social media is sort of like barthes "i'm wearing the sunglasses" except instead of anxiety about love, it's anxiety about how we are seen, about our political/social selves, it's the practice of indicating what we are thinking about except within a context of publicly pretending that we've already thought it through. and calling each other out for not having thought something through enough, or not giving proof of one's allegiance to this blabla or that balboa. this sounds obvious or pretentious. haha. just working something out in public. wearing sunglasses. haha. oh that's even more obvious or pretentious. never mind here's a picture of my dog. no sunglasses. we should be so lucky.

for the fans

http://phoenixtheaterhistory.com/directors-crew/chris-danowski/

evita bailaba con freud

Dream 1: I'm at an incense shop with Allen Ferguson and we are looking at cigars. He asks about a sampler kind of thing and the guy behind the counter pulls out some little boxes that look just perfect. I am looking at these, and meanwhile thinking about incense, and I turn around to see that the shelves are all moved to make room for a yoga workshop. There are all these groovy looking people on the floor. They have the incense in their laps and the instructor is teaching them about the scents as part of the workshop, so it's hard to shop. Eventually, Allen is talking to someone in a corner, and I am sitting on the floor and chatting to a young woman. She might be from eastern Europe somewhere and is very interesting, and after a few words we start to make out. A little later I am texting another woman from the yoga workshop, and trying to keep the texting from this possibly eastern European woman, who is starting to get jealous, even though (I can tell) she feels being jealous is inappropriate in most circumstances, but especially now since we're just flirting to see where it goes. The one I am texting writes that 'metaforos son mejor en espanol', and this seems very very hot to me, so I am trying to text back 'y entre cites de Borges Evita bailaba con Freud' before I wake up (on texting Freud's name, it keeps autocorrecting)

Dream 2: I have to put apples on my feet before I go out. My friend (?) says, that's why we call it "hunky dory." I say, "Haha, I'm not falling for that again," and I wake up. 

Another Lost Book of Love

*****

There are those who are born into forgetting, they have to learn everything through the skin, over and over and over again, and they never do learn in a way that gets them past themselves. There are those who are given access to the pages written in the Book of Love, who can see the story and its lessons before it plays itself out, they see their destinies and they can decide to fall in love even though it is doomed, or do something else, and they almost always do something else. And there are those who have left the Book of Love entirely, who escape, erasing their traces and disappearing like rabbits into a tree trunk, their footprints barely visible, almost already eroded. Of the three groups, the first one, the ones who learn through the skin and forget and have to learn over and over again, caught in an endless cycle, are the most delightful people I have ever met and I have always wanted to be one, and on most days I feel like a rabbit, heart beating and missing someone I haven't met.

*****

We wanted to be ascended masters, but we kept getting caught in our own reflections.

*****

She's covered with napkins and listening to damien rice, she says it's important that he let her have the first breath in the song, this is important, she sings first, everyone was waiting for this album and when it begins we don't hear his voice, we hear hers, this is important. We telegraph ourselves to each other, we tell each other everything we need to know, we like to hear our stories and we like to signal through the flames, this is what my heart is like, and most of the time, the one we are telegraphing to doesn't get it, and that's part of why we do it.


*****

I'm looking at her blue jacket, how it matches her eyes, and that beauty mark, and then I'm looking at her button shirt under the jacket, and I'm thinking about my hand under her jacket, imagining how she will look at me when my hand is on her heart, and I get so hot in my head that I cannot think straight any more. This is me at 17. This is me at 21. This is me at 49. Nothing is really changed, except there are a million stories between then and now.

*****

We progress in 7s, new skin for every 7 years, everything is new, and I knew that 7 x 7 would be important, but I didn't know it would be the year I spent pretending you leaving didn't hurt.

*****

And then I felt so bad and awful and beat up by the world and my heart was flat and there was only dusty bones in there and you could shake it and they would all fall out through the cracks, and I lay down on the road in the middle of the road and I said I'm done, that's it, I am done, I cannot love anything or anyone, this is all lost this is all fake, and just then an old flame driving by stopped and said this letter I just found this letter you wrote me do you remember this letter? and I don't remember this letter, but I remember what she wrote back, it was the sweetest thing anyone ever said to anyone ever anywhere.

*****

It is dark and she is talking and she is learning secret signs and they have to do with bodywork and she is thinking of a secret sign, and I see it in the air above us and I tell her and she says, "Draw it on my back," and I draw it on her back, and she says, "Yes, that's it." It was easy because it was right there in the air above her head and I think it must be like that, that is how it is, it is always like that, but we don't see it when we don't know how to see it.

So I put my head into the fireplace, the lap of the goddess, and I say please lull me to sleep, please lull me into that place where I am not fighting where I am not willing to argue over every little thing, please make my head stop talking so I can hear you and know things. I want you to teach me things, and today I don't even care if they hurt. They probably will hurt. And the goddess is standing over me when I wake up and she is eating a bowl of captain crunch and she is dripping sweet milk on my head and it feels nice and she says, "The fireplace is not the lap of the goddess, idiot."

*****

I really really really don't mean for it to get this strange. It always works out like that though, and the worst of it is, I know that it's really not very strange at all. My edge is not as far away as I like to think. I've never been hurt, not deliberately, and I've never been able to hurt someone, not deliberately, not like that, I would be the one with the whip who looks like an idiot, standing there in some leather something and wishing I were somewhere else, that even being on break from a job at a corporation would be less awkward than pretending I like this.

*****

There is a gentle stream and it's a warm day and I dip my feet in, and my friend says, "Haha, you are so stupid."
And I'm like, "Oh, what?"
And she's all, "You are going to get sucked into the current and get bashed to pieces."
And I'm all, "How do you know?"
She's like, "Because it happened a year ago, and three years ago, and 14 years ago, and 30 years ago."
And there is a dog who is watching and the dog says, "That is what it's like to get born again and again and again. Jump into the river."

*****

I'm driving through the mountains at night, and up ahead there is a figure and her name is Isabel and she is looking like a queen, and I get closer and realize this is the same Isabel who killed me in 2010 and who tried to kill me last year, and I shouldn't stop, but I do, I am pulling over and we are so surprised to see that we're still alive after all this time, we have so much to catch up on.

We're inside a cafe within minutes and before I know it she is telling me about how they use the dates from the date palms to make the date shakes, and for some reason, I am back in some whirlpool of childhood. I might mean tide pool not whirlpool. And someone is telling me about dates and date palms and I don't understand that dates are those little brown round pod things, like big raisins, no one explains that to me, and I don't know what dates are and I guess it has something to do with the palm itself, like they must hammer out the leaf itself and extract something from it. I don't know how it works. So when Isabel (who I assume, like you must, is a ghost) tells me about date shakes, I am back there, a child who is trying to understand something everyone seems to know, because there is an important detail (what exactly is a date) that everyone knows and I don't know how to ask. And this is what love has always felt like to me. Everyone knows and there's a secret but I don't know the right question. What is a date?

******




(these are fragments I will continue)

that dream

I am in a revival of Don't Drink the Water, and we opened last night. It went fabulously. I had my opening scene tonight, and now I'm backstage waiting for the next one. We're all smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and it's really fun. We are in a new country and this is an exciting city in this new country and we are all excited about being here. My next scene is about 10 minutes away so there is time to talk.

It suddenly occurs to me that I remember the order of events in the next scene, but I can't remember any of the lines I have. This can't be that hard. The nest scene is short so I just have to get through that, and the rest will come back to me. I ask around for someone to go over lines with me. I can't find anyone to help me and it's getting closer.

The entrance is a flight up, but I go up two flights of stairs instead of one. Up here, there is a guy who visited me and my ex last night, he is a grad student in performance studies and wants to talk about his residency next summer. I tell him I'd love to, but right now I have to be Walter Hollander and I can't remember my lines. He finds people sitting at a table with scripts, and they share them with me. They are all the wrong script.

Now there is a woman with a headset, and she's trying to get me downstairs, because it's going to start. She notices I'm not in the right costume. "We'll have to get this straightened out," she says. Then, she notices that I am panicking right now, and she says, "I have been watching you for years and I always wondered how you did it, and I can see that you're always working, that makes sense."

Meanwhile, the grad student tells me that everyone worries too much. This is just a play. "Just listen to what the other person is saying when you're out there," he says. "And when it's your turn, say things."

I'm downstairs and in the wings and I am in front of a costume person. I need a suit and a wig and glasses, and she's undressing and redressing me and now I can't see anything. "Who did your costume?" she asks. "I think it was Jake and Jamie," I say, and she shakes her head.

"You'll be fine," she says. Then she gestures to Danny McNeill (a childhood friend, I haven't seen since second grade), he's got a script and he's going to go over it with me, and everything will be ok. I see myself in the mirror. I like the wig and the glasses. "This is what Walter Hollander looks like now," I say and then I wake up. 

this is so long away

There has been no news because there is no book of longing on the table by the bed and there is not a single signal that has been crossed.

Except now, there is this. This is me when I was thinking about you (I wasn't thinking about you).
This is me between two mermaids, I have not been there for awhile, I stopped listening to the songs, because they did confuse me.

There is also this.

This is me when I decided to enter into the world of men who are giving up and going out to sea because there is only sadness on the land. I cannot tell you what we found because it is secret.

That's not true. What's true is that the mermaids know, they know us better than we know ourselves, and I could say this is a photograph of me when I was not thinking about you,

but it is better to say that it is me trying not to think about you.

Now there is also this. 

r u mad

This is something I wrote about you. Before it disappears, have a look.

None of this is true, this is not about you, this is about her.

I have been away for a long time. I have had things to take care of for a long time.

This might be about you. 

It's not like I haven't not been thinking about someone.

There will be more for 2017, this has just started and look at the footprints by our doorsteps already, just look, we have been dreaming and there are footprints between the doorstep and the edge of the sea, and there are songs that have our names, you can almost hear them already.  

River dance

I dream that I am in my childhood back yard. The sun is setting and there are storm clouds and all the cracks in the universe are visible. There are lots of aliens but that's typical for the time of day. I see Brian Dennehy wearing a black cloak and that's not typical. When I get closer I see he is really Father Time, or Death (gender is very important in this dream you'll see). I laugh and Death laughs he almost had me fooled. 

Now we are in a restaurant and I am siting with all the feminine figures in my life. All of them. They are all upset with me, which is typical. (I'm sorry this is so binary, my dream writers are modernists with a smudge of post colonial & post structuralism). I am moving from table to table and trying to tell them my death story and no one wants to hear it and finally the one who looks like my ex wife says: "we are tired of your stories, you don't need to keep performing your life for us through these ridiculous stories."  As you can imagine this is very upsetting so I go under the table and sulk. (There is more How I Met Your Mother in this dream than I would like to admit). 

Next we are outside and it is night and we are walking around the hills that are on the edge of the sea. Elli is with me and she is particularly restless and reminds me of me on stormy nights in summer when I was a teenager. I have not changed that much. Soon she runs ahead of me and then she trips and starts to roll down. My first thought is that if she is going to fall off a cliff then I'm going too because I don't want to live without my daughter and besides the other world might be interesting. So I roll after her and she is close to water but it's a river not the ocean and she falls and submerges. I go in after her but right away I understand what is happening. She has turned herself into a fish, this is what she wanted for a long time and I can't follow her because I will never be that. I can go under the water, and I do, but I can't live there. She can though because this is where she is home. I understand this is what happens between all fathers and daughters. 

Last I am on the banks of the river, but another part. I am fishing with two men I know. They are older, I guess you could say post menopausal if we had such designations for men but we don't because we missed an important turn 40,000 years ago. It's not too late. Anyway we are fishing and don't worry about me catching Elli because we are using old bait, old eggs that do not have any more spark in them. We are throwing lines and crowds come and go and get in our way and I catch something enormous. I reel in part of a big pile of rope. I see it goes from the bottom of the lake to the middle of the sky. This is just part of the net that's been here since the beginning, the one that unites the below with the above. I am sad because of all that happened and I am not at home here with these men (but we are certainly related) and I'm not at home in the river with the fish (but we are certainly relayed) and I might not be home anywhere here but it sure feels close to home. 

O&E new

(Now ORPHEUS opens a lemonade stand and is charging nothing but it'll cost you your heart but hearts are cheap is what he is thinking. He is talking to his BRO.)

BRO: A lemonade stand is a tricky venture how will you suss it out. 

ORPHEUS: Wow, bra, ever since you went to England your speech is so sophisticated. 

BRO: They don't call it England over there they call it United EnKland. 

ORPHEUS: Oh wow that's cool. 

BRO: Yah. 

ORPHEUS: I don't think that's true but it's cool. 

(A beat. The kind of comfortable silence that happens between friends who are not all that smart, it's familiar and easy and dim.)

BRO: Why lemonade, Orpheus. 

ORPHEUS: Because did you hear that album. 

BRO: No but I watched the video until I got to the Pippilotti Rist part. 

ORPHEUS: Yeah that was cool. 

BRO: But derivative. 

ORPHEUS: I don't know calculus so who knows about that but I know myself when I see myself on screen, or like in songs, in whatever you would call a screen for songs. 

BRO: Oh my gosh you see yourself in the music are you going to wear a yellow dress or like what now. 

ORPHEUS: Oh I'm not her. I'm the window. I'm the hammer. I'm the glass breaking. I'm the moment of shattering. 

BRO: Oh. 

ORPHEUS: You want to buy some lemonade. 

BRO: In London we call it mad citric vitality mate.

ORPHEUS: I don't think that's true. 

BRO: I'm on a new regimen where I don't drink anything. 

ORPHEUS: Cool. 

BRO: You should be all like the first one is free but after that it might cost you all your strength because my heart is heavy as gold baby. 

(BRO kisses his own fingers and really looks like he thinks this might be a good song and he's wondering how people wrote things down when they think of them because this hasn't happened to him before.) 

(ORPHEUS is thinking of how he should move through the world carrying so much weight but it's really not all that much but we will keep that quiet for now.). 

(Now she's walking and she sees that place where she lost him, the x she visits now and again /not often /not seldom /often enough, and she sees pages of books he was reading when they were awake /before they fell asleep, and as she reads it is such a guilty feeling and it is warm too like her chest is being rubbed from the inside, it calms the nervous bird in her throat but it also reminds her there is a nervous bird in her throat, and she is so absorbed she doesn't see the bones /she doesn't recognize the bones, they are not his they are hers, the arms she had when she used to hold him, and even though it is cliche and she knows it she can't help it that she knows that it's not just he who is gone but this part of her is gone too.)

r u mad ophelia

This is March 5, 2016, 8pm.
You are invited to hear a slightly staged reading of this new work by Howl Theatre project. This is the final performance text in the Monsters of the Sea cycle. We're going to be putting this through a development process following this event, so we are requesting your delightful presence. We promise to be present to you. There might be cake, but to be sure, if you really want cake, then you should bring cake. You can also bring beverages of your choosing. You can drink during this. You can't smoke during it, though. But we have an ashtray outside and you are more than welcome. Also, there is a dog in the house. She doesn't smoke, and so far she does not drink, so please do not turn her on to liquor. The people involved have these names: Christopher Danowski, Heather Lee Harper, Jamie Haas Hendricks, Steve Wilcox, Ashley Kerin Martinez, Barry Moon, Stephen Kass, Shannon Phelps, Michael Frioli, Portia Beacham, and Boyd Branch. Oh, please note that this is a private event, and seating is extremely limited (and you might have to sit on the floor even, but there are pillows). This is super duper secret. But our love for you, that's no secret, we want to shout it from the rooftops.
Oh, you're going to need to rsvp for sure to get a space. Send a text to me, and that means you know me already and have my number, haha, I'm not going to just give it out to anybody are you mad? haha. 

i forgot, i forgot to ask for a little extra glitter, a vial that held a few drops of the scent, and something that would help me sleep. i kept eating pomegranates, because i wanted to know something, even though it kept leading me further and further into darkness. i never was very smart about these things. but smart enough to understand that this was lost. this was the result of a few wrong turns. and staying lost would require me to take a hundred more. my body knew how to find light. my skin understood how to find light much better than anything i could think up. but i also understood this might take awhile. i was looking for her long before she showed up, long enough that i could recognize her by her light. i was lost long before i took this last wrong turn, i was lost even before i lost my voice. this was darker than i expected, though, and it took just one cold night to miss the glitter between my fingers. i didn't understand how much that kept me warm, and just hungry enough to wake up at the break of dawn. now i wake up when the morning cracks open because i think the sound of my heart beating is the sound of her coming home.

ah, this, this, this is what happened in poland...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGPm5QY-nhs