into the woman I've become (and am still becoming). Yes, I'm still the urban artist -- but I'm also the Luddite who can read for hours in a clearing in the woods... the girl who -- at dusk last night -- went for my first (spontaneous) swim of the season: stripping off dance clothes and wading into the lake. I'm the same girl (woman) who -- more than 15 years ago -- waded into that same lake to rescue a frightened fawn from our overzealous terrier. As a child, I was so in touch with the rhythm of this land that wild sparrows would land on my fingers to eat birdseed.



Whatever else I do in the next months and years of my life -- regardless of what happens with my novella or the recent job offers from New York -- I want to cultivate this powerful tranquility: to be so serene that birds might choose to perch on me again.

Malleability and Ductility: An Urban Artist is Hugging Trees

At dusk last night, when I caught a glimpse of myself walking back into the house, after many hours outside (gardening, landscaping, laying bricks, etc) I felt three nearly-simultaneous thoughts:

1) My clothing was filthy (a paint-stained tee shirt with my high school track logo... over mud-spattered dance pants), and I was disheveled (hair half-coiled in humid tendrils... a streak of mud where I'd pushed back falling bangs)
2) I looked tired -- but young -- and very happy
3) My friends and colleagues in New York would not recognize me here

~ * ~

Actually, that last thought/feeling isn't true.

Some of my closest New York friends would be happy to see my windswept country splendor.

One of my favourite friends in the city is originally from Vermont; she'd love to see me so relaxed, and I think she'd find this rural life delightful. Another friend would also understand: some months ago, he left NY for a more peaceful Connecticut life (inspired by thoughts of grassy yards and simple canine companionship). An East Village choreographer/filmmaker (who summers in the Hamptons) would empathize. Two Brooklyn friends -- an exquisite dancer/choreographer/puppeteer and an innovative musician -- would be thrilled to see me living so holistically. And two similarly brilliant friends/colleagues -- one a writer, the other a theatre director and video artist -- would understand completely.

~ * ~

I shouldn't fault my colleagues -- I'm the one who cannot recognize myself.

(Is this muddy country girl the same woman who lived in New York?)

Just last October, I worked at City Center -- calling the cues for Christopher's magnificent dance as I crouched in the wings off-stage right. Last November, I was giddy for David's show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music -- slipping seamlessly through corridors with my backstage pass. And I never imagined I would tour as I did. Memories of those months in New York are staggering; I accomplished things so grand I had little time to dream before they morphed from chimera to (transient) reality.

~ * ~

The heights of those achievements made the undertow quite hard.

I was freelancing for so many different companies that I felt I spent more time commuting between meetings than actually working. Some of the companies paid me well... others couldn't pay me at all (but I chose to work with them for the inspiration they sparked)... another intended to pay decently but later didn't (as their finances became strained by other starving artists). I felt pulled in incongruous (and irreconcilable) directions. And I was drowning -- financially, creatively, and existentially.

~ * ~

And now?

I've resurfaced.

I'm breathing... laughing... singing... writing... reading... sketching... dancing.

I'm living.

And I feel ready to live.