The desert, again

I am not exactly sure how I ended up here again but: "tada" I am sitting once again, albeit cross legged, in the desert. But this time it doesn't feel profound like the Montana dance tour that was a cracked wasteland inches from soul quenching rains. Or the Lenten sands that felt noble and liturgically endowed with poetry. Nope this feels dry, and gritty. And I want some shade... seriously anytime little fig tree.

A Fish in the Pond

Sunday mornings for me are sacred. I attend a church service in the evenings, but the mornings are my true sabbath. I sleep in, fiddle around in my kitchen usually producing some new variation of scone (this morning is was apricot ginger) to go with my coffee, and then load up my book bag for a trip to the park. It is my liturgy of rest.
My park, which yes I have come to feel a sense of ownership over, is a lush grouping of willows, maples and birches surrounding a small lake that by any other name is really a glorified pond. I situate myself on a bench on a little dock that is almost hidden by bulrushes and breathe. Peace becomes a tangible substance, it fills my nostrils and dances across my skin like the breeze that skitters across the back of my neck. I am content with my book, my scone, and my coffee.
But the dock is not as hidden as I thought and soon I am joined by a small herd of children followed shortly by their shepherding parents: a father who turns to me apologetically while the mother focuses on gripping the waistband of a toddler who seems determined to plunge head first off the dock in pursuit of a duck. A dog appears,a warm old golden retriever, than 2 more little lap dogs with bulging eye balls. Their owners arrive, a pair of typical middle aged east van hippies, the type who now have the money to afford shopping at expensive organic stores but still insist on wearing clothes from their teenaged wardrobes. My little dock has begun to feel like a 10' by 10' microcosm: ducks, dogs, hippies, and children darting around in choreographed precision. I feel separate, as though I am the invisible narrator allowed to paint them unto a canvas they are ignorant of. As quickly as they came they all walk away down the weathered boards and back unto the trail to join the buzz of the park.
I return back to my book, I think about God and faith and family. I sip my coffee and make a note to buy gum.
Then my second wave of visitors arrive, a boy and his father. They are quiet. They do not announce or apologize for their arrival, we simply acknowledge each other, a quick glance and acceptance of one anothers presence. The boy unravels a fishing line and props up a zip lock bag filled with God-knows-what kind of brown squirming bait. The father drifts back observing his child from a distance, finding his own sacredity in the grey skys of this Sunday morning. I read, the father breathes, and the boy fishes. We are a silent happy trio.
I hear water splashing and look to see something moving in the plastic container next to my little fisherman. I ask him if I can look, somewhat shyly he lets me squat next to him and see his 3 tiny fish splashing around. I am shocked both by their shining brilliance gasping in the shallow bowl, and by the fact that he actually caught anything. I ask him what he will do with them -- half afraid he intends on frying up these 3 inch creatures and ingesting their pond scum-- but no he will release them. I want to keep chatting, or ask to fish with him, but I return to my bench and my book.
The baseball diamond in the back corner of the park has a new sound system which the little league has decided to use to blare beach boys tunes, when it switches to a vibrato laced 'O Canada' by some aspiring local I know it is time to leave. I abandon my fisherman and his father, I feel like I should say goodbye or wish him luck but I don't. I walk past the 8 year baseball players, the gathering of taiko drummers, a little girl just learning to ride her bike, willows,birches,maples, back to my home.
Sometimes I wonder if being an artist means I will get crazier the more I hone my craft. That I will see more of what others ignore and care less about what they do. For instance I went to the park today in my Uggs, in June, because I knew the warmer my feet were the longer I would stay. My face is naked from make-up and wisps of my hair refuse to stay in my half-hearted braid.
Perhaps I am already the crazy artist. I think I am okay with that.

This Storm Borne Frailty

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!(King Lear 3.2.1)

The rains, as you might have guessed, have continued. The storms that come , now have the cutting edge of colds winds that send the pelting rain in gravity defying directions. When I parked my little car outside of the studio for Shakespeare class last night I was half afraid it swim away on me. Oh but how delicious it is to have Shakespeare and storms together. The night begged for one of us actors to go screech Lear's soliqueys into the roaring storm...none of us did of course, we would've gotten wet, ugh. But the drama of the storm, even when safely indoors, rages on inside me.

I, perhaps sixty years too early, have gone walking in the storm. I have those deep emotional cracks and rages of Lear's storm blowing at me with a force that has torn aside pre-exsisting foundations and confidences. I feel half wild, ready to tear at my clothing and run headlong into the very storms I have spent my life avoiding. I feel dangerous and released...but then I put on my dress shoes and head off to my 9-5.

This is my conflict.

I am quietly raging unsure of at what, or whom, but walking edges of cliffs - silently. My silence comes from the other side of my storm, the warm air, that reminds me to nurture and love, to cling to the responsibility and leadership that I have walked in my whole life. And all of this feels unnoticed -- the glory of acting Shakespeare is that when a character feels something, we see it, we hear it, it is the external and heightened representation of our internal swirling chaos's. While we may think of doing something, these characters do it, they scream, they murder, they betray, they fuck...and occasionally make love. Its raw, its visceral, its the storm inside us.

In the end Lear has walked in the storm, ultimately, to face himself -- "Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (1.4.230), he sees betrayals, loyalties, sorrows, and himself. Now I am not saying my coming of age crisis's is the equivalent of this tragic blind dying man, clutching his dead daughter in his arms, while he howls into the night; er at least lets hope not.

But this passion, this intensity, the high stakes is a storm I -- well none of us-- can avoid. One only hopes that enlightenment and not destruction comes from our journey into night. But, that the pelting pitiless rains expose more than madness allowing us to walk on into morning.