The Twisted Gypsy

Happy birthday to my beautiful mother. Here is to a year of change! Cheers!

I really miss my friends blogs. All at once, everyone seems to have abandoned them. This is not a guilt trip. It is just that in some silly way, reading blogs makes me feel connected to that person on a daily basis. Ugh. There is no way to make this not sound lame. Does anyone want to join in my ‘bring back the blogs’ campaign?

Recently, I have been talking to my big brother on an almost daily basis.  Well, by ‘talking’ I mean chatting on line. It makes all the difference in the world to have a daily connection with someone.  Where were we before the Internet?  Our ancestors boarded ships and sailed for the new land to never return to their homeland and to never see their families again.  That just blows my mind.  No contact.  Perhaps a sporadic delivery of handwritten letters that were outdated the moment they were placed in the post, perhaps nothing.

At a recent trip to my Aunt Janett’s house, we came across this map that my Grandfather Gilchrist sent to my Grandma Aphrodite while he was away fighting in World War II.  He sent this map.  This is what she got in the mail from him- a map.  A map of where he had been and where the battles in the war were taking place. Who knows when she got it- weeks, maybe a month after he sent it?  Did she wonder if he was even alive? How did all this work? How did relationships work?  How did they spend 4 years apart with little to no contact? Was love more simple?  More pure?  More distant? Were they successful because everyone said they should be?  How did they hold it together in such a complicated, destructive time?

I wish I could time travel.

I wonder who she is?  Captured without knowing it. I couldn’t find her if I tried, but I have her photograph.

After the 2010 stomach flu episode last week, we gathered
our senses and went to Prague for 2 days for some work.

Thank goodness we finally felt well enough so that
we could consume Czech beer. Really, how could it be
so much better than beer anywhere else?  My guess= Magic elves  

The stomach flu has to be one of the most humiliating forms of short term illnesses. We spent the evening with friends the other night and all of us, including their baby, woke up the next day with an awful case of the ‘which way do I turn’ flu. There is no need to expound on that idea, as anyone who has ever had it knows the momentary misery that it brings.  It makes you plead, has you making promises to anyone who will listen, it takes you to a point of utter desperation.  So, in those feelings, I thought of my mother who has always said “If you have your health, you have it all.”  I mean, really, what could be truer than that statement.  If you are healthy, you can do what it takes to fix whatever is broken.  There is nothing that can’t be fixed besides some one’s health.

And so, with those 24 hours of awfulness in my pocket, I can take them out and use them as fuel.  It is so good to be physically reminded of the power of our body and the importance of treating it like a temple.  Things can change in the blink of an eye- for good or for bad. Remembering that is a gift, a gross one, but a gift none the less.

Once again, we are getting ready to get neck deep into Let There Be Balloons. This time, we will be doing a public reading in Malmö, Sweden, which should be interesting.  I have no idea how a Swedish audience will react to this very American story, but I am eager to find out.  In the coming weeks, half of the creative team will be doing rewrites and then preparing some professionals to do the read/sing.

This is a song that Felipe sings about his partner, Ben, just after Ben has made a decision that truly breaks Felipe’s heart.  ”I Won’t Need You” is really what you want to stand up and say as someone that is closing the door on you, but of course, finding the strength to do that is not an easy thing to do:

I Won’t Need You_DEMO

If I could, I would build a life sized house like this:

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The bridge to Copenhagen…

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Waiting for it:

(A shot I took in the swamps in Florida.)