(Not the Florida Keys, but the keys here on the laptop…)
I did not drive down to see my dad yesterday because I wound up coming down with a very mild cold– still, I didn’t want to risk his catching it.
I took the whole day off to just relax and rest yesterday and now I feel pretty good. Only a little congestion left.
Today, I’m working with Sandra on a few tweaks to the Epilogue — and then:
…the script goes off to the Production Crew in Toronto and the play will actually be underway!!!!
Can you believe it? (We started working on “The Guide to Being Fabulous” in November of 2014.)
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Aside from that, I’m trying to shift my focus around here, because the play will need next to nothing from me now — maybe a line here and there will need to be written during rehearsals. But that is it. So I’m clearing off my desk and getting ready to dive into the next project.
Oh! And, lest me forget — right around the corner is this (I’ve had a ticket to this concert for 6 months already!):
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Okay. Real Raw News was off on a trip from Hell, and is just now getting caught up. From yesterday:
“White Hats Shoot Down FEMA Plane Leaving Hawaii
On August 29, a White Hat-controlled Arleigh Burke-class destroyer shot down a State Department 767 carrying 180 FEMA personnel from Honolulu to Florida via a stopover at San Francisco International Airport, a source in General Eric M. Smith’s office told Real Raw News.
The shootdown occurred at 2:15 a.m., approximately 300 nautical miles east of Oahu. The plane was flying at 37,000 feet when struck by a single Standard Missile 3 (SM-3). The 767 broke apart midair as it plummeted into the ocean. […]”
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The rest of the news is basically still stuck in Hell — earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, explosions, more floods, more fires…
And today is my least favorite day of the year — the anniversary of 9-11.
We all know now what really happened that day, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. I have PTSD attached to the images of 9-11, so I will just let you go watch all the footage elsewhere. In my opinion, NYC — my home back then and my most favorite place on Earth — was never the same after that day.
(Phil has some videos about what really happened that day — you can find them here.)
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Okay, here’s this–
James Tabor- Bible Prophecy # 6–Does the Longest Prophecy in the Bible “Foretell” Events After They Happened? (33 mins):
Ross K. Nichols – The Prophet Isaiah: Signs and Wonders [Ep. 4] (54 mins):
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I have one chapter left to listen to in Bertram Cope’s Year (audiobook on LibriVox, novel from 1919, written by Henry Blake Fuller). I have really enjoyed listening to that book, gang. What a quiet, unexpected little gem.
I’m still reading Paris in the Fifties, by Stanley Karnow (1997) (and still studying French on the Mondly app!!), but now I am also reading Mary Oliver’s New and Collected Poems, Vol. 1 (1992), and it really sets the tone for my mornings, now that September is really with us and autumn is just around the corner.
I love Mary Oliver’s poems. Through most of my adult life, I thought she was a black woman from Harlem, or someplace like that. Which is really odd, considering 99.9% of her poems are about Nature, nothing urban… but, for some reason, that’s what I saw in my mind’s eye whenever I would read any of her poems in magazines.
Of course, I eventually learned that she was a white girl from Cleveland!!! Which is just so funny, since that is what I am, too. You gotta wonder, gang, why I would assume she was, like, the complete opposite of me…???
Anyway. I love her poems, and in my opinion, she had the most lovely and amazing life.
Here’s one of her best-loved poems:
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save. Mary Oliver The Journey
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And I’ve also been re-watching this DVD from 2010, doing some research for an upcoming memoir of my wee bonny girlhood — Stones in Exile, a documentary on the Rolling Stones in exile in the South of France, where they were recording their now-classic album, Exile on Main St.
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So the approaching autumn is changing the color of the world outside my window and the color of my inner, writing life. Things are feeling kind of peaceful around here. For a change…
That’s really it, gang. I need to head into town and get the groceries before I call Sandra and get down to work.
Enjoy your Monday, wherever you are in the world.
Thanks for visting. I love you guys. See ya!
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My current listening-music!
From 1971, that legendary album from the Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers: “Dead Flowers.” Enjoy!!
Marilyn's Room 