Coming Full Circle

Two weeks ago some, hmmmm, IDIOT, hacked my computer.  Email contact list ripped off, sent email emptied out, etc.  After 18 hours over 4 sessions with 6 different techs in India, they decided that my operating system is kaput.  Frustrated from dealing with this, I got up this morning and fled the house and Prescott opting to drive over Mingus Mountain for a change of scenery.  At the highest point I got out and took a brisk, brrrrr walk gazing at the Mogollon Rim in the distance, a notch of blue skies, red and sandstone cliffs peeking through the pine forest.  Ah things were beginning to look up.

After winding my way down to Jerome, I stopped to visit one of my favorite structures--a building with a floor to ceiling window about 20 ft wide overlooking the Verde Valley.  The shop is now a wine tasting art gallery.  I’m a cheap drunk and drinking in the middle of the day while driving is never a good idea, but I asked the sales woman if she had a sparkling wine, thinking of Christmas dinner when my family is here from Japan.  She gave me a sip of an almond infused bubbly that was really quite lovely.  So bottle in bag I walked back to the car and continued down the mountain from Jerome into Cottonwood, stopping to stroll through the three blocks of Old Town where I sampled some lime flavored olive oil (buying it of course) and snagged myself a latte as part of the walk was in the shade and it was chill or I was chilled.

From Cottonwood to Sedona I took my favorite detour, the Red Rocks Loop Rd, and stopped where the view is absolutely breathtaking and walked along the side of the road to build up an appetite for lunch at a great Chinese restaurant my husband and I discovered a few years back.  The first decision was To Have a Martini or Not Have a Martini. Strange but they specialize in exotic martinis.I rationalized my way to a Canton Classic-Plymouth Gin and a Ginger something or other with a twist of lime.  It was superb.  Now remember that I had coated my stomach with olive oil samples and sipped the martini as I ate my Kung Pao chicken.  So I actually left the restaurant feeling fairly clear minded rather than my usual befogged gin soaked self.

From Sedona I made my way back to I-17 going south to visit Montezuma Castle National Monument.  My oldest son Matt had visited there several years ago and in the interim had lost a favorite hat acquired from the gift shop.  So…hat in bag along with a plush toy cardinal that sings when his tummy is pushed, I strolled the walkways along Beaver Creek, bordered by leafless sycamores, gazing up at the 700 year old cliff dwellings. I imagined youngsters scrambling up the ladders (now absent) leading to the heights, a couple making love, a woman giving birth, a cook pot over a fire, a father teaching a child to hunt, a mother weaving.  I couldn’t quite figure out where my counterpart would be.  Perhaps very few women made it to 68, but if they did, surely they remained in the few dwellings at the foot of the cliffs until of course the floods came.

Making my way full circle back home via Cherry Road and Hwy 69 I unloaded the car and put things away.  An Indian (India) fellow on my answering machine begged me to call him back so that he could respond to my dissatisfied evaluation of their attempts to cure my computer and make it wonderful again.  I decided instead to eat my leftover Chinese lunch while I watched an episode of Bones.  So not ready to sit at the bedside of  my sick computer.  May it rest in peace for a bit…  

Chasing Alligators

Ah the blank page.  What to do with it.  I’ve promised myself that I would blog every two weeks, once on the Coffee with Gail blog and then on The Artist’s Path.  But inspiration feels in short supply.  I’ve taken time off since pulling Path 2012 together for April—reading, walking, two small road trips, watching videos, doing some research on Path 2013, but leaving the white expanse of space bereft of words.  

 I said to a class mate from my high school days that I’m not a writer, but a wannabe writer.  All the poems, short stories, novels, plays, films from a lifetime leave me in awe of the written word and those who use it as their medium of expression.  I’m grateful to them beyond measure and not just as a source of knowledge, a way to know the self, a source of pleasure and pain, but these words allow me to practice my own way of expressing myself through using my body, my voice, my Self as an instrument to play their words. Yet…yet there is still that yearning to make some part of the world manifest in words.

And so I listen for that tap on the shoulder when my muse, often absent, off inspiring someone else I suppose, whispers in my ear, planting an errant thought that begs birthing.

These last words remind me, and not sure why but willing to just chase this alligator and see where it leads, of a time I was driving cross country west to east  on I 40 and decided to stop off at the University of Oklahoma in Norman where I had attended grad school in theater.  Like most universities in cities, it had grown, bursting the seams bordering the neighborhoods surrounding it.  I scarcely recognized where I was.  My internal map was not working and it’s usually spot on.

  

 University of Oklahoma's Bizzell Library 

 Where My Acting Thesis On Agnes of God Remains for Posterity

Finally I found the Fine Arts complex and wandered through the building where the theater program is housed.  The main change in my 25 year absence was the addition of a  black box theater where I had once directed The House of Bernarda Alba and what I believe is now a full on musical theater program. 

Few people were about, so perhaps I arrived between semesters.  I found the classroom where I had spent many hours in acting courses and where when I was teaching  one semester a couple in their ‘60’s wandered in.  I welcomed them and they told us that they had once been students there, fallen in love, married and eventually gave birth to one our most iconic child actors and gifted directors—Ron Howard. 

     Rance and Ron Howard

We were thrilled and to this day I watch for Rance Howard who is still living, (Appearing  most recently in the film The Dilemma directed by Ron. ) and his wife Jean, also an actor, who died in 2000.

                                                                                    Ron Directs is Mother in Apollo 13

They spent an enchanting hour with us talking about OU in their day, working in Hollywood, Opie (Ron Howard) and the craft of acting.  No specifics remain in my memory, but they seemed so content with one another and so genuinely happy to spend some time with us.

Sometimes inspiration literally walks into your room with no warning, to tap, tap, tap. 

I still don’t know what to write about, but I’ll post this jaunt down memory lane and hope my muse shows up before the Path blog is due.  Who knows …maybe inspiration will literally knock on my door again.  The welcome mat is out!

Memory

Could there be anything more prosaic than picking up the afternoon mail?  Grey phalanx of metal boxes, all uniform in size, keyholes worn with years of wiggling keys to slot in--bills, flyers, junk mail, expected mail, unexpected mail.  Who could have predicted the power of a piece of expected mail on the topic of taxes?  I knew it was coming, vouchers to pay estimated taxes quarterly.  How utterly without interest!

So you can imagine how blindsided I felt by my reaction when I pulled the plain white envelop from its metal resting place.  Neatly written return address in New Mexico, neatly written address to me.  But the handwriting itself?  I hadn’t seen it in years or so it seemed. I felt a blow to my sternum, eyes filled with tears as memories flooded through me.  Here was the hand that sent me one of Elisabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnets in a note in junior English, the same hand that wrote a lovely poem when the first pictures came back of earth from space detailing the swirling blues and greens, the sense of wonder of this new perspective of our home.  This was the writing that tightly packed the onion skin letters penned from Vietnam.   This hand composed love letters in Vienna, posted across the Atlantic to keep fragile connections alive.  

Over 52 years I’ve seen this particular hand, but not for years have I seen it on an envelope.  The ease of phone calls, email and Skype precluded the handwritten letter even as recently as an eighteen month tour in Afghanistan for USAID.  And once again we are separated-- by only 300 miles, but 300 nevertheless and for two years.  The best way to get the tax forms to me was by snail mail.  No big thing, right?  How easily we can be taken unawares and suddenly a half century of memory kaleidoscopes through the mind.  Tears of remembered joy, sorrow, regret, chagrin, embarrassment, the whole gamut, coursed down, dripped on the envelope. I heard footsteps behind me, approaching the mailboxes.  I hurriedly turned to the idling car, head ducked, mumbling a hello with choked voice and left.  

My husband is currently working in New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.  Enchantment indeed…

I've ordered a Kindle.  It should arrive today.  On this same day I've opened a book published in 1858  which my husband bought me to use in my production of Tea With ZaZa. It's old, small in size ornamented with a man, rifle over his shoulder walking off into snowy woods followed by what looks like golden retriever.  The book, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is titled The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Every man his Own Boswell.  As I thumb through the detailed descriptions of life over 150 years ago, I'm struck by what seems a truism, though perhaps not, that one must have had a certain level of wealth, independence to  chronicle life by hand in such detail. 

 

Today I blog, email, post to FB details with ease though certainly my scribblings, cybernetic or not, cannot be compared to a Holmes or a Boswell.  But I am struck this late in the morning as I  neaten up the house how blessed I am by the gift of time to choose to sit at the computer and write my thoughts here.  If I had been in my 60's, of a working class background, decades ago, I would probably not be doing this.  To be a woman or man of letters required leisure, leisure bought with financial independence.

I shall keep my 1858 book out on a side table along side my Kindle to remind me from whence we've traveled and the future to which we rush headlong with enthusiasm and trepidation....

Monday Morning Musings

Enjoying my first cuppa this morning with the windows open, the sounds of songbirds.  One in particular keeps coming to a pile of natural plant detritus, picking up bits and zipping off to build a nest.

Lizards skitter across the patio, pausing to to do pushups and then rushing to the next pause.  A candle I bought at the Armadilla Works in Prescott is teasing my senses with swirls of orange and green and scents of citrus and mint.  My body creaks and I will workout soon to loosen up all the cranky bits and get the blood moving.  The air feels, even from inside, cool and crisp.  My kind of day.  Gratitude wells and I find myself saying thank you to a presence I doubt exists, but I was taught to be polite.

Last Monday, the day after a ten month journey of bringing a theatre project to fruition, I promised myself a week of sloughing off--scraping off the dead skin of months of working on two major projects, emptying the mind of 'should haves' and 'oh dear I forgots', preparing the soil of my creative self for new cultivation.  Well that promise lasted about two hours on last Monday and before I knew it,  I was tearing down the website and updating it, writing universities for their assistance in my next endeavor, writing press releases that won't be used for 6 months at least, and posting on The Artist's Path blog.  I did at least wait a full week to post on this blog, she writes, patting herself on the back with a phantom third hand.

A friend from grad school days showed up out of the blue to rescue me on Tuesday and we went off to Sedona to take in the beauty of nature run riot, good food, good conversation, and the magic of blue skies, red  rocks and rushing waters. 

Taxes are still due for Path and two grant reports, several financial reports I've promised the board and of course the ever present specter of now empty coffers and the necessity of filling them to produce Path 2013.  

Yesterday on the way down to see Road to Mecca  

at the The Theatre Artists Studio, I asked my companion if she would like to join me in robbing a bank to fund our respective theatre projects--we could split the take.  She said she was too busy and then I remembered a bank president friend of mine pointed out that I would be terribly disappointed at what I'd find in most vaults.  Bummer.  Back to the drawing board.

Need inspiration and it often comes with a walk in the woods.  So folks off to riparian area of Watson Woods here in Prescott, AZ to seek wisdom at the foot of a cottonwood.  Until  next time...