Fri. Oct. 4, 2024: Time to Pack!

image courtesy of Di Lewis via pixabay.com

Friday, October 4, 2024

Waxing Moon

Pluto, Saturn, Neptune, Chiron, Uranus Retrograde

Foggy and cool

And it’s FRIDAY. Again. How did that happen?

Meditation group was good yesterday. It was good to be with everyone again. Charlotte was thrilled to be on Zoom again with them. Although Tessa blocked her, and I had to step over Tessa, pick up Charlotte, and step over Tessa again to get Charlotte to the computer.

Bea, who’s been shy about exploring since her little kerfuffle with Willa on Sunday, was finally out and about exploring yesterday. The apartment across the driveway has a cat who often sits in the window opposite hers, so she has company that way, too.

I got the blogs up, did my morning blog rounds, answered emails. I got “Effie” into a binder. That’s not a Mitt Romney joke. I put the script into a binder, along with the cast list and notes.

So there’s a run on toilet paper because of the dock workers’ strike? Do I need to state that I bought toilet paper on Wednesday because we needed toilet paper, and I won’t be home next week? People. Urgh.

Just pay the dock workers. They’re worth it. (Update: by the end of the day, there was a temporary stay on the strike, with them going back to work, at least until January 15, while negotiations resume).

Instead of layoffs, we need to start with cutting CEO salaries as soon as a company claims it’s “struggling.”

I’ve been working the poem “I Will Be Different” which is what I will read at next Wednesday’s reading. I think I will bring it into our first workshop session for tweaks; I’m hoping it won’t make me lose confidence just before the reading. It got a very positive response when I read an earlier draft in the Poets in Conversation Series a few months ago. I hope it’s even stronger now, although it still needs work, and I have some questions about structure that I think my fellow poets can help me with. This is the poem I am adapting into a stage play, and which will be the central focus of my time in the residency.

I also think I’m going to write this play from the middle out to both ends. It’s a technique I learned from the National Theatre in the UK, when I took a workshop with them one year when I had a show in Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I usually write from start to finish and then rearrange as needed. But this play, the central stanzas are the ones I’m “seeing” best adapted to stage, so I think I will start with them and see what happens. The play will be chronological down the generations, but I will write it out of order. Shake up the process a bit.

One of the things I will need to decide (which probably won’t happen until I have a completed first draft) is whether I want the same actress to play all the generations of mothers/daughters or if I want different actresses to play those roles and then a handful of actors to play all the supporting roles. Each choice brings something different to the piece. In terms of story, I won’t know what it needs until I have a draft. In terms of it being produce-able, I have to keep an eye on cast size.

It was time to get back to drafting THE VICIOUS CRITIC, and it was hard to get back into that headspace. This is why I like to write first drafts working every day, without interruption. Because it’s hard to get back into it with a break.

I finished Chapter 15 and started Chapter 16, about 1300 words all together, which wasn’t bad. I’ll get there, and get back into it.

Turned around three small coverages. Read the fourth piece (for a medium coverage) and wrote most of it, but there are a couple of points I wanted to mull over, to make sure the suggestions I’m making are as helpful as possible. I will get that out today, and then I have three small and one medium again for today.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about issues of core integrity and self-worth lately. I lost a lot of self-esteem in my previous location during the six years, across two separate jobs, where I had toxic, manipulative bosses who were determined to “break” me in order to reshape me into what they wanted. And, at one job, there was a colleague who, every time the boss was out of the office, told me how she didn’t want me there and I should never have been hired. One of the bosses even blatantly stated that her intent was to break me and reshape me, on more than one occasion, and that it was “for my own good.”  Which, of course, was a load of crap. They did not break me. They did damage me, and I’ve been fighting my way back ever since, making a little progress here and there, backsliding. What I’m trying to do is heal in a way that doesn’t pay forward the negatives of those experiences.

And I had to stay at those jobs because I needed the money, even as I was looking for something better and less toxic, but daily losing confidence that I could or would.

The capacity building program helped me find the bits I’d hidden away, that were still there, but which I’d protected during the attempts to break me. It was a pulling out, as well as offering new possibilities. Hopefully, I can integrate all of that in the coming months.

That’s what the upcoming Jupiter retrograde is about this go-round. Looking within and cleaning all that up to move forward. Paired with the Chiron retrograde (the Wounded Healer), there are bound to be uncomfortable times through that, but it’s a good alignment to really look at those aspects and get it done.

Speaking of Jupiter retrograde (which happens on Oct. 9), I’m getting a little tired of so many so-called astrology articles generated through AI, but pretending to be written by actual astrologers. I am blocking a lot of sites coming up, unasked for, on my feeds, which are obviously not written by humans with any knowledge.  I came across one this morning that talked about Mars going retrograde next week, and how it does so 3-4 times a year. No, boo. JUPITER is going retrograde next week. It does so once a year. It’s the planet of expansion, not the planet of aggression. Mars goes retrograde about every two plus years (and it is not pretty). This year will be tough, because it turns retrograde in December and will be retrograde into February, just in time to throw a spanner into everyone’s holidays, AND coinciding with our next Mercury retrograde. Mercury is the planet that goes retrograde multiple times per year, and encourages technology, travel, communication, etc. to go cattywampus. But it’s great for thrift store finds! Hey, we take our bright spots where we can.

I will attempt to have a quiet, home-and-hearth holiday season and keep my mouth shut!

A longtime friend from the time I lived in New York checked in with me, to make sure I wasn’t having flood flashbacks. I lost the car before this one in a flood in suburban New York in 2007, water was all the way up through the first floor of our apartment building (we were on the thrid floor and dry) and we were without power for days, maybe a week? It wasn’t the first time it flooded badly there, but it was one of the worst. We ended up fostering a cat found floating on a mattress in a basement apartment (they got the cat out before the water hit the ceiling) until the owner could be located and reunited. Neighbors shared food and cooked so things wouldn’t spoil, and took turns going to the location where Con Ed gave out dry ice. So yeah, I relate to the flooding, and am grateful that we didn’t have serious building damage, and weren’t on a lower floor. Some people had to be evacuated via fire truck ladders horizontal over the floodwaters. I was working as a swing on WICKED at the time, and, on my days commuting in (after the first days of the flood), arrived early so I could take a hot shower.

I’m reading an excellent biography of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell by Janice P. Nimura, THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL. I first learned about Elizabeth Blackwell as I read my way through the Childhood of Famous Americans series, where I spent second and third grade reading all the books about women in the school library. Emily, Elizabeth’s younger sister, came to my attention a few months ago, and intrigued me. I also hadn’t realized that the Blackwells were friends with the Beechers (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s family) in Cincinnati, but it makes sense.

This is one of the best biographies I’ve read in a long time. The biographer makes the people, places, and context come vividly alive. It’s really good.

On today’s agenda: Get some writing done, turn around the scripts, go to the library, mail some bills at the post office and buy stamps. Maybe pack my clothes for next week.

For the weekend: tomorrow, I’m going a big grocery shop, to cover my mom next week while I’m in residence, to cover what I need to take with me, to get the ingredients for the things I’m making for Wednesday’s reading. I will finish packing, and hopefully have some coverages to read. Sunday will be coverages (I hope) and anything last minute. I want to get some writing in all weekend, too. I plan to get some work done on Monday morning, and then head over to the residency. I’m so excited to see everyone! I also have a friend’s script to read.

Sunday is also the Fall Foliage parade. It usually comes past the building on its way to de-stage after the end of the parade, so Charlotte believes the town throws her a parade every autumn. She sits on the porch, being a princess, and people on the floats and walking wave to her and smile and take her picture. She loves it.

That’s what’s going on over here. Have a great weekend.