Some poems

Ode to my aging technology

My poor mobile phone
Held together with duct tape
Old enough to be obsolete,
Pre Blue Tooth,
A Dinosaur in my pocket--
Hands free is a quest on Ebay.
But, it works.
And in these days when I squeeze each nickel
Into a thin dime,
A newer phone
Is stubbornly
Out of My Price Range.

Alas, the hands free lobby has triumphed again,
forcing purchases in the name of Safety
They have rendered my phone illegal for much of my day.
Those who pass these ridiculous,
confusing, patronizing laws
Have never juggled three children, six activities, a strictly limited budget
And a traffic jam.
They sit upon their priviledged thrones,
Issuing edicts for us peasants.


Response to the National Arts Index

Sometimes,
Transformation takes time.
And Marination.
Being moved
May happen in a lightening bolt
or like True Love
Sprout
and dig in
Embellish and tangle
Over years.

Trust the process.


On the coming of spring

I am reborn
At the tipping point
Each Equinox
A New Year
The fog lifts
The abyss recedes.

I am Gandalf
After White
Blue eyes, sharp, renewed,
And with powers
Not Witnessed
In my grey
Incarnation.

Ideas pop
Connections swirl
As if the
Inner Physics
Leapt
A Quantum Level

Days grow longer
Sun is golden
Melting the blue
of Ice
Too long
Earth bound.
Soon Green
Soon Warm
Soon, Spring.

Damnation of Faust

Why you need to see this opera. For ME. Way back another life time ago, I created work that did not necessarily have a narrative through line. I used the best music I could find. I would throw imagery out there--striking imagery made with human bodies. Some of that imagery was drawn from media, because at the end of the last century, and now surely in this one, as a people we have developed a common vocabulary of images that serve as a kind of shorthand to narratives: the line of coffins, a soldier with a weapon. A pregnant woman clasping the flag folded from her beloved's coffin. In my case, it was a woman crumpling to her knees, sob emanating. It was her scream from the floor. Or the other one: people in mist filled boxes pushed around by robots.I would repeat the images, a leitmotif as it were. And I would leave the audience to find meaning--which would frustrate more conventional consumers. I trust audiences. I have always found that our minds will pull it all together and find a story that somehow intersects with who we are and what we care about. We can be moved by a story that cannot be told in words.

To move us, and force us to see the world in a new way--that is the job of a contemporary art work, be it a photo, a painting, a happening in a loft, or in this case, an opera. It is refreshing and wonderful that in a time where we all feel depleted, weighted down with what a friend calls poverty mind, that a so called bastion of the status quo takes a risk, and pulls out the playbook from the most contemporary performance work there is, and puts it out there to resonate. There are some traditionalists out there having a problem with a beetlejuice Brander--but I see a man decayed by his lifestyle. That vision drills into my brain. And come on, those Rat Dancers, it brings something sleazy and depraved and exploitive into the mix, even if you are not sure what it is. This show has to sit with you a while. The music will rock your socks off and I giggled to see it listed in a hip publication next to totally au courant music choices like ticketmaster Uber Concerts. This show could totally play BAM, and I love that it could draw a new generation into the hallowed halls of Wacker Drive. But go, spend the money and get a ticket. Because this show is going to stick in your eyeballs. You are going to think about it for years. You are going to find yourself downloading the tunes. This show takes my venerable beloved grandma and puts her in my daughter's generation.

And we need to get out there and support LIVE ART. Just like we need to spend more for REAL food, we need to put our money and our bottoms where our belief system lies. If you want there to be a place where your body can vibrate to the vocal and artistic equivalent of the Olympics, you have to support it with your presence.

Don't miss this show.

Fantastic February

Ordinarily, February is one of those dud months. Drags by. But this year its just been one party after another. It began really with our Superbowl Junk Food holiday. We hosted two exchange students for the night for an authentic American evening curled up in front of the boob Tube, with a big dog in your lap. Our guests are from China, which does not really have a Dog Tradition. Our pooches managed to win them over. And they loved our Junk Food Buffet. Big contest for Best Advertising.
Then it was Chinese New Year, with nice healthy dumplings and fortune fish, rushing right into Greek Food Night(could NOT manage a canadian menu) in honor of the Opening of Olympics (another night around the telly, maybe not so good to be couch potatoes WATCHING athletes)

All those Olympics shined a light on our house sport of speedskating, and there were some 5 am ice times for tv promotions that kind of scrambled my head. We are NOT morning people. But it sure makes the snowy cold grey days of winter speed by in a kind of fatigued blur. Oh, don't let me forget Valentines Day which turned into a film festival with a lot of red dye staining the counters when we made our first red velvet cakes. Think I will pass on that one next year. Many doilies died for our loves.

Next up: Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez, and we beaded up, donned our masks, and went over to Dixie to celebrate Mardi Gras where I got my yearly Hurricane and hubby cracked off a tooth under a crown, so we could add going to the dentist to the to do list. Boo Hoo. Jambalaya is hard to eat on one side of your mouth.

Funny moment the next day. My son thought they put HOT ASHES on your head for Ash Wednesday. He felt sorry for everyone with smudges. "Thats gotta hurt" he said......

And FINALLY an opera in the house--so rehearsals ate up another batch of winter doldrums. You will completely regret it if you don't see Damnation of Faust. Hot show. But its really funny to look at our daily calender and see DAMNATION on the to do list.

We are coming in to the final stretch of the busiest February on record, with a Shakespearean competition, then the final race of the speedskating season where WE are the hosts and finally PURIM. I will reprise my annual role of Esther and have tea with the small ones at Ye Olde Preschool. Haman Taschen---mmmmmmmm.

You can hibernate through winter, or OverActivate. Planning on getting organized in March--putting the costumes away and unblocking my Chi. May you survive the snowstorms and SAD. Spring is coming, you just can't tell.

Slow Food

Yesterday, in a bit of stealth political work, I dragged one of my children and a girlfriend to the Annual Meeting of Slow Food Chicago. I had heard about the slow food movement years ago, and have been a practitioner (without being a zealot) for as long as we have owned land in Michigan. Once you have eaten produce lovingly harvested by your neighbor, the farmer, there is no going back. I have this philosophy that says that breaking bread is the fundamental act of civilization, and though,in practicality, I fall short of my ideals, I remain committed to mealtime as a sacred moment. In our house, slow food might be genetic--I have at least one child who was born a Slow Food devotee---even as a baby, this one did not eat, she dined.
I have been slipping Slow Food concepts into my programs (a practice which often makes me the laughing stock of my staff) for the last two years. But when you are prosyletizing to the unconverted, one must be subtle and kind. And hauling my compatriots to an hour long power point presentation was underlined by the heart of the movement, Food, which is always the way to make a convert. The Food. Artisanal cheeses that were Happiness on your tastebuds. And honey that was sunshine and summer on the tongue. Jasmine tea that warmed my soul. Slow food might be a part of my spiritual and religious identity--we are, truly, what we eat, and when what you eat is so unbelieveably beautiful, it makes you have faith in higher powers. I have come to want to "infect" the public education system with Slow Food. I think if kids sat together and dined, it would forge a community spirit like nothing else. Can growing and eating food be educational? I was reading some student reflections on a local garden and it makes me think that there may be no more authentic lesson plan than to grow and consume your own food. In incorporates literacy, math, science, social studies, and something so lacking in the world of youth today: connectedness.
So today, for me, choose something beautiful and delicious for a meal. Eat it slowly and mindfully. And find pleasure in this most basic act.

Elixir

So I crawled out of my winter funk and took the metra down to a dress rehearsal at the Lyric yesterday. Life is ALWAYS better with opera. You know the music will be good. But how could such a big ol institution know that after being up all night with a kid with the stomach flu, exactly what I needed was an overdose of sunny Italy, some tight physical comedy, the golden tones of Nicole Cabell flirting with the boys. And the FABULOUS steampunk vision of Alessandro Corbelli as The Doctor Dulcamara with his big ol horse and wagon out of Dr. Parnassus. They need to sell that hat at the gift shop--everyone would want one. Look out Johnny Depp.

Ok, Ok, going to a movie is cheaper or you could hibernate with something off of Hulu, but crawl out of your frozen lair, throw on some polar fleece and get to the Lyric. I know a bunch of budgetarily challenged opera fans have broken down and given up and are heading out to the cinema to get their opera fix with them new fangled Met things (and it IS a way to see the competing Tosca versions), but I am hoping the lure of live theater brings them in again when they are off unemployment and back on a payroll. And if it warms up its so fun to dress up and just waltz about the golden lobby and feel so fancy.

Elixir made me feel like going home and having a lovely giggly glass of wine and smiling, no matter what life throws at me!

Musings on Shopping

When I was a girl, shopping was an idle pastime. We would go to some suburban downtown and poke around a favorite store. Betty's sticks in my mind. There was no real agenda, and I don't remember having much money (and I saved all that I would earn--all my kids know how I was able to spend a summer backpacking around Europe on babysitting and birthday money)

When there was a big occasion, your mother would take you to try on dresses and then you would have lunch somewhere. As teens in the 70's we discovered malls. Mom was not invited. We scoped for boys, ate fries in the food court, and tried on makeup at the department store counters.

Then I grew up and went away for college. Shopping became an ordeal of necessity--find a kid with a car and trade favors for a ride, or get on a bus for an hour to get to the mall and then trundle it all back. Shopping became a chore, not a way to while away the time I did not have.

Then I went off to New York for grad school and shopping became an adventure. I rediscovered the thrill of the browse: Soho on Saturday, street vendors in Alphabet City late at night on the weekends(before New York got cleaned up), window shopping on Fifth Avenue, Korean deli bar poking around on Broadway, or getting LOST in Strands Bookstore in the Village. I never bought much, but I acually got addicted browsing. Then, I finished school and moved to downtown Chicago, and sometimes I would just wander through stores looking at Stuff to clear my head. I would still travel to ethnic neighborhoods for the adventure, but when I set up a grown up household, somewhere in there, shopping stopped being a form of amusement and once again became a task on a large list of things to be accomplished: find a lamp for the reading area, get a throw rug for the bathroom to replace the one the cat destroyed. I even had a few jobs where shopping, or procurement, was a JOB. I got paid for the ability to source and obtain strange items for a reasonable price. This was a handy skill to have in an artistic career---and to this day I can find artistic inspiration in a hardware store.

Now the internet makes procurement so much easier. The ease has made me forget how much work SHOPPING can be. And the predominance of internet procurement in my life means that I have totally fallen down and forgotten to teach my kids how one shops(except thrift shops, antique stores on vacation and rummage sales--I have taught my kids how to Scavenge, not Shop). My sister in law had picked up the slack with a yearly ritual of an outfit and a lunch, but the demands of her own kids and full time job took that off the table. And so, I found myself last weekend, at an upscale mall with my youngest. I needed a winter coat, and I should have known that if I could not find it online, it probably does not exist(orange down, with inside pocket, under $100) but in the interest of connecting and introducing my child to a tradition, off we went. My daughter LOVED the day of being an only child with mama. She is a clothes horse, fashion maven and wanted EVERYTHING. But she now knows now that I am the pickiest shopper in the known universe, and I am not sure if she will ever shop again with me. We never found the coat I need. But she scored buy one get one free leg warmers, a Snoopy tee shirt on massive sale, and yet another Ugly Doll, on half off. (How man Ugly dolls does a girl need---as many as she can get!) She loved the way Nordstroms wrapped her package, and she compared and contrasted the ambiance and product mixes at the various stores. We liked Lord and Taylor. Kinda hated Macy's, which looked like the store had been raped. And we started late, so lunch turned into French Onion Soup and a pint of Guiness at the pub for dinner. Not a bad day. Not sure I will do it again, but though I bought nothing, I brought home a lot.

New Year

The day before the old year ended, I finished out a journal. I have been journaling since high school, and it always feels literally like the end of a chapter when I finish out a book--they are filled with poems, sketches, essays, the flotsam and mental jetsam of an overactive mind.
By the time I finish, the book is worn, pages are dog eared and stained, crunchy with use. Some of the ink may have run, the pencil may have smudged. I never plan when they should end. I just run out of pages. And then I must select a new book. It's exciting to crack it open and smooth the pages, all empty and waiting. I always pick a special pen to start a journal.

And so, this new year and a new journal begin. Of late, its not as big a deal, because after misplacing one journal, and leaving another in a different state, I have taken to having overlapping journals, which will drive some doctoral student nuts if I ever become famous, but since that is so entirely unlikely, I don't worry about it.

I do like to read through an old journal as an end of year ritual. I just randomly flip through a book. I try to guess the year. I like touching base with where I have been. Last year, before my daughter went off to Germany by herself (well, without a family member--she was part of a horde of teens) I reread my old travel journal from when I bummed about Europe one summer over two decades ago. Very little of my core has shifted, even as gravity takes its toll on the shell.

My other big ritual for the turn of the year is to pull out a tarot deck. I find them endlessly interesting for the free associations they pull out of cobwebby corners in my head. This year, I kept gettingthe World. Hmmmm.

Oh, and I take a big ol hot bath. Wash away the old, spoil myself for the new.

Here's to rituals. And newness.