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The Play is the Thing: Day Five
Today was not a great day for the play. Or writing in general. Think I needed a break. However, the end is in sight and I've got two more days before going back to the pens. It will be finished on Mother's Day. Something very poetic about that.
Have also made an important decision to not be the guest star in someone else's life.
I'm going to accomplish the things I want.
Keep sight of my goals.
Find my way back to the surface.
The Play is the Thing: Day Four
My ambition may be getting the better of me. I can see it all coming together and it's real and there is a vision of it on the stage that is astounding me. But I have not formal guide, no theatre training or geekyness to fall back upon. So I'm looking at plays that I've read. Some I've seen produced, some not. Who do I find speaking to me? Tony Kushner. I'm reading his Playwright's Notes for Angels in America and they are making sense to me. Not that I see That's Why I Hold On as anywhere near in the same league.
I mean, let's just get a grip.
I'm playing t-ball while watching game tapes of the World Series.
But if you're going to find heroes
you might as well pick the best:
Tony Kushner, Eugene O'Neill, David Mamet.
The Play is the Thing: Day Three
Nothing done in the computer today. Edited on paper. Went to class.
Feeling good about this.
The Play is the Thing: Day Two
Things are rolling right along. So very please with my progress. Five days left. Exciting!
The Play is the Thing: Day One
I am on vacation from my fountain pen job this week. The goal is to finish the play I've started and had in my head for more than a year. I'm going to finish the first draft by the end of the week. Today went well considering that I had to retype everything I already had due to an earlier glitch during my upgrade from Snowcat to Lion.
C'est la vie! All is well and I'm ready for tomorrow.
Over the next several months I'll get it ready to submit to the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2013. One way or another I'm going to get it produced.
Twenty Years Ago
Vicinity of Vermont & Vernon via Los Angeles Times
Twenty years ago I was a college senior living on campus at Jefferson and Vermont. It was Wednesday, Stop Day, the day between the last day of classes and the first day of finals. That morning I had a job interview near the airport. I didn’t like using the freeway so I took Florence home through Inglewood. It was 1:00pm when I went through the intersection at Normandie a few blocks before I turned north on Vermont. My Drama final was the next morning. I put in a videotape: Crimes of the Heart. I wasn’t watching TV, didn’t know what was happening. My RA knocked on the door holding a bat, told me to stay inside, to watch the news. I watched a police car be overturned near the courthouse. I tried to call my parents, let them know I was okay, but there was no dial tone. I stared out my window, watched a crowd marching north, flames in their wake. I was holding the phone, twisting the cord, when it rang. It fell to the floor and I picked it up, asked, “Hello?” My friend’s dad was on the line. Had I seen his son? He’d gone to lunch with his grandparents in Brentwood but had not been seen since. I couldn’t tell him I could see his son’s parking space and that it was empty.
At Last
Last weekend my co-worker and friend, David, married the love of his life, Whimsey. It was a simple and beautiful service between two adults who’d taken the long road to this romance. Gives a grain of hope to those still looking for love.
My favorite part of the wedding was the groom's dad and his camera.
Ralph Lindenmeyer: May 8, 1920-March 20, 2012
This week the funeral for Ralph Lindenmeyer was held at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Vista. He was a friend of my dad’s from his days at the San Diego Union Tribune. Dad was a sports writer. Ralph was a typesetter. More on that in a minute.
I felt it was important to go because he was my godfather. His late wife, Lenore, was my godmother. I didn’t know them well. We moved away from the neighborhood shortly after I was born. But during the summer we’d drive from Denver to San Diego for vacation. That’s how I really knew him. There was always a beach party. Now, you need to understand what a beach party is. It is an all day affair consisting of getting there early to stake out a fire ring, swimming, eating, building sand castles, swimming, eating some more, building a fire, cooking hot dogs on skewers and beans in the can on the flattest rock you can find, toasting marshmallows and eating brownies, sleeping in the car on the way back to the hotel.
Ralph was a very Catholic Catholic. Throughout my life I received cards for my First Communion and Confirmation, high school and college graduations. But even though he was not just an active but passionate Catholic, he was open to other’s practices and faiths. It makes me think he’d be okay with my doubts, the shift in my faith. I didn’t know that his favorite saint was St. Therese. The only reason this of any importance to me at all is that she’s kind of my patron saint. I went to St. Therese Academy. So did a lot of kids, I know. But then there was a display of her things at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York when I was there. She also played a small prank on me at when I lit a candle to her at Sacre Coeur in Paris. A book about her life literally jumped of a shelf at me in Barnes & Noble. So for her to be the saint of choice on his prayer card was so cool!
Ralph was a Pearl Harbor Survivor. This is something I’ve always known. He was Navy Machinist Mate Third Class on Ford Island. What I didn’t know was that his youngest daughter didn’t know that until 1976. She had to have been eighteen years old. And she read it as an article he wrote for the newspaper. Ralph was active in the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. He even consulted on the 2001 Pearl Harbor movie.
My sister and I have the same memory of him at the paper. He spent thirty years as a typesetter for the San Diego Union Tribune. What he did was, in the days before computers formatted everything, was set the letters for each story. Every word was handset into a box, letter by letter. He could spell backward and hold a conversation while getting the newspaper ready to print.
May today there be peace within.
May you trust God the you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
May you be content knowing you’re a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones,
And allow your soul the freedom
to sing, dance, praise, and love.
It is there for each and every one of you.
~ St. Therese of Lisieux
Testing Remote Capabilities
Sunset, September 30, 2011
Just checking to see how the remote posting works.
Update
on 2012-04-17 20:26 by Jonella
Ha! Ha! That was easy and looks good!