Blue Glasses

My new glasses arrived over the weekend, and I've been getting used to them, and to seeing better! I'd been taking off my glasses to read, and now I can keep them on again. True, sometimes mounds of grass seem to be rising to meet me as I walk through the yard, and I can't tell if it's 1) the bifocals 2) the lawn needs mowing or 3) all of the above.

It's a beautiful blue-sky, fall-coming-on kind of day, with a big full supermoon tonight. The moon was gorgeous in a clear sky here last night, too. Perhaps when I was young, I saw the world through rose-colored glasses, but only for a time. Mainly, that was an expression I asked my mom about. Now I am happy to see the actual moon through blue-colored eyeglass frames, happy to grapple with what's right in front of me...

Er, or appears to be right in front of me.

The Language Archive

Background music: "You say gramophone, I say phonograph..." (sung, oddly, and out of whack, to the tune of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" from Shall We Dance. Shall we?) Yes, I'm still obsessed with The Language Archive, because we open next week! This book art by Malena Valcarcel (who has an Etsy shop!) is like an area on the set, complete with gramophone!

I was so tickled that set designer Kenneth Johnson and interim artistic director Julie Kistler were on board with my request for a "Victrola"--a brand name that became a generic term for the phonographs of the time with the big floral horn delivering the sound! We will have a gramophone! Not exactly this one, but a sweet one. Joy & gratitude.

We will also have other sound delivery systems and cool sound effects, thanks to Chris Stucky, sound designer, who is also an actor in the play! We have a loverly collaborative bunch of coconuts working on this production, including J. Michael Grey as props master and L.L. Zamenhof, plus Nancy Nickerson as costumer and Alta, who comes from far away to share her language, Elloway!

She and her husband, Resten, played by Mark de Veer, come to be recorded by George, played by Bruce E. Clark, for his language archive, a repository of the languages of the world. George is having a bit of trouble with his wife, Mary, played by Devon Lovell, who is leaving him cryptic notes, and, well, just leaving him....! And now Alta and Resten are having a bit of trouble, too! What's a language archivist to do?

Fortunately, George has a capable assistant, Emma, played with sweet honesty by Michelle Kaiden, who is learning Esperanto, one of George's many languages, perhaps his favorite, from a German language instructor, played as a diva by Vanessa Houssian, who is, actually, an opera singer! It's all so much fun.

And it will all be beautifully lit by Anita McDaniel! And meticulously stage managed by Matthew Harter. And vocally coached by Connie de Veer! My thanks to all who are making this such a lovely experience at Heartland Theatre Company!!

Come see it.

Floor Plan

Background music: "Since You've Asked" by Judy Collins

Yesterday, I showed you celestial maps and asked myself where I'd find the moon that night. It was in its usual place, as you are probably expecting, but in a different spot, as I came out of rehearsal at a different time, and it was not emerging from clouds but already blur-edged in a clear sky. Since I asked.

Today, speaking of the moon, here's a poem with the moon in it, sort of: "Metaphysics" in issue a of Floor Plan, a new journal with cool, moving stuff--physically moving stuff, an active table of contents. "Metaphysics" is also sort of about roof repair, on my mind lately, as my parents are getting a new roof and I've witnessed quite a bit of neighborhood roof repair in the last couple years. Also, this, at EIL.

I'm also awake in the middle of the night in another of the Floor Plan poems, "But This Might Still be Called 'Waiting for Immortality,'" which is perhaps also vaguely metaphysical. Sigh... And to make it a Random Coinciday in the blog, my mom is reading Pride and Prejudice.* For the first time!

*Makes sense (as much sense as I ever make) if you read the poem!

Today I learned--I love you, Wikipedia!--that a floor plan is also known as a Scottish plan. (You can have fun tracking that down. I got this public domain floor plan during my search, and also this fantastic photo of the county jail in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, a place I've actually been! Thanks to Derek Jensen for that. And, yes, I've got another poem with a mansard roof in it, because I appear to have a poem about everything. And, as of today's randomness, the sheet music to "Since You've Asked.")

I've been looking at a floor plan of my set lately, and a front elevation, and I'm still obsessed with directing The Language Archive, by Julia Cho, at Heartland Theatre Company. It opens September 11 and contains many voices, in many languages, and a beautiful, sweet, funny cast of generous, collaborative actors. All hoping it does not rain, and/or that the roof does not leak. Again.

Celestial Maps

Last night when I stepped out of the theatre after rehearsal, the moon was emerging from clouds. Half the moon, or, rather, a half moon, the edge amazingly straight. Ah, I love the serendipitous beauties of the earth, of my life, of our shared lives in this universe. How does it all happen? How does it all come together? I so often stand back in curiosity and amazement.

I remember being like this as a child, always asking, "Why?" as children do, and "What does that mean?" about words, phrases, expressions, figures of speech. I remember the first time my mom answered a "What does that mean?" question with, "Oh, that's just a figure of speech." "What's a figure of speech?" I asked. Of course. And now I'm a writer.

Today's new poet at Escape Into Life is Lynne Knight, with amazingly honest poems. Brace yourself for "To My Rapist." And "The Great Verb." These are paired with map art by Ed Fairburn, drawings on actual geographical maps (of Germany or the Lake District) or star charts (the celestial maps you see here).

When will I see the moon tonight? Where will it be? Will its edge still be a straight edge, or already blurring?

Labor Dream

I dropped my husband off at the train station. "Where are you going?" I asked. "To pick potatoes." Yes, this was my morning dream on Labor Day. I knew I had to let him go, the love thing. I knew he was going west. (So, probably Idaho, right?) And I know this relates to the play I'm directing, where a husband offers a ride to the station to the wife who is leaving...

Everything relates to the play I'm directing. That's how these intense preoccupations go. Everything I'm reading connects in cool ways, even the things I did not read for research. I found out in A Curable Romantic, by Joseph Skibell, that Anton Chekhov's doctor in Yalta (just read a biography of Chekhov), was an Esperantist! Who knew?

There's a bakery in the play. A wonderful place with magically delicious bread. Get this, also from A Curable Romantic:

Here, exactly as I had been taught as a child, was the Heavenly Bakery, where angelic bakers were busy preparing the manna that will be enjoyed by the righteous at the end of time. Their magnificent ovens were working at full blast. Apprentices in smocks and caps were running with floury wheelbarrows. Master bakers were shouting their orders, opening their oven doors, inspecting their loaves, while their assistants slathered the long work tables with oil and pounded down mountains of dough with giant rolling pins. The scent of coffee filled the air. The music I'd heard below, produced by the circuit of the planets, now blared out of the radios each baker listened to at his station.

Our bakery, while heavenly, is not quite this big, but the cast will appreciate the personal music at the baker's station! And I tracked it down (an Internet wormhole), that the heavenly bakery is a real story from Jewish classical texts. May all your Labor Day picnics have plenty of manna. I hope ours has potato salad. And the potato heart comes from Oregon! And, just as the work goes on in the Heavenly Bakery, we do have rehearsal tonight!