Who Gnu?

It's July, suddenly! Summer moves so quickly, while simultaneously feeling eternal and leisurely. And we've been having drought and wildfire smoke, so it's been looking like August out there for a while, with chicory fully in bloom and Queen Anne's Lace ready to pop. Now, thunderstorms bring needed rain. The purple cone flower is open, the orange day lily, the sort of lavender-mauve Prairie Blue Eye, nothing "blue" about it. I've been swimming, except for 2 days this week, when weather & circumstances prevented it, and enjoying the ducks at the pool and some neighborhood ducks on my walks to work.

I have a poem in Image, a beautiful journal. The print copies arrived this week, and the online version comes out July 6. I am thrilled and enjoying the issue, full of variety, plus Art, Faith, Mystery.

The books I am reading continue to have a music connection, as noted in a previous blog entry, and my sister was here for a few days, so we sang at the piano--"Joanne" and showtunes, a little concert for my mom between medical appointments. I loved learning more about Bill Harrison in Making the Low Notes, a memoir by a bass player and therapist I had met in Chicago! And even Cambridge, a novel (autobiographical?!) by Susanna Kaysen (of Girl, Interrupted) had music in it--a mother who plays the piano, a teacher, Vishwa, who teaches the young Susanna to listen--as did Dear Diary, by Lesley Arfin, with punk and rave concerts in it. My life is a tangle of intersecting strands. 

Even last night, the interstitial music was gorgeous in The Book of Will, by Lauren Gunderson, in a wonderful production directed by Lori Adams, its opening night* at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. The weather cooperated in letting us see it under the stars (clouds), including a huge wind that blew in after the dramatic death of Burbage. Spoiler alert. Burbage dies, Shakespeare is already dead, somehow his plays get published! And knowing all this before we go in, the play is still full of suspense and a cliffhanger!

*I was also lucky enough to attend opening night of Comedy of Errors with my sister (see Open Water Swim). I can't right now untangle my life, but I am enjoying the very mess of it, the love, the moments of respite and card playing, and even the tenderness of wound care as my mother's skin grows back on her leg. Today there may be dancing at church. There will certainly be a potluck. And that makes it another Random Coinciday in the blog.**

**Oh! And to add to the coincidii, a little play of mine called Shakespeare's Ladies at Tea (a gathering of Shakespeare's women uttering their own real lines in a new context) will be performed in New York in August! Who gnu?