"Welcome Home"

In 4 short days, my play will be on a stage, with actors, in front of an audience.  It's taken 8 years to get to this place.  It's been an exercise in patience.  It started as an exercise in writing at CSU Summer Arts in 2004.   It started with a character named Lydia.  Then Caroline emerged in another writing exercise.  Lydia evolved into Lavinnea, Caroline's mother.  The funeral scene was the first scene written of this play.   There were scenes written, patched together and called a play.  It was read publicly at the University Heights Arts Festival in 2006?? in the Diversionary Space.  My friend Anthony read Lavinnea.  The audience, art walk patrons, laughed.  My friend John, a retired writer, told me to pay attention to that.  This was unpolished.  They laughed.  A lot.   I tried to rewrite.  I should mention now that the Summer Arts workshop was my first exploration in depth at playwriting beyond my one introduction to playwriting class at UCSD.  A second draft was written.  Bad execution of play and reading.  Killing off a major character didn't work.  Play went into hiding.  Kept writing.  The girls kept coming back to haunt me.  John kept bugging me.  Last November he called, cancer came back.  Last January, he produced a staged reading, this time at Twiggs, this time he heard some new stuff before he left us all.  It has now evolved into around 90 pages (we keep cutting stuff out of the play so I'm guessing at this point.)  You all get to see it Friday. 

Short Story "Purple Cloud" Prompts for Writers

So I subscribe to Creative Writing Prompts blog. Considering the fact that I spent the first day of 2013 watching Serenity and the Walking Dead, sci-fi was a great prompt for me today.   Hope you enjoy:

She noticed a purple cloud floating toward her.  Unable to move, her heart pounding, eyes wide she knew what was next.  The hit from the nerve ray had left her unable to move and with the knowledge these were her last few moments.    So many times she had seen what was left of someone.  So many times she helped eviscerate what was left of the body.  As it grew closer she noticed the flecks of blue, pulsations and waves that intertwined in the cloud.  There was a strange yet deadly beauty to it. 

As it grew near, the noise started.   Buzzing, not quite like insects yet not like electricity either, growing louder as the cloud floated innocently towards her.  It reminded her of watching clouds across the sky in her home planet.  Clouds, beautiful and strange, coming across the sky, unsure of the malicious content they might contain towards the end.  Clouds that used to carry water contained acid, growing more erosive, then eventually, taking the skin.  These were her reasons for leaving.  Finding someplace else, possibly finding a cure for the ills of her planet.  But someplace else wasn’t always welcoming to others.  And they didn’t leave welcome wagons, in fact, they left bodies behind as warnings.  Don’t come back and tell everyone what we’ll do if they come.  But the desperate with no place to go can only keep moving.   

As the cloud moved near, the noise grew louder and the colors began to change.  She noticed the size of the cloud began to grow but there was a strange tingling in her feet.   The feeling was coming back into her body!  “MOVE!” her thoughts screamed, dragging her limbs until she got to her hands and feet.    Five feet to her pod, five feet and she might be safe from the beam, ‘five feet’ she hoped as she got to her feet and took her step towards the pod, seeing the shadow of the cloud in front of her, and then nothing.  

@2013 Jennie Olson Six

Poem

Just when I think I’m spent

Given up my last penny

Can’t take one more breath

Fingernails broken scraped

down the sides of the tub

Not getting fished out of the drain

Along it comes

This damnable thing called hope.

@2012 Jennie Olson Six

My big head

So get a text from a friend that says "nice picture in the paper today."  And I'm thinking that it's for Persuasion, that opens this weekend.  Nope.  Second page in the Union Tribune, my big head is on the page.  WOW!  And the next page, a nice big article about Persuasion.  So to my friends who are wondering where I am and what I'm doing, the paper is publishing my whereabouts.  Does this make me a Kardashian?  If so, I want better clothes.  And someone to do my hair. 

But seriously, I have a lot to be grateful for right now.  And I am so grateful.  We have a public reading tonight of my play at New Village Arts.  This is the dream.  When someone says they're going to workshop your play, it's pretty amazing.  So if I'm not posting a lot, know I'm rewriting.  Or driving to get to my call ontime.  And I'm thankful for all of it. 

Great web series - Urban Yogis

Just digging this series a whole bunch.

Kevin Six's Famous Last Words

*No, do not get yourself a piece of cheese, the man eats first.
*You me sex now!
*It'll only take a minute.
*No, it won't hurt me, I'm a trained trapeze artist.

Finding peace in chaos

I feel inadequate in trying to describe the past few days.  Watching the devastation left by Hurricane Sandy through the lens of the media solidifies a few things for me:
1.  Being present means being present with what is.  Not what it should be, what I should think about it, how I should feel about it.  Just what is.
2.  Staying with this thought from a recent workshop: "You wouldn't walk up to someone who is standing in their pajamas with their three kids in their pajamas, watching their family home burn to the ground and say 'it's all good.  there's a reason for everything.'  That's abusive." It's called hug your neighbor, don't put a band-aid on a chest wound.
3.  Can I be a part of the solution?

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness" Chinese Proverb