Each pilgrim kisses the black stone there

I'm off to the Odin. Andersen's Dream, the play which I observed in rehearsal for two months, is being performed for one week only, this year, in Bergamo Italy. I'm going to see it. And to visit the Odin's home theatre.

Blogging may be intermittent while I'm on the road. If I can get to a computer, my Raw Umber blog will be flowing deep.

Someone Digging In The Ground

An eye is meant to see things,
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: for loving a true love.
Legs: to run after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back, completely changed.
On the way to Mecca, many dangers: thieves,
the blowing sand, only camel’s milk to drink.
Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
with pure longing, feeling in the surface
the taste of the lips he wants.

This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,
while the real work is done outside
by someone digging in the ground.

-- Rumi

We need places in the world that are worthy of pilgrimage. Sanctuaries.

"What would you do if you had the Gift of creating sanctuary?" I asked my friend Juval once. "Create a sanctuary for sanctuaries," he said.

Ponies in the kitchen

Seattle is soft and green. Maple leaves rustle near Nasai Teriyaki, shading its two outdoor tables. At work we sweltered, longing for escape.

My pants fit looser. I'm eating better. Old carapace sloughs away, shinyness peeks through.

When I was little I brought snakes home. I lost a big one in the house. I still remember snake smell. And how garter snakes, who are not supposed to bite, sometimes do.

Once the ponies got into the house while we were gone. They found the tub of potatoes under the sink, and munched them into a frothing mashy mess, covering the floor.

It's a fine thing, to find ponies aquiver in the kitchen, jowls dripping with potato foam, swivelling their ears.

Clutches can take brake fluid

Did you know that some clutches can take brake fluid, if you don't have clutch fluid handy? Just look on the cap. If it says ".3" or "DOT 3", it can take Dot 3 brake fluid -- which you can buy at the gas station or Albertsons, as opposed to clutch fluid which you cannot.

More raw and more true

There is a painting that hangs by the art store door. It always catches me -- an object of energy that is somehow not complete. "Why is it not complete?" the artist asked. "Because of the boy," I said. It is a portrait of a boy, on a roughly textured green-yellow background. "That boy is not as true as the background."

We talked more.
"I can paint your portrait," she said. "Just bring me a picture."
I was warmed. I only wanted a true portrait.
"Can you paint my portrait without it looking like me?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Can you paint my energy portrait? Or do you need the image as a lens?"
"I need the image."
I considered for a moment, looking at the painting.
"You must get better first," I said, with the slight courteous half-bow Leonid or Eugenio gives when concluding a conversation with a decision. "You must get more raw, and more true."
Her eyes were alight and dancing.

I felt like a fish, moving through water.

When you're ready, you're ready

The downside of my "Adjust forever then make a huge change easily," pattern, is that long adjustment period. That was last year. I laid around, looked and felt like a slacker, and couldn't see why I was alive.

Now I'm entering the upside -- huge changes made easily. All I have to change is the easy stuff. The subterranean wars have already been fought and won.

Sunday is laundry day. I'm off to do mine, while it's still Sunday.

Undulating links

Okay, I'm back. I've been concentrating on my new job. Tonight is an evening of peace. On those frazzled days I found my own blog entries a source of peace and reassurance. "Write more!" I thought. "Write deeper! I need a lot of this."

One of Leonid Anisimov's 3 principles for a theatre company is that of a linked circular chain -- that leadership moves, like different links rising to be the high one. It is wisdom to know who should lead at any moment, and how to give that person full attention.

I'm experiencing that at work. For the deep and the spiritual, I'm a high link. For all the day-to-day of my job, everyone around me is a high link. As good as I am at what I do -- that's how good they are at what they do. It feels delicious to take and release. To realize we are all, always, babies. All -- in our own dominion -- masters.

Raw umber

I have another blog. It's called Raw Umber. I began it because I noticed my Morning Pages were more dropped-in than my blog. I wasn't writing for an audience, I was writing for the dream. It felt like painting, or rehearsal -- only responsible to the search.

This blog is a pleasurable practice of near-daily posting. Raw Umber is under no such pressure.

Between starting a high-think/high-do job, and losing my fellow-mystic housemate, I feel a sharp and urgent need for deepness.

Check it out. You're welcome to either or both.

When the buddha comes

I am looking at my mala. The yellow thread on the guru bead is a wisp. This is my fourth mala. Kirby gave me one of lotus seeds, the rest were sandalwood. They wrap around my wrist four times.

Sometimes I forget I have vowed to be of service.

Sometimes I remember.

In the Kalachakra Initiation, you get a red blindfold. You receive the next Teachings by listening only -- dangerous spirits in the room. When the preparation days had finished and purification began, they gave us two sticks of drygrass and a red string. You put the long grass under your mattress, the short one under the pillow, the string around your wrist. It was to protect you while you did your purification for tomorrow's Initiation.

"Work begins on Monday." I start at Microsoft tomorrow. I want to be purified and protected.

This is Day Four of the year of listening to myself. I'm going home to purify and protect.

when the lama comes
you must see him, see him, laugh in
delight -- get Teachings

altar candles, fruit
seven water bowls, buddha
incense, roses -- bow

wood floor gleams, bare feet
prostrations saying thank you
Padmasambava

when the buddha comes
you must obey him, obey
walk the long straight road

Dalai Lama, on choosing a teacher

I was rereading my notes today, from the Dalai Lama's 1996 Kalachakra Initiation in Sydney, Australia. I'll paraphrase for now, and replace with the precise quotes when I bring my book in.

Seek a teacher who embodies what they teach (practices what they preach).

If what a teacher is saying does not follow reasonably and logically, that person is not a holder of the truth.

If what a teacher is saying is inconsistent, that teacher is working at the interpreted level.

If what a teacher is saying is true and valuable, it is a good teaching.

We say, "That is a good teaching, that Buddha Shakyamuni gave." We do not say, "That must be a good teaching, because it was Buddha Shakhamuni who said it."

We can only know the quality of a teacher, by the quality of their teaching.

Listening to myself

I have noticed that if I have liesurely deep talks with someone -- "seshes" -- once a week for a year, their lives transform. Or, rather, in an atmosphere of being profoundly heard and accepted, they transform themselves. There's a chicken-and-egg timing; it's only when you want your life to transform, that you seek out that kind of listener.

Anyway. The other thing I've noticed is that these people often go straight into amazingly good long-term relationships or marriages. My theory is, they've gotten used to saying the truth, seeking the truth, living with the Mystery, and being accepted -- that now they only look for that, along with all the other stuff they want as well; which is a good recipe for a relationship.

It occurred to me that the reason this hadn't happened to me, was that I had not yet listened to MYSELF with the complete attention I give others.

April 13, 2005, I vowed to spend a year listening to myself.

Huge stuff started happening immediately.

Prop room no more, foreclosure ph/fishing, Noble Eightfold Path

My favorite part of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is when they bring the guy back from his shopping expedition, and unveil his new house. It's the makeover of the space that is most profound.

"If I could only remember one thing out of everything you said, what is the most important?" I asked my theatre-director master, Leonid Anisimov, after two weeks with him. He thought for a long moment. "Affect the space first," he said.

With those as touchstones, I dived into cleaning the livingroom last night. I love how Queer Eye shows you those before-and-after glimpses, one right after the other. Messy room... clean room. White walls and crumpled rug... saffron walls with chocolate trim. I also love how, in Kipley's blog, he shows photos of himself once a month to track his progress at getting in shape.

So I made some visuals.


Amount of crap in my livingroom yesterday


Amount of crap in my livingroom today

I also discovered not all the crap was mine -- the bicycle machine, mountain bike, and guitar stand are my housemate's.

Inspired, I also washed two loads of dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and purged two grocery-bags full of papers and bills.

Foreclosure ph/fishing

When your house is in foreclosure -- oh man, this should be a whole separate post -- well, take it from me, a LOT of people read those "How You Too Can Make A Fortune Buying Foreclosed Property For a Song" books. I must get 12 letters a day, half of them in hand-written envelopes with scarily misspelled letters inside, from people wanting to buy my foreclosed property, help me sell it, loan me money, help me save my house, pray for me, offer me the enclosed orange lifesaver in my time of distress, or pretend to be an official agency acting on behalf of the foreclosure people.

"This," I told my housemate, waving that last one in the air, "Is like fishing at night with a light." A massively illegal form of fishing, by the way, for those of you who did not grow up with First Day Of Fishing Season and First Day of Hunting Season as official school holidays.

Anyway, so it wasn't hard to find two bags of paper to throw away. Or to feel grateful to Microsoft, Joshua Howard, and the gods, while doing so.

Back to cleaning

I am cracking -- making breakthroughs -- all over. With the house, habits, understanding, even how I speak.

After a 7-year spiritual journey, the final year of which was a bardo -- the space just after death -- I find myself reborn into action & purpose. This is the third time in my life this pattern has occurred: a year of laying around looking like I have totally fallen off the train, followed by sudden immense effortless change.

I bought a cleaning book last night called, One Thing At A Time. The therapist author believes chronic messiness can only be cured by a new *system* of thinking. I agree. In this, her second book, she says, "On a less linear note, here are 100 guidelines, intentionally randomly mixed. Pick whichever work for you."

Take her guideline of, Store things near where they will be used. She says (I'm paraphrasing), "Suppose your house has a lot of mail and paper clutter on the dining table. So now people don't eat there anymore. By adding a recycle bin by the front door, you can throw away most of your paper clutter as you enter. Which means less paper makes it onto the table. Which means a) it's more appealing to tackle, and b) it's easier to set aside when the table is needed. Which means the family can start eating together at the table. A BIG change in the system, all from the small change of placing one recycle bin by the door."

The Noble Eightfold Path

The buddhist Eightfold Path, describing the way to the end of suffering, is one of the best systems I know. It lays out all the vectors:

Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

Interestingly, Right Speech is considered the first principle of ethical conduct in this system. Words are an act of morality.

Anyway, here's where I think I am.

Right View = It's all connected. Cleaning my house is sweeping the temple, affects everything
Right Intention = Always leave a theatre cleaner than you found it
Right Action = Pick one room: the studio. Pick one time: now. Throw away one thing: this one.
Right Speech = I said exactly how messy the room was. I said (drew) exactly how much got cleaned.
Right Livelihood = Well, after waking up to a clean livingroom, I am having MAJOR breakthroughs today in my understanding of theatre, software, vision, and excellence. I wrote almost 50 journal pages on that today.
Right Effort = Tackling the livingroom, even though it's too big to be solved in one go. "Abandoning an unwholesome state which has already arisen."
Right Mindfulness = I was present while I was cleaning. I could tell how much energy each item held.
Right Concentration = I was as foccused on cleaning as on rehearsal -- aware of it in both the spiritual and mortal realms.

OyBaby goes OyBlog (now with working links)

Hey, remember me talking about my friend Rob, and how he and his wife had made this fantastic CD and video of their baby doing baby things, while gently celebrating Judaism, all set to out-of-this-world harmonies by three sisters? You don't? Well, here you go, and here.

Anyway -- Rob's gone blog. If you want to track the making of their sequel video & CD, OyBabyBlog is for you.

I find this inspiring because it's someone creating art they love -- and getting it out into the world -- all while still holding down a dayjob, raising the kids, and keeping life rolling. One of the great things about Rob is, he went and GOT that MBA. So he thinks as creatively and fearlessly about how to generate profitability, as he does about the artistic content of what he's creating.

I watch and learn.

Cellular

I just got my first cell phone. Most folks here in Seattle have had these for years. I'm a Slow Adopter.

I feel like someone who just got new contact lenses, but doesn't have the routine down. I don't yet get when to leave it on and when to turn it off. I plugged the charger in by my toothbrush, so at least I'll remember a couple times a day. The best tip was from the salesman: "If you carry it in your pocket, keep the glass side toward your leg so it doesn't break."

2005 is the year -- in my circles anyway -- when cell phones morphed from optional, to expected. Suddenly you were the one out of step if you couldn't call for directions as you were driving, announce your arrival 10 minutes away, inquire from within the building which hall to take to the rehearsal room, or say you were locked out of the theatre. Now it's part of the flow. If you don't have one, you're slowing everything down.

Cell phones have reached Phase 2.

Any new technology goes through three phases. In Phase 1, it emulates a known technology -- in this case, the regular phone. In Phase 2, it starts to evolve into doing things ONLY it can do. In Phase 3, it has become a distinct entity entirely. No one now thinks of a computer as a calculator anymore.

Jenni and Holly are my phone models. They're fast, they're fabulous, and they make it look easy. They're who I want to be like, when I grow cellularly up.

Plus I have to admit... I feel that thrill of techno-cool emanating from it. SO sleek. SO designed. And able to take pictures? ... hmmm... does Wacom make a little tiny stylus for it?

-----------------------
[14 minutes later]

Hey!! My phone just rang! Vibrated, I mean. I about jumped out of my skin, trying to get away from my coat. My first thought was that there was a garter snake in my coat; my second thought was no, maybe a salamander, it was a faster wiggler. Talk about OLD associations from childhood.

Well, I read in the user's manual this morning, while I was brushing my teeth, how to turn the phone off ("Press END"). That seemed a cool battery saver, so I did. But I finished brushing before I got to the part about how to turn it back on.

The prop room, revisited

Six years ago, I made my living room into a rehearsal studio. I stripped everything except two couches at the far end for observers. With pinewood floors and cathedral windows, it was perfect for 2-to-4-person scenes.

"Raachul," said Leonid Anismov, the Russian master theatre director, sitting on the couch in the moonlight, gesturing at the empty space. "What more do you need?" He meant, for a theatre; to do your work.

Three years later, I got a housemate and stopped rehearsing at home. The room stayed empty, then transmuted back into a livingroom for a while. And then it became, innocuously at first... the place where theatre things went.

- Twelve gleaming red 3-foot dowels ("sticks") from Medea.
- Six silver sticks, a stabbed mantle, an unstabbed mantle, and a box of costumes from Caesar.
- Two iron swords, a curved Korean sword, and a broken rapier.
- A heavy glass water bowl for spiritual rituals.
- An iron candelabra, taller than a man, holding three green leafy plants.
- A shorter candelabra with a fourth leafy plant.
- Stretching 14-feet in the air, the delicate tracery of the dead branches from Macbeth.
- Two dark wooden Chinese rice-boxes, several bright cushions, Tibetan altar bowls, and two suitcases of reference books from Nanda Devi, along with several left-behind scripts, Sal's vest, a coat everyone thought was ours but wasn't, two vases, a box of markers, and four lengths of raw silk.
- A brown fabric wall-hanging from Doors.
- Five successive revisions of the Noir script.
- A small pile of books from Theatre du Soleil, most of them in French and a year later still unopened, even the new one by Peter Brook.
- Those four Maeve Binchy books that get read over and over, and a sprawl of old black-and-yellow Darkover and Dorsai novels, Ace and Daw editions cover-priced at $2.25.
- A black art portfolio, a larger one, and one so big it must be wedged up under the armpit, its single handle set at arms-length down its front.
- And behind them all, Rodney's computer, keyboard, and monitor, perched on the window seat, waiting to be turned on.

The couches have crept their way forward to intimacy with the TV. And behind them -- well, it's the prop room. No, a prop room would have shelves, and be organized, and you'd actually plan to USE the heavy Korean sword for something other than just making cool swishing noises in the air and frightening yourself to death.

Oh -- and let it be said, this is all my crap. My housemate is immaculate.

----------------------
[More thoughts, the next day]

So, why did I reveal all that? Most of you will never see my house.

I woke up this morning realizing -- it's because that room bugs me. That's the first one getting cleaned up.

Phone-goddess queen

You start out rested, ready to dive in. You work a long time -- really a long time -- stopping only for food and bathroom, and suddenly you realize it's light again; it's the next day. But even though now you're on the wind-down, having accomplished way more than you planned, you keep finding one more thing to do.

It's like not wanting to take your skis off at the bottom of the hill. So you slide over and go down the bunny hill a few times, for joy.

If it could be done online, or within walking distance of Kinko's, I did it today. I was the fricking email, online, account-managing, advance-planning, internet-researching, appointment-making, fax-arranging, phone-goddess queen.



Yep, queen.

Wild conversations

I love wild conversations. Feral, free-ranging, unbounded, amoral, asocial -- tracing the true leaps of the mind. Nothing is off limits.

When two people reach this state, which I call "Bigness" or "Greatness" -- both minds are freed. There's nothing left to filter, no worry of how your thoughts will be perceived. There's no "you" or "I" left -- it's just the connections, thinking themselves, remapping themselves.

Csikszentmihalyi would call this "Flow," the peak creative state. I would say, this is a form of Flow for the spiritually/ethically/artistically/intellectually rigorous. For artist-thinkers who are media-independent.

It feels like being able to breathe underwater. It is cleansing, purifying. Finally, the flow is fast enough, wide enough, mysterious enough. It takes place at the membrane between the conscious and the subconscious. Telepathy begins to occur. When both people get aligned, trust and bandwidth are high, ANYTHING can be introduced. All the consciouses trust all the unconsciouses. Nothing is incidental, everything has meaning.

Prescient dreams, Aarvanss 40

The last two nights I have had deep clear dreams about my future. I'm not remembering most of them, but I trust that part of me is. These messages are brilliantly clear, embodied in metaphor. Burning blue skies, clear yellow sun, fresh winds -- everything is distinct in these dreams.

Sitting on the mountain, looking at the ocean with the boy who had nothing in his wagon but a pane of glass -- that was the first dream.

I forget the second one.

The third one, last night, culminated in a close-up map of Europe, with all roads leading north to the Odin. It was a map found in a dead woman-scholar's notes -- like the writings of visitors to Tibet last century. On it was the only recorded mention that the Odin had, in its early days (but after they were the full company), created a piece called "Aarvanss 40." It was said the piece sounded like a symphony. It was said that anyone who heard this piece, would have their lives changed forever. I was setting out to hear this piece.

I think "Aarvanss" is a combination of "Aarhus," the university Odin is affiliated with; "Advance"; "Our ones" or "our vans"; also possibly a corruption of "Caravans," as in Rumi's poem:

Come, come, whoever you are
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
It doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come

It then became a dream about having accomplished a big thing -- our team had won a prestigious university-wide research competition. Because of this, we had gotten funding (1.5M Euros) to build a startup entering a worldwide competition. But now the run-rates were all figured differently; everything cost time-and-a-half from now on, so we really only had a month and a half to figure out what to do. And we could no longer afford our primary expert, as she now cost $200/hour. As I was telling her why we would no longer be using her, I thought, "I have moved from Research mode into PM mode."

I think this is true in my life, too. After seven years of research, I am moving into doing.

"I feel like your life is just starting," said Radmila. I have the same sense.

Evidently all my roads lead to the Odin; I am off to find Aarvanss 40, the lost Odin piece, hear its sound and have it change my life (or perhaps I have already heard its sound, which is why my life is changing); and found our startup to enter the world-wide competition.

So that's the spiritual realm. On the mortal realm, I have the overwhelming desire to buy cell phones for me and my mom, paint intensely for a week, purge my house, and open a bank account in Euros.

Pater noster, plant good seeds

I caught the Pope's death services on television yesterday. I liked this Pope. He was a good man, a Polish man. I have seen his church in Krakow. Part of my heart felt panged that he was being buried in Rome, so far from his own cobblestones and skies.

An old man in red robes stepped up to the mic, and in a quavery voice sang the lord's prayer in Latin: Pater noster, qui es en cielis, sanctificateur nomen tuum...

I was stunned. I first heard that prayer when Akropolis actors sang it in Jeanne the Maid; the priests sang it sweetly as they destroyed Joan of Arc.

What blew me away was -- the tune was identical. I thought Akropolis had made it up. But no, they'd done their research. It was the real thing.

To have those two singings overlaid inside me -- Joan's feral killers against this Pope's sorrowing mourners -- was fantastic. Like cold water and hot water at once.

"Play the moment you're in," says Bart Sher. "Let the audience put it together."

Leonid Anisimov says, "We never know what seeds we are planting with our work. It might be thirteen years before your performance helps this man... and you will never know it. And perhaps he will not know either. It is not our job to know. It is our job to plant good seeds."

Using the exact Latin words, tune, and intonation -- that was good seeds.

When I was at the Odin Teatret, and Eugenio Barba was building Andersen's Dream, one of the guidelines was: nothing could go in the performance that was not tied to Hans Christian Andersen's texts. Nothing. So even when they needed a certain material to fill a box, and wanted coffee-beans -- they could not use them, until they found an Andersen text about coffee.

This is ethics. When every level is attended to cleanly, you can trust the work. It resonates differently because of the precision of the ethics.

Road warrior

I've been spending a lot of time at Kinko's. When FedEx bought Kinko's, they decided to cater to "road warriors" -- the salespeople and independent business- people who spend their day on the phone and on the road. If you bring your own computer, you can work for free forever. They have free ethernet, free dialup, free wireless, free bathrooms, access to paid printers, and 7 or 8 cubicles.

I, my friends, have become a road warrior. Until my phone gets turned back on (with paycheck #1), I'm a fixture.

"Hi, Chris, hi Shane" I said yesterday. Chris had her usual -- Franklin, plastic crate of file folders, three fat white 3-ring binders, cell phone, pink flowered box of tissues. Shane was huddled with his phone earpiece on, focussed on his screen. It was strangely companionable. When you look up, there's a bank of windows through which you can see across the lot to the trees.

Only one of the cubicles has dialup, which my laptop needs. It's also the only one where three-year-old children periodically appear, less than two feet away, faces pressed against the glass, and stare at you face-to-face for long minutes. It feels like when the big fish swim past, in the wall-high zoo aquariums.

New job

I accepted a job today as Program Manager of Casual Games, in the Zone group at Microsoft. I start April 18th. I like my manager. "I feel like I started at the far side of the maze," I wrote, "And got -- or got led -- to the treasure at the heart."

Casual Games are ones for non-gamers -- like Hearts, Solitaire, Tetris, Hexic, Word Jumble, etc. You can play for free at zone.com.

Many angels helped:

Pat, who recommended me to Christina
Christina, who checked references, brought me in for interviews, and gave Joshua permission to approach me
Giancarlo, who gave not one but two detailed references
Rob, who wrote a stunning reference
Darryl, who wrote a fantastic reference
Michele, who wrote a awesome reference
Ben & Gwen, who prayed for me during each and every interview
Joshua, who chose to interview me for his group
Peter & Jason, who took me to a dazzling lunch
All interviewers in both groups, who gave profound attention
Chris, who enabled me to talk to the product unit manager
Jason, who sent free word-games to tide me through the wait
Mark, who kept hold of me through 15 interviews, even after I was no longer with his group
Everyone involved in my offer, who did it quickly
John, my brother, Joan, Radmila, Jeff, Kris, Michele, Jim, Patricia, Lyon, Kipley, JJ, Scott, Rik, =s=, and many others who gave unwavering support
the gods, the Mystery, and that butterfly's wing
Stanislavski & Chekhov, because they help with everything

Wagons with houses, wagons with glass

I dreamt last night that my village, like Anatevka, was dispersing. We had all put our belongings in wagons, and were pulling them away. I remember noticing that every wagon had a little house in it; some of them had two houses. "Cool set design," I thought professionally.

I didn't have a wagon. I went with a 10-year-old boy. He was barefoot, wearing a slate-blue hand-knitted sweater and jeans. His wagon was empty except for a single, 1-foot-wide x 4-feet-high pane of glass, carefully wedged between two buddhist cushion-rolls to stand erect. It stood tall, like a mirror, except it was clear. We went the opposite direction of the other villagers, up onto the mountain ledge where we sat and looked at the sea.

Teaching full circle

My BCC class didn't fill this quarter. However, it looks like I may be invited to teach on the Microsoft campus.

This would be coming full circle. Mark Williams, my first acting teacher, taught at BCC... then got invited to teach on the Microsoft campus... where I took his Improv, Movement, and Neutral Mask classes.

I didn't realize how profoundly this would touch me, until it was suggested.

Can I do justice to Mark's obstacle course of tables and chairs, through which we had to back with serene authority, as if wearing gowns and heels?

There is some current which is correctly flowing, if this is still coming into the world.

Yellow tomatoes

Yellow tomatoes mean you're paying extra attention to yourself -- not just tomatoes, not any tomatoes -- but yellow tomatoes. Tomatoes that look like peppers. Tomatoes just for the outrageous beauty of it.

Van Gogh knew yellow tomatoes. And Rilke. And even Beethoven, finally, at the very end in all those suspended endless trills.

Yellow tomatoes for me are those actors who have walked through their own dragon doubts and killing fires, and died three times. Who are longing to die again, and to live, and who see me as the gate or the ground. And I, them.

Yellow tomatoes is sleeping in, in Paris, then walking through the field of old leaves and cold mud, past the steaming horses, to Le Cartoucherie and a theatre filled with sun and soup.

Yellow tomatoes is the path of no compromise -- of only yes. Of purely me.

I don't know the story of my life. I can't name where I am.

I thought the most important part of Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness was the monks who lived in retreat, and who must highly prized Not Knowing. Their fabulous oracle, always right, not always clear or satisfying, cost a ransom.

The oracle would tell me, "You already are that which you are becoming."

I am almost ready to write my books -- almost truthful and ignorant enough.

it's not just actors --
i, too, long to die, be
reborn thrice, all the way

the first death is me
the second is the man. the
third is theatre

commitment feels like
death to me. i am about
to die many ways