• Category Archives Acting

  • Too Much Chocolate and Brain Fog

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Saturday gratefuls: Han Shan. His poetry. Shadow Mountain. The green green Mountains of home. China’s Mountains. Korea’s Mountains. Mt. Fuji. The sect in Japan that worships Mountains. The Mule Deer Doe eating Grass and Dandelions in my back last night. Joan and Alan. The Bread Lounge. Evergreen. The everlasting construction along its Lake. All detours, everywhere. Tom’s old fashioned thank you note.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Joan’s house and property

    One brief shining: Never had French toast like that six Texas toast sized slices stuffed with Nutella and chocolate small drops of chocolate on the top and syrup even syrup it was the chef’s choice for stuffed French toast and oh my I ate about a third and gave up turned it back over full.

     

    Yeah. Alan and I had breakfast at the Bread Lounge and I ordered the stuffed French toast. Not gonna do that again. Thought I wanted something sweet as a counterpoint to my usual savory breakfasts with Eggs and chicken fried steak or bacon or tamales, a few too many potatoes. Maybe hot sauce.

    We got caught up on this and that. CBE news. His life in the vertical cruise ship as he calls his apartment complex in central downtown Denver. Many puns later, he can’t stop, we left with a bag of pastries for Joan’s.

    I’d never been to Joan’s house before though I’ve heard often about its daunting driveway. Which I thought was not so bad. Not curvy, not even that long compared to others. Anyhow her house sits on the crest of 27 acres of prime Colorado Mountain real estate looking west toward Evergreen, Mt. Blue Sky (formerly Mt. Evans), Mt. Berrigan and beyond. It’s a lovely and special location.

    Her home is a beauty, too. All polished woods and black rafters, black painted wood here and there for contrast. Plate glass windows with the view toward Evergreen. A perfect house for a writer. I think Joan’s on her 18th or 19th published novel now.

    Her husband Albert died last year at 96. Not sure exactly but 68 years of marriage. Somewhere in that range. We talk about grief from time to time before acting class begins. Yesterday she asked me brain fog.

    I’ve only come to realize now, two and a half years after Kate’s death, I told her, how much brain fog I’d had. And that’s an exact metaphor. When it began to lift, I could see life again. With clarity. Before there was always a scrim, one I was not aware was there until it began to lift.

    Jon gave the best metaphor for it. Recovering from the fog of grief mimics the slow rebounding of the North American Continent from the last Ice Age. It’s still underway, measurable especially in the Canadian tundra.

    When Alan and I left, Joan told me she was going to mail me one of those rocks over there. She pointed to a rock wall she or Albert had built near her front door. It was what, she said, I had lifted from her mind. I reached back for her hand and gave it a squeeze.


    Acting Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Mountains

  • Summer, the American Season

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits cooling. A cool night. Good sleeping. July 4th. Seoah’s birthday. Sending her a Jacquie Lawson card. Mary in Eau Claire. The most recent CJ Box book. K-dramas. Stranger. Sky Castle. Itaewon Class. Cod. Potatoes. Collard greens. Herme.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our Earth

    One brief shining: Geez Tom passed on an image from JPL that showed all the asteroids that could strike the Earth and they wove in and out of the Solar system creating a web of white that looked like doom doom doom for the Planet but no JPL says not this century.

     

    Learned another one:

     

    I traveled to Cold Mountain,

    Stayed here for thirty years.

    Yesterday looked for friend and family

    More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs

    Slow burning, life dies like a flame,

    Never resting, passing like a river.

    I stand in my lone shadow,

    Suddenly, the tears flow down.

     

    Summer feels like the American season to me. The 4th of July. The Indianapolis 500. NASCAR. Baseball. Family reunions in city parks and on family farms.

    For many years I would take the summer to read American history, political philosophy, political analysis. Haven’t done it for a while but recent reading about the far right was the sort of thing I would do.

    I also have a modest Civil War jones. I love to visit battlefields. Again, like the summer reading, it’s been a while since I’ve set out on a road trip to visit Civil War sites. Thinking I might do it next year. Visit Sarah and Jerry, Paul and Sarah. This year’s occupied with Korea and Israel.

    Let me see. I’ve been to Manassas, Antietam, Shiloh, Ft. Sumter, Stones River, Vicksburg, Ft. Donelson, and Andersonville. Still missing Gettysburg and several others. Enough for a long trip.

     

    Guess I could also visit Trump era proto-Civil War sites like the Capitol Building and Richmond, Virginia.

    With the Extremes dismantling  years of liberal policy and law trying to take us back to their own future, a dismal and cruel place, learning what the far right wants has become more and more important.

    They want no special treatment for African Americans. Even if the special treatment of slavery skewed not only the politics of our constitution but embedded racism in the very interstices of our law and governance. Even if the special treatment of slavery ginned up the falsest of lies, white supremacy. Even if we know all of this for sure.

    They want all life held sacred. Except the children born to poor parents or the children of immigrants. Or the victims of mass incarceration who end up dying needless deaths in prisons across the U.S. I mean not only, not even primarily, capital punishment, but deaths of despair, of under treated illness, deaths of families living without fathers.

    They want to be left alone in their enclaves of Christian Nationalism or survivalist paranoia or anti-globalist, America first isolation. They want to treat all Federal lands as personal property and suffer no accountability for their actions.

    They want guns to protect their liberty from the fascist Federal government while supporting the actual fascists who will certainly take their liberty and impoverish them even more.

    They want the libtards to stop trying. We cannot, must not. Ever. Stop.

     


    Acting Asia Commentary on the news Poetry Politics Science Travel US History

  • A Do Anything Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Wednesday gratefuls: Tal. His new play. Learning Cold Mountain’s poems. Writing more for my character project. Acting. Acting class. Coffee beans. Coffee grinder. High altitude coffee maker. Writing. Ancientrails. A long road from my past through today. Bill Schmidt for helping me set it up. Allergies. Tree sex. Pollen, Pollen, Everywhere. Ruth. Gabe. Another bright blue Sky. Warm to hot days. The green. All the green. Everywhere the green. Mountain living. BJ. In her own personal Idaho.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

    One brief shining: Life rises from thermal vents, creates itself in tidal pools, wanders onto Land, Seeds allowing Plants to walk away from the Shore, moving and changing as it stretches itself into new shapes, new ways of being until Animals big and small, until humans, now able to look back, all the way back to its beginnings, life looking at itself, wondering about its own meaning.

     

    Tuesday. Writing. Finding out more about Gaius Ovidius. About the Hooded Man. About Cold Mountain. Deciding to memorize one poem a day. Here’s the first one. From memory:

    Where’s the trail to Cold Mountain?

    Cold Mountain! There’s no clear way.

    Ice, in summer, is still frozen.

    Bright sun shines through thick fog.

    You will not get there following me.

    Your heart and mine are not the same.

    If your heart were like mine,

    You’d be there, already.

     

    Called the gas company. They wanted to change out my gas meter. Turned out they’d already met their quota. Why would they change it out? Each year a random number of meters get swapped out for identical ones and sent to a testing facility to determine their accuracy. I found that interesting.

    Then, Nielsen ratings called. You know, the famous one from the old days of ABC, CBS, and NBC. They’re still doing their thing. But since nobody here was in their target demographic I got a pass from them, too. I found it oddly reassuring that they were still in business. As if the 1950’s will never die.

     

    Plunked down some more hard cash to ensure aisle seats on my flights from Denver to Heathrow, Heathrow to Ben Gurion. Easy access to the bathrooms trumps a window seat every time at my age. Couldn’t do the same on the return for some reason. Maybe later.

     

    I’ve not written about the Summer Solstice. My favorite part. It means the nights grow longer and the days grow shorter. I do not like hot nights, nor do I like hot days. Some warmer days after the cold of Winter feel good. I’m enjoying the ones we’re having on Shadow Mountain right now, but as they get hotter? Not so much. Why I enjoyed Minnesota and its short summers. Shadow Mountain, too. Cool nights are the difference between a good night’s sleep and a bad one for me. Last night stayed warm for a while and disturbed my sleep in spite of my fan and my mini-split. Feeling a little loggy this morning.


    Acting Great Wheel Our Land and Home Poetry Shadow Mountain Travel Weather +Climate

  • First World Problems

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Tuesday gratefuls: Friends and family visiting. Visiting friends and family. Travel. Korea. Israel. Murdoch and his pink slipper. Conifer Cafe. A great workout, 140 minutes. Loaner hearing aid. New one on the way. Amy. Her trip to New Zealand to watch the U.S. Women’s Soccer team. Honeycrisp Apple and Peanut butter. Aspen Perks. Primo’s. Breakfast Places. The Bread Lounge. Parkside. Wildflower. Blackbird Cafe. And friends to eat breakfast with. Tom. Alan. Rebecca. Marilyn and Irv. Tara.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sharing meals

    One brief shining: The often empty hearts of politicians seeking advantage power and wealth collude with the often empty hearts of the wealthy who want or is it need advantage power and wealth too so often this happens that the two become the same seeking that which is unnecessary for tasks that no one wants completed in the process ruining lives soil a planet the only one we have while what they truly need doses of love justice and compassion eludes them both.

     

    Yesterday. Breakfast at the Conifer Cafe. Tom. Violet there, too. This time with red hair. I may go blond soon, she said, as she poured me some more coffee. Tom and I dealt with first world problems needing solution. His: AC problems. A tradesmen inflicted wound of a compressor coil which knocked out one. Stress after that knocked out the other one. With Kate this would have qualified as a reason to visit a hotel until all was well and truly cool again. Mine: a hearing aid that won’t charge. Made an appointment with Amy. Went down the hill to see her. She gave me a loaner and says a new one is on the way.

    As I said a few posts ago, we can view these problems as hassles or as evidence of our continuing agency. We’re not dead yet. They are opportunities to retain contact with the world, meet new people, cement working relationships. And as my buddy Alan says these are first world problems. Not talking about starvation, war, oppression, poverty. A useful reminder when things bump bang and whimper in the night.

     

    I plan to spend most of today working on Herme. I’d like to get at least two different sets of Cold Mountain poems organized. Both with an internal trajectory. I also want to spend a good bit of time on the introduction to the project. Playing further with the idea of a one-act play.

     

    Also need to call Colorado Gas and schedule a change out of my meter.

     

    Beginning to think about the Korea trip at a bit finer grain. Gifts for Seoah’s family. For her and my son. A house warming gift for her parents. Seoah’s brother built them a new home. I did buy today two contemporary histories of Korea.

     

    Oh the winds of change. Noticed Putin’s face looked a little sour in a Washington Post photo. Well it might. Strong men who suddenly look weak often don’t last long.

    Until tomorrow.

     

     

     

     


    Acting Asia Politics Shadow Mountain Travel World History Writing

  • Herme and Religion’s Institutional Decline in the U.S.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Joan. Abby. Debbie. Alan. Marilyn. Tal. Rebecca. Cold Mountain. China. Chinese art and poetry. Asia. The arts of Asia. Song dynasty painting and ceramics. The Japanese tea ceremony. Ichi-go, ichi-e. Wabi-Sabi. Korean celadon. Ukiyo-e wood cuts. The temples of Angkor and Bangkok. Haiku. Zen. Chan Buddhism. Applause last night when I finished reading Cold Mountain poems. Keys on the Green. Beet salad and a Reuben. Coffee. With Rebecca Martin. Heated days. My fan, air purifier, oxygen concentrator, and mini-split on cool. All electric sleeping aids.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Spoken Word

    One brief shining: Last night I learned again how pleasant it is to have people clap for something I’ve done when all I did was read poetry by Cold Mountain out loud stopping between 10 poems for dramatic effect and interpreting his condensation of Mountain recluse scholar life.

     

    Herme, the character for my character study class, has begun to emerge. His first work has been identifying 8 to 10 poems of Cold Mountain to use as the core of his piece. I have at least two other components to add to the project. A way of introducing the Hooded Man of the Wildwood Tarot Deck as Herme himself. Then weaving into his major arcana characteristics the Celtic ways of the Old Grey Magician. I want Herme to blend the Hooded Man and the Old Grey Magician into one person. Following that I need to figure out a way for Herme to introduce himself and the poetry of Cold Mountain without becoming didactic. The obstacle I feel right now is the gulf between the world of the Celts and Tarot  and the somewhat hard edged, very Chinese world of Cold Mountain. The bridge is the reclusive nature focus. I know that much.

    I toyed on the way home last night from acting class-driving up the hill between Shadow Mountain and Black Mountain-with doing the whole project as a one act play. My aim would be introduce the not well known in the U.S. Chinese tradition of Rivers and Mountains poetry to Mountain audiences. The reception of Cold Mountain’s work the two times I’ve read them has been wonderful. Part of it is Cold Mountain’s rendering of life in the Mountains away from the dust of urban life delivered to an audience of Mountain dwellers. Might be fun. A playwright? Why not?

    Acting calls on different aspects of my person than my usual reading and writing. Emotions. Body. Alertness to an audience. Ability to read the words of others in a manner that conveys meaning using all of those tools. I find the challenge energizing. Not looking forward to the memory work however. I have to get better at that. Somehow.

     

    How bout those Southern Baptists? Doubling down on, well, stupidity. Closing doors left slightly ajar that allowed women, oh the shame of it, to mount pulpits and lead congregations. This article in today’s NYT, The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America is Well Underway, is the most recent of four articles focused on the secularization of American life. A phenomenon already well played out in Europe. In the article they argue that those institutions with high barriers to entrance also have high barriers for leaving and have suffered less attrition than those like my previous religious home, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. which were more liberal in their theologies. Yet they too have begun to decline, a long slow ride to virtual irrelevance as far as the broader culture is concerned.

    Many years ago in the 1980’s I got my Doctor of Minister degree. My thesis way back then was on the decline of the Presbyterian church and other liberal Christian denominations. I don’t even remember my arguments. I’ll have to get the thesis out and read it again. I used to be pretty knowledgeable about all this.

    Oddly I still believe in religious institutions but not ones with high barriers to entry and leaving. I believe in them as small communities where friendships can develop, where life’s big questions can be explored, where life’s transitions can receive ritual expression, and where the knowledge of the past can inform and leaven the present. Reconstructionist Judaism does it for me, at least in its CBE expression. But any religion could open itself in the same way. And I hope they do because religious life is an ur part of human life, one developed long before academics and politics and cell phones, and one with a vital human contribution to make.

     

     

     


    Acting Asia Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • The Slow Crossing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: The Mule Deer in the back. The merry, merry month of June. Tal. Joan. Lid. Rebecca. The Bacchae. The Iceman Cometh. Tennessee Williams. The Dybbuk. Phaedra. Racine. House of Leaves. Mark Adams. Tip of the Iceberg. Issa. Haiku. Theater. Acting. Building a character study, presenting it in a project. The gospel singing at CBE last night. The Great Sol is so so lit. Trains. Booking a flight to Tel Aviv. Mark in an apartment. In Hafar. Those two Elk along the road last night.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Visitation of the Mule Deer

    One brief shining: Those Elk the three one with only one antler come now to eat Dandelions instead this morning it was one Mule Deer inside my fence her buddies looking at her from outside it while my heart admitted mild disappointment wondering when those big Bulls would get here having come four years in a row I enjoy their visit.

     

    A definite shift, a threshold crossing under slow way. I’ve added go anywhere days to my calendar. Yesterday after a solo breakfast at Primo’s I turned onto 285 headed toward Bailey instead of back toward home. Took the first exit and turned left instead of right to Staunton State Park. S. Elk Creek Road. What a beautiful drive. Elk Creek meanders back and forth across the road doing ox bows in a large Meadow just off 285 then crosses to become a fast moving wide Stream creating white Water as it smashes itself against Rocks again and again.

    The homes on the first stretch had a similar style. They used the bark board cut at a saw mill when starting to mill a whole tree as siding. They perched on solid slabs of Rocky Mountain basalt (I think) looking down on the action generated by the Stream below. The Valley sides are exposed Rock in many spots. Tall Ponderosa Pine throw shade at the road. The road itself vacillates between asphalt, gravel, and graded rocky Soil. I had to turn around fifteen minutes into my drive because two county road levelers took up the whole of a barely two lane stretch of road.

    Elk Creek road is one of my new favorite places up here. That’s the way of the Mountains. You learn the roads you use a lot, the Mountains and Streams, the Valleys, the way homes arrange themselves down in the Valley and up in the Mountains. You begin to imagine that’s the way the Mountains are. But no. Only an exit away a totally different experience exists, one you would never know unless you turned down that road, drove along it for awhile.

    That’s true of Blue Creek Road which interests Brook Forest Drive. Maybe four miles toward Evergreen on a road I take several times a week. I turned up Blue Creek Road six months ago. Wow. Open meadows. Large horse farms. Big houses. Each road has its own character, a character defined by the different folds and peaks and Valleys and Streams that Mountains create.

    Learning, exploring. Even in my own smallish section of the Rockies. That’s part of the slow way of the crossing.

     


    Acting Jefferson County Mountains Shadow Mountain

  • What a character

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Alan. Noi. Lid. Joan. Marilyn. Rebecca. Tal. The character study acting class. Deborah and Abby, too. My passport, expiring 2029. The Conifer Cafe, tamale and egg with green chili. Ode, trippin’ thru Colorado. Psilocybin spores. On their way. Happy Camper. How do I feel. Or, personal inventory. The amphitheater at CBE. Finding a hermit character. Stretching the Self. My son and his wife. Murdoch. My dishwasher. Refrigerator. Induction stove. Sink. Solar Panels. Mini-splits, heat pumps.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being There with Peter Sellars

    One brief shining: We sat in a semi-circle in the social hall of Congregation Beth Evergreen the Rabbi’s son teaching us to move as an ensemble, to balance the space, and how to sit with a cracked egg running down our head loosening each part of the body it touched, running our tongues around our mouths to taste our last food, sniffing trying to smell ourselves, putting our hands on our knees to notice how it felt to the touch, listening listening listening as usual I could not hear much, finally opening our eyes and seeing something we hadn’t seen before looking looking looking closing our eyes and drawing it in our mind’s eye a Lee Strasberg exercise outside the usual Stanford Meisner work Tal prefers.

     

    Yes. Back at it again. Acting class. Third one with Tal. I skipped the Winter semester. This one is character study. Met Noi a local artist and photographer. Lid, who identifies as non-binary and has their happy place in a city park in Nebraska. Alan is in it, coming in a bit late and when asked what his happy place was said having breakfast with Charlie. Joan Greenberg, the author of several published novels including her most well-known, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. Like Alan a long time member of CBE. Rebecca a former oil and gas lawyer is also in the class as she was in the two other classes I took. Deborah and Abby also in the class were not there last night.

    At some point we all have to pick a character. Tal last night went through archetypes often used in playwriting classes: the Caregiver, the Hero, the Sage, the Jester, the Outlaw, the Ruler, the Member, the Lover, the Creator, the Explorer. Alan would like to study Lear. I’m interested in a hermit character, a Chinese scholar/sage type. Wanting to explore myself and my current situation. Might work this character study into my planned Crossing the Threshold ritual on October 8th.

    These classes push me into a different place. More emotional. More thoughtful about my body as an instrument of artistic expression. Into the Charlie who took many theater classes as an undergraduate. Who did modern dance. Acted in high school and seminary. Who went with the family to Stratford, Ontario many summers to Shakespeare on the Festival stage. Who had season tickets so many years to the Guthrie. All the memorable performances there. A place of modest discomfort sometimes. Growing edge.

    BTW: my happy place is my home.


    Acting Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Shadow Mountain

  • Life in its brilliance and in its everdayness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: My passport. The post office. Kristie today. Acting class tonight. The Heat and the Nuggets. The Monaco Grand Prix. Max Verstappen. Fernando Alonso. Esteban Oco. My son and his wife. Fever in the Heart Land. Thanks, Ode. A quiet, restorative Memorial Day. A good workout. Korea on the schedule. Israel getting closer to dialed in. Ecuador still in the planning phase. All the poems coming in from the Ancient Brothers. Ritual ideas.  Acting class tonight. Diane in Indiana.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Great Sol, lighting up a Shadow Mountain Morning

    One brief shining: Or, the Great Soul, Sol, source of light, source of power, source and sustainer of life itself why shouldn’t the Human soul, the Animal soul, the Plant soul, the Mountain soul be like their progenitor brilliant, a source of sustenance and warmth, a source of chi, a source of energy, yet every so often eclipsed by the turning of our inner lives, still there yes, waiting only for what Jews call teshuvah, a return to the ohr, the light of the sacred within us and to our sacred path, this orbit around our true God.

     

    Got to get going, pick up my passport from its safe spot at the Ken Caryl branch of Wells Fargo. Safety deposit box. In case of fire, down the hill. Going to eat breakfast out, come home and try to take down the last outstanding bill, then talk to Kristie, my oncology P.A.

    I’ve succeeded in reducing $14,000 worth of medical bills to $240. A victory although one I shouldn’t have had to win. One refractory $429 bill. Turned over for collection. Nope. Have disputed it, am disputing it, will dispute it until they back down. Could tell you the story, but trust me it’s only about one hand not knowing what the other one is doing.

    A day of life chores. You know the kind. They come up like whack a mole. As you finish off one round of them, another few arise. By 76 you’ve seen them come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Even the most persistent and troublesome of them get dealt with, fade into the blob of things past no longer necessary to consider. I wear my trousers rolled while whacking each mole.

     

    I’m loving the Sunshine, the blue Sky, the warmth of approaching Summer. Thought  yesterday though. Would I love the summer without the backdrop of winter? Could I tell the good without the bad? Would I know beauty without the ugly? I know we wouldn’t need a word for justice without injustice. Rasputin belonged to a Russian sect that believed the more you sinned the more God was able to bestow grace upon you. That’s the sort of rationalization that makes for a strange life.

     

    Nuggets versus the Heat. I’m excited. Might try to find a tv package that will let me watch the NBA finals. I love basketball. And F1. Watched the whole Monaco Grand Prix yesterday. Wow. That Max Verstappen. Is. A. Monster.

     


    Acting Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Great Wheel Health Hermitage Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Shadow Mountain Sport Weather +Climate

  • Radical Otherness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Mesa View Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Tal of the light and the morning dew. Acting. Finding a character. The Explorer archetype. The Fool. The Hermit.  The Window. Art hung. More donations taken. Robin and Michele. A blue Sky Sunlit Lodgepole and Aspen Mountain Morning. Maxwell Creek. Cub Creek. Kate’s Creek. Bear Creek. Shadow Brook. All full and roaring, muddy. Black Mountain, a gentle curve against the western Sky. Shadow Mountain beneath me. The night Sky. The Atlantic Ocean. The Bay of Fundy. Robbitson, Maine.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The repetition exercise from Meisner

    One brief shining: Acting requires living truthfully in an imaginary situation according to Stanford Meisner Tal says which made me wonder with the sensory mediation of reality with which we all experience each other and the world if living in what we each insist on calling reality does not require the same.

     

    Read a fascinating article in the New York Times by a couples therapist. Two things stood out for me. The first, which was her main point, is the apparent degree to which the language and conceptual frames of the me-too movement and the Black Lives Matter movement has come to inform how couples see each other. Men and women both have a greater sensitivity to the impact of sexuality on even day to day interactions, at work as well at home. Mixed race couples and couples of color have begun to voice the reality of the daily toll racism takes on their lives and how it can impact their relationships. This is, in my mind, one of the greater positives to come out of both of these movements. When we can begin to alter not only the conversation between each other in intimate relationships, but within our selves, we have the potential for lasting change.

    However. That was not the most significant part of the article for me. Orna Gurlick, the author of the article, says the biggest challenge in couples therapy is accepting the radical otherness of your partner. Oh. Yeah. What a thing to say in the context of therapy. And therapy in an intimate relationship, the ones where we know each other better than any other. Or so we like to think.

    We are tiny universes, distinctive and self-motivating. Tal last night took us through the 5 questions of acting. Who are you? When and where are you?  What do you want, what gives you meaning? How do you get what you want? What will you do if you get it or don’t get it? The intent of the five questions is to help actors understand that their character must be understood in as fully complicated a way as our own Selves.

    Radical otherness sits as close as the chair at the breakfast table or lies next to you in bed. That notion humbles me and excites me. There are aliens among us and we are one, too. At our best we live truthfully in the imaginary situation we create with all the other aliens in our lives. Something to ponder.


    Acting Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends

  • Swole. Art.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Mesa View Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Robin and Michele. More pruning and hanging of art. Leo. Luke. Sleep. Getting up on time. Chatbotgpt4. Mountain Streams. Water running free. Beaver Ponds. Park County #63. Burning Bear Trail. Marmosets in Staunton State Park. That young Moose Bull roaming around here. The Black Bears out of hibernation. Elk Calves and Mule Deer Fawns. The Great Wheel turns in the mountains.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: William Wordsworth

    One brief shining: The treadmill, invented as a source of punishment in England I believe, has served me well these many years as a place to think, a place to watch movies, a place to keep my heart working at or near its healthiest, when I climb on my body knows its time to work, work hard and sweat, these bodies of ours they need, need, need to move.

     

    Mondays. Wednesdays. Fridays. I’ve gotten back to my old routines. 130 minutes yesterday. Treadmill. Anytime on the machines. Prioritizing workouts now. Not seeing them as intrusions but as key components of my week, of my self care. Feeling stronger and healthier. Resting bpm down to 62. I’d love to get it below 60.

    Anytime Fitness has the machines I feel better using for now. It also has a large carpeted area for free weights. Each time I go I sit on one of the machines the leg press, the leg curl, the leg extension, the shoulder press, the bicep curl, the chest fly and while I do, I watch the swole guys grunting, putting on weights in the 200 pound range. Then dropping them. Clank.

    They seem pretty serious. As if the weights were some woke Antifa protesters they got their hands around at last. Probably stereotyping. There are too the more slender folks, women mostly but some men. I wonder what they train for. Up here it might be rock climbing, hiking, skiing, trail running, mountain biking.

    Humans come in many sizes with varying motivations for all that they do.

     

    Today Robin and Michele come. More closets cleaned out. A pile of unused sweaters on a chair. Old pillows and sheets from our queen sized bed no longer needed. Same for duvets. Some tech to go. Like that internet radio. Never could make it work right. Found four more pairs of jeans I didn’t know I had. Some winter wear that I’m saving. Keeping all the boots. The Sorels. The LL Bean duckies. The new, lighter Snow boots. Cleared out old tennis shoes. More quilting books. A monitor.

    If we have time, we’ll work on the storage beneath the benches that Jon built. I don’t even know what’s in there.

    Top priority though is hanging art. Retrieving some from the loft, other spots. I have most of it already placed. But there’s more I want to get down. Looking forward to this. Next up after this is reupholstering the couch. I also want to get a company out here to deep clean all my tile floors and rugs. And, maybe, somebody to clean the windows, too. Finishing touches to two years of work.

     

    First character study acting class tonight. Tal at CBE. A busy day. Gotta make sure I eat.


    Acting Art and Culture Health Hermitage Shadow Mountain