If You Can Make It Here...

Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), dramatist

Here I am in Manhattan and I am sitting in my room. I did dash out this morning and went to the Starbucks across the street rather than stand in a long line in the hotel. I picked up the NYTimes, The Daily News and the New York Post before the arctic front that is coming through by lunch time. Thank goodness I have work to do, so the freezing temperatures won’t really bother me today.

Last night I met up with Johnna from Blindsquirrel. We had dinner and went to watched actors audition for a role in her play, “Rattlers,” which is part of her trilogy. I was fascinated watching actors bring life, add nuance, and personalize her words to make the part theirs. The youngish, arrogant director sat in judgment of these actors and he truly relished his role as big man on campus, which countered his diminutive stature, and will fade into the background as the play premieres in November.

Rattlers will play in off-off Broadway and I will be back to see who was ultimately selected to portray an undertaker and the angry, drunken, forlorn husband.

Missed Explosion

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), novelist

I hadn’t heard the news. I am on vacation for a couple of weeks. I was sitting in the backyard starting a new book, “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson, when Johnna from Blindsquirrel called and said she was okay and just missed New York’s latest explosion. You can read her more detailed story at her site.

Thank goodness you’re okay. I turned on the local news and there was nothing on, so I knew it couldn’t be a major disaster, so I turned to CNN and they were reporting it and I discovered a steam pipe burst from under the street. Working late sometimes does have its benefits. Immediately following the explosion she and other workers were told to leave, as in get out of the building now.

Johnna moved to the big apple to further her playwriting career, but she misses Los Angeles, but she is doing well and doing more than holding her own. She is fifty pages into her trilogy of plays and attends a writing class that workshops her scenes with real actors.

What happens is that when I don’t write for the blog I also don’t read other blogs as a general rule, because I usually get to the blogs through Tonermishap. Johnna’s dedication to writing has served as an inspiration for the past couple of years we worked together.

I guess it’s time to poke my head back into the world of blogs.