Saving FB scraps
One of these days, I'll go through this journal & harvest all these words.
April 17, 2017
The men freeze & she's downstairs, stumbling through Chopin on some unseen piano, then she emerges, moon-eyed & colorless under the light. The hair she fussed over all day is hanging limp and long and stark. Wasted, wandering apparition, bemoaning ruined hands that clutch the wedding dress she pulled from the attic like a spiritualist releasing ectoplasm. Her consumptive son confesses what she cannot hear. He reaches out to touch her & she beats out a "no!" so hard every last person in the house jumps. She inhabits only her memory. The past IS present & there's no one around her now but mothers--Mother Elizabeth. The Blessed Virgin. She talks of prayers & visions at shrines. She was going to be a nun. She was sure of that in the winter...but she remembers as she rests her head absently on her motionless husband. In spring, she fell in love with James Tyrone & she was so happy...for a time.
Then the light cuts off & I realize I'm not breathing.
Absolutely the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen and I got to witness it in the very house where all these memories originated. It was like the actors were channeling spirits, pulling their energy right out of the walls that absorbed all this unrest over 100 years ago. The tension was physical, palpable, brilliantly, necessarily uncomfortable-everything O'Neill was shooting for when he wrote his play, I think--this day that drags on and each tick of the clock pulls us further & further back into this family's all-consuming past.
The artistry of Flock Theatre *always* leaves me gobsmacked.
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April 15, 2017
I can't stop watching these giraffes. I'm sitting here getting all weepy-eyed for my new mama days, when I was like "hello tiny human who's been safe & sound & warm under my heart until now. I can't believe I made you. You've given me both the greatest pain & the deepest love I've ever felt in my life. I'm not sure if I'm ready for there to be space between us yet, so I'm just going to hold you to my chest & listen to you breathe the way you've listened to my pulse as it kept us both alive these past 9 months."
April 17, 2017
The men freeze & she's downstairs, stumbling through Chopin on some unseen piano, then she emerges, moon-eyed & colorless under the light. The hair she fussed over all day is hanging limp and long and stark. Wasted, wandering apparition, bemoaning ruined hands that clutch the wedding dress she pulled from the attic like a spiritualist releasing ectoplasm. Her consumptive son confesses what she cannot hear. He reaches out to touch her & she beats out a "no!" so hard every last person in the house jumps. She inhabits only her memory. The past IS present & there's no one around her now but mothers--Mother Elizabeth. The Blessed Virgin. She talks of prayers & visions at shrines. She was going to be a nun. She was sure of that in the winter...but she remembers as she rests her head absently on her motionless husband. In spring, she fell in love with James Tyrone & she was so happy...for a time.
Then the light cuts off & I realize I'm not breathing.
Absolutely the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen and I got to witness it in the very house where all these memories originated. It was like the actors were channeling spirits, pulling their energy right out of the walls that absorbed all this unrest over 100 years ago. The tension was physical, palpable, brilliantly, necessarily uncomfortable-everything O'Neill was shooting for when he wrote his play, I think--this day that drags on and each tick of the clock pulls us further & further back into this family's all-consuming past.
The artistry of Flock Theatre *always* leaves me gobsmacked.
-------
April 15, 2017
I can't stop watching these giraffes. I'm sitting here getting all weepy-eyed for my new mama days, when I was like "hello tiny human who's been safe & sound & warm under my heart until now. I can't believe I made you. You've given me both the greatest pain & the deepest love I've ever felt in my life. I'm not sure if I'm ready for there to be space between us yet, so I'm just going to hold you to my chest & listen to you breathe the way you've listened to my pulse as it kept us both alive these past 9 months."